Pre-June rant getting some practice

[sirs]

Scary that the country's level of freedom soon hinges on just 1 or 2 supreme court justices, but suffice to say, Obama's signature non-racist gorilla in the room 2700 piece of legislative garbage, erroneously titled the Affordable Care Act, has him and his Dem coolaide drinkers already trying to set the stage of how "horribly wrong" and unjust any ruling that knocks down the mandate, or the whole thing for that matter, would be
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Obama Pre-emptively Lashes Out at "Unelected" Supreme Court

Following last week's dramatic Obamacare oral arguments, the Left appears to be anticipating a defeat when the Court releases its ruling in June.  To lay the groundwork for a full-fledged campaign of anti-SCOTUS recriminations, they've begun a coordinated attack on the Court's legitimacy and reputation.  Democratic Senators have fired early shots, as have several prominent Democrat Party strategists.  Today, as expected, President Obama joined the pre-emptive pile-on:
 
"Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary event by overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress," Obama told reporters today while speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. "I'm confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld." Obama concluded.

A few thoughts:
 
(1) That last quote will go down in the annals of presidential tautological tautologies. The law "will be upheld because it should be upheld."  Such insight!

(2) Yes, the US Supreme Court is -- and always has been -- an "unelected" body.  And?  Are you hinting, Mr. President, that the American people ought not respect the final decisions of the High Court, or that the institution no longer serves as the ultimate arbitor of constitutionality?  Such a departure would, indeed, be "unpredecented" -- the true definition of which appears to elude our Harvard Law graduate president.  Also, since when does this president object to panels of unelected, unaccountable federal appointees making decisions about people's lives, with no possibility for further appeal?  Suddenly, it's no longer a feature.

(3) In all seriousness, in what conceivable way would SCOTUS striking down a law it determined to be unconstitutional constitute an "unprecedented" act?  Supreme Court majorities have been doing exactly that since establishing the practice of judicial review in 1803's landmark Marbury v. Madison decision.  Heritage's Lachlan Markay reports that the Court has struck down 53 federal laws in the last 30 years alone.  Unprecedented!

(4) Actually, a "strong majority" did not pass Obamacare.  You'll recall that the 24 hours directly preceding Obamacare's passage was fraught with desperate vote whipping and deal-making.  It was eventually dragged across the finish line in the House by a razor-thin margin, with dozens of Democrats joining a united Republican front opposing the law.  Besides, the size of a congressional majority has no bearing on a law's root constitutionality -- a point one might assume a former law school lecturer would grasp.

(5) As for the president's "confident" (is he ever anything but?) prediction that the American people won't stand for such an exercise of "judicial activism," perhaps the president should re-examine, you know, virtually every single piece of polling data on the matter.  In fact, the American people are demanding that the court rein in the Reid/Pelosi Congress' worst piece of legislative excess.  Note the views of Democrats:



I'll leave you with this reminder of how liberals greet closely-divided, highly-charged Supreme Court decisions with which they concur:
 
"It is a decision of the Supreme Court. If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken. It's an elementary discussion now. They have made the decision."

Finally, the critical reminder that we genuinely do not know how the Court will rule on this case.  Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't shooting straight.

[sirs]

.....and not to forget about the need to erroneously & ignorantly try to connect Romney to "big oil"
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The money-grubbing rich dude and his corporate oil barons screwing you over, America.  Yawn:

"Remember" - Obama for America 2012 Television Ad

For a careful explanation of why this ad's first-out-of-the-gate "eight year high" claim is grossly misleading, read this piece from Erika.  Then ask yourselves a few questions:  (1) If these "tax subsidies to Big Oil" are so egregious (incidentally, the exact same subsidies apply to American companies across many sectors