soaring-poverty-in-america-good-time-to.html

The Fiscal Lunacy of Electing Democrats to Congress

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_fiscal_lunacy_of_electing_democrats_to_congress.html

On Sep. 7, Barack Obama waded into the midterm elections fray with a speech at the University of Illinois, proclaiming that the good economy we're currently enjoying actually started under him. According to Obama, Trump inherited it all. Be that as it may, what did Obama inherit?

Some will make Obama's economic inheritance out to have been the worst situation ever. But actually, the crisis that we faced in Sep.-Oct. of 2008 had already been dealt with by the Bush administration. Recall that the financial markets were seizing up; we were looking into the abyss, the collapse of capitalism. Treasury secretary "Hank" Paulson even reportedly knelt before Speaker Pelosi, begging her to usher the $700B TARP through Congress.

Bush, Paulson, and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke stepped into the breach and stopped the hemorrhaging. By the time of Obama's inauguration, the markets had reopened, money was flowing again, and disaster had been averted. So the worst of the crisis had been dealt with before Obama became president. But don't tell that to Barry, as he likes to think not only that he is responsible for all the good stuff that came after him, but also that nothing that preceded him was important.

What Obama's recovery was really about was propping up prices in the stock market and real estate, and in funneling money to his base – e.g., union members. What Obama's recovery was not about is government reform. Because Congress didn't deal with the underlying causes of the crisis, we're still vulnerable.

Obama's recovery, the most anemic since the 1940s, came at one helluva price. What's more, America has not yet paid that price and settled accounts. The Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars through multiple rounds of quantitative easing – i.e., Q.E. The "unwinding" of the Q.E. asset purchases continues.

More sobering than the Fed's Q.E. are the unprecedented deficits that Congress ran during the Obama administration. Even so, in his speech, Obama claims to have cut the deficit "by more than half." But in FY2008, the last full fiscal year before Obama became president, the deficit was $458B, which at the time was the largest deficit in history. Only one of the deficits during Obama's tenure got below the 2008 figure, and that by only $20B.

So when Obama claims to have cut the deficit by half, he's talking about cutting it from his own high point, and the high and low deficits under Obama were $1,412B in 2009 and $438B in 2015. From the high to the low, the deficit was cut by almost 69 percent; that's nearly $1T. So the cut in the budget deficit was not just more than one half, but more than two thirds.

However, this improvement did not happen under Speaker Pelosi. The improvement happened only after the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans took back the House and replaced her. Pelosi and the Democrats were never able to get the deficit below a trillion dollars. (One can verify these numbers by looking at Table 1.1 on page 25 of the OMB's historical tables.)

Over the last two years, Republicans have disappointed on the deficit. But giving control of the budget back to Democrats at this time would be quite stupid. That's because the bill for the Democrats' deficits under Obama will start coming due on October 1, which is the start of fiscal 2019 and will mark the ten-year anniversary of Pelosi's first trillion-dollar deficit.

Any ten-year securities sold in 2009 will mature in 2019. And here's the thing: most of the public debt is Treasury notes, not bonds, and T-notes have a max term of ten years. Democrats actually expect voters to put them back in charge of the budget at the exact moment that we start paying back the bulk of the trillion-dollar deficits that they, the Democrats, ran up under Obama.

The federal government will soon be rolling over an unprecedented amount of debt, which will cause the interest rates on those U.S. securities to rise. Now is long past time for Congress to cut spending, but all you hear from Democrat candidates for Congress is more spending: "free" college, single-payer government health care, and other "free" stuff.

When Nancy Pelosi was campaigning to take control of Congress back in 2006, she touted PAYGO, pay-as-you-go financing meant to keep the deficit from rising. But her first budget, FY2008, had the largest deficit up to that point; her second deficit was nearly a trillion higher; and trillion-dollar deficits followed. In the midst of running her $1.4T deficit in 2009, Pelosi shamelessly flogged her fraudulent PAYGO at a House news conference. Talk about chutzpah.

On June 6 this year at The Hill, we read: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other top Democrats are vowing to abide by fiscally hawkish pay-as-you-go rules if they seize the majority next year, rejecting calls from liberals who feel they'd be an impediment to big legislative gains."

Also on June 6 at The Nation, we read: "Bold progressivism and 'pay-go' fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive."

On June 7 at the Washington Post, we read: "If they're successful in winning back Congress this year and winning the White House next year, it [PAYGO] could seriously hamper their ability to pass progressive legislation."

On September 4 at The Intercept, we read: "Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made the public a big promise, vowing to handcuff her party's progressive ambitions, including in the event that a Democratic president succeeds Donald Trump, by resurrecting the 'pay-go' rule that mandates all new spending is offset with budget cuts or tax increases."

Fret not, my progressive friends: Pelosi's promise to abide by PAYGO was a lie in 2006, and it's a lie today. Voters should remember that in the middle of the Great Recession and a trillion-dollar deficit, Democrats passed a huge new entitlement: Obamacare. If Democrats really cared about fiscal responsibility, then rather than the easily ignored PAYGO, they'd be urging a balanced budget amendment.

On Sep. 10, former speaker Pelosi told CNN that she feels comfortable with the support she has in the Democrat caucus and that after the midterms, she will again be speaker. Decency would dictate that the person who ushered through the nation's first trillion-dollar deficit might demur from commenting on smaller deficits run by others, but not Nancy.

If it becomes ever larger in comparison to the economy, the debt will someday become unmanageable and America will have a "debt crisis." Leading up to that dreadful day, there'll be interest rate hikes, which are already underway. These rate hikes are coming at the very time when we'll be rolling over more government securities than ever. Politicians of both parties are responsible for this scary situation, but Democrats are worse. Democrats belong to the only party that has run trillion-dollar deficits while controlling both the Congress and the presidency.

Rather than a "blue wave," Democrats need to be spanked in November. When Democrats told us in 2006 that they would not make the deficit worse and would abide by the constraints of PAYGO, we gave them power, and they made the deficit far worse than it'd ever been. Now, twelve years later, Democrats again tell us they'll abide by PAYGO and expect us to put them back in power. And this, at the very moment the bill for their extravagant borrowing and spending under Obama is starting to come due. Holders of U.S. securities aren't like Obama's General Motors bondholders – they must be paid.

If there's even a remote possibility that Democrats might retake Congress and again control the budget and spending, real Americans should run to the polls on Election Day and vote Republican.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA

'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/pew-american-people-legals-see-obama-as.html

The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.

The Alinsky-ization of Brett Kavanaugh

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_alinskyization_of_brett_kavanaugh.html

By Rich Logis

Republicans and conservatives are fond of referencing Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky, but how many have read his body of work? I've always referred to Alinsky's secular agitator bible, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, as the sequel to The Communist Manifesto. Published in 1972, shortly before Alinsky's death, Rules was a significant part of President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's political upbringings – although he more influenced Obama, who followed in Alinsky's community organizing footsteps in Chicago in the '80s.

Alinsky's thirteen rules are effective. The first step to challenging them is actually recognizing them.

Here's how Democrats and the DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex) Alinsky-ized Brett Kavanaugh, in the lead up to, during, and after his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

1: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."

Outnumbered 51-49, Senate Democrats know that the arithmetic isn't on their side. If the Democrats and Republicans each hold court along party lines, Kavanaugh is our next justice, thanks to the nuclear option employed by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell last year to get Justice Neil Gorsuch confirmed.

But a two-senator lead means the tie-breaking voter, Vice President Mike Pence, had better be on call when the roll call vote to confirm Kavanaugh is held. Democrats undoubtedly consider Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, of Maine and Alaska, respectively, to be free agents, particularly over Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh was relentlessly questioned by Democrats over abortion; the goal was to create doubt that Collins and Murkowski would vote to confirm him. If uncertainty exists, it's unlikely that Democrats from states President Trump won in 2016 will cross the aisle. If Democrats somehow secure 51 nays, we'll have the modern-day version of Borked: Kavanaughed.

2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people."

Alinsky wrote in Rules that "the issue is never the issue." The reason the Democrats were obsessed with the documents withheld by the president has nothing to do with the documents; it has to do with the fact that the Democrats on the Committee on the Judiciary were unwilling to have substantive legal discussions. Why? Simple: because Kavanaugh would have made the Democrats – several of whom are trained attorneys – look like first-day law school students. Having authored 307 opinions, from 2,700 cases, during his 12 years as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, along with dozens of speeches to law schools and legal groups, Kavanaugh's jurisprudence bona fides are not only rock solid, but also very public. There is zero we don't know about Kavanaugh's interpretive approach and acumen.

3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."

I suspect that this rule guided The New York Times' and Associated Press's show-me-the-woman-and-I'll-show-you-the-crime expedition two months ago for the work emails of Kavanaugh's wife, Ashley, who was hired earlier this year as town manager of Chevy Chase, Md. The Times requested any emails that contained the words "gun," "abortion," "federalist" or "gay." Perhaps the Times believed that Mrs. Kavanaugh was fond of attending The Federalist Society lectures about concealed carrying lesbians who believe that abortion is creepy. The Times' request was a big dud; 85 pages of emails later, and, I'm sure, much to the newspaper's chagrin, nothing incriminating, and nothing about guns, abortion, gays, or federalists was discovered. The AP requested all of her work emails but hasn't yet reported on its findings.

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

Though there weren't explicit questions about Kavanaugh's Catholic faith, he noted his work with Catholic Charities. This rule was the basis for California senator Cuckoo Kamala Harris's lie that Kavanaugh called birth control abortion-inducing drugs (have you noticed how often I've already written about abortion?). And here's the ACLU's predictable fear-mongering that Kavanaugh would usher in a theocratic oligarchy. In fairness, I'm not angry at the ACLU, because voting is a lot like any decision or purchase: it's done based on fear or greed.

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

Kavanaugh has been in Washington for decades; he's what many of us would call an "establishment" figure. This has provided an opportunity for the DMIC toattack his establishment "elitism," which President Trump swore to reject by draining the swamp. The median household income of Kavanugh's ZIP code is $12,000 a month, his house cost $1.2 million to purchase, and Kavanaugh racked up tens of thousands of dollars in credit debt to buy Washington Nationals season tickets. As coach of one of his daughters' basketball teams, his moniker is "Coach K." If the nickname Coach K doesn't smack of elitism, I don't know what does. The DMIC showed no qualms in portraying Kavanaugh as an out-of-touch Beltway insider. Oh, yeah, and people will die if he's confirmed.

6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

Democrats know that most of their voters are out for blood, and a "good tactic" was to inextricably link Kavanaugh to President Trump, an "unindicted co-conspirator," according to Harris and Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, due to the plea deal of Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

In the old days, Democrats weren't quite as politically loony as they currently are and were definitely more likable. Unlikability is a good tactic for the Democrats; the temperament of a justice is important, and the more unlikeable Democrats were in their questioning, the better the chances Kavanaugh would lose his cool. But alas, he kept his cool, especially during Harris's entrapping questionsabout possible conversations he had with Trump's lawyer's firm regarding the Mueller investigation. The Democrats tried to force Kavanaugh into the role of de facto spokesman for the president, but he was ready for them.

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

I didn't watch every second of the hearings, but I watched more than 75 percent, and Democrats said Trump's name dozens of times. New Jersey senator Cory Booker handled Trump fatigue by putting on a theatrical production worthy of Broadway: Booker, whose claim to fame was interrogating Mike Pompeo about sodomy during his secretary of state confirmation hearings, dared his Republican colleagues to expel him from the Senate. As was expected, President George W. Bush's name popped up. Kavanaugh worked for Bush, and the implication is that Kavanaugh has always been associated with illegitimate presidents.

8. "Keep the pressure on."

This is one of the easier rules to follow, because specifics aren't necessary. Attorneys who litigate before the Supreme Court know to expect random barrages of questions, and the Democrats kept up the pressure by interrupting Kavanaugh dozens of times, not including the interruptions from protesters. The interruptions failed in knocking Kavanaugh off his game – same for the objections to the hearings, coordinated by Democrats.

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

If I had to pick one rule sold the hardest by Democrats, it's this one. The "threats" posed by Kavanaugh sound a lot like the threats posed by Robert Bork, nominated by President Reagan in 1982. Said Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy:

Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution[.]

Of course, had Bork been confirmed, none of those things would have occurred. But that wasn't important; it was the "what if?" threat of those things. In Kavanaugh's case, workers will have zero rights, felons will own machine guns, and women will be forced into back-alley abortions and die.

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, the Democrats will have lost the battle, but they will consider the larger war still winnable – especially considering that he's expected to be confirmed a month before the midterm elections. It was quite apparent which Democrats were thinking about running for president in 2020 (Harris and Booker) and which weren't (Partrick Leahy of Vermont). Those positioning themselves for a White House run will incorporate their self-aggrandizing "resistance" to Kavanaugh into their campaigns.

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside."

In the case of Kavanaugh, this is a slight overlap of Rule 1. Trump has gotten 60 federal judges confirmed, is reforming the Supreme Court to how the Founders envisioned it, and has 100 pending federal judicial appointments. These realities are red-meat selling points to Democrat voters: "Look at the havoc Trump has wrought! We must prevent him from further destruction!" Just how deep it will break into the counterside remains to be seen, but desperation is all Democrats have left (although projected demographics, if not engaged, don't bode well for America First).

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

To have a chance of winning long-term political battles, there must be self-immolation and sacrificial lambs within the Democratic Party ranks. Adaptation is key. This is already underway, as evidenced by the rise of "democratic socialist" primary winners nationwide. In America, Leninism has always been implemented in creeping doses, until one day, it's mainstream. The constructive alternative will continue to be the message that overt, out-in-the-open socialism is necessary to prevent future Brett Kavanaughs.

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

In Clintonian fashion, the Democrats will persist. Remember: Kavanaugh can't prove he's not racist, or that he won't vote to send abortion battles back to the states, where they belonged in the first place. The Democrats will continue to color Kavanaugh identically to how we describe Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor: as an untrustworthy judge who legislates from the bench.

My prediction: Kavanaugh will receive 54 votes to confirm, with Collins and Murkowski unlikely to defect.

Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show at TheRichLogisShow.com and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat. He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.

GEORGE SOROS PARTNERS WITH BARACK OBAMA and ERIC HOLDER TO CREATE A GLOBALIST REGIME FOR THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS and CRONY BANKSTERS…. Open borders and endless hordes of illegals will make it happen!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/monica-showalter-soros-banksters-and.html

YOU WONDERED WHY OBAMA-HOLDER WORKED SO HARD TO SABOTAGE AMERICAN VOTING FOR MORE ILLEGALS???

Those are the subliterate, low-skill, non-English-speaking indigents whose own societies are unable or unwilling to usefully educate and employ them. Bring these people here and they not only need a lot of services, they are putty in the hands of leftist demogogues as Hugo Chavez demonstrated - and they are very useful as leftist voters who will support the Soros agenda.

BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY ERIC HOLDER DECLARES THAT OBAMA IS

(still) “READY TO ROLL” FOR A THIRD TERM FOR LIFE!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-barron-obama-and-building-of.html

“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing.”

THE OBAMA MARXIST-MUSLIM BANKSTER-FUNDED THIRD TERM for life:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/03/obamas-marxism-still-hankering-for.html

"Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview. Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan

"We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C.

home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative

agenda. None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that

Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him."

Patricia McCarthy / AMERICAN THINKER.com

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: AN AMERICAN TRAITOR

Saturday, September 22, 2018

BARACK OBAMA'S LEGACY OF FISCAL LUNACY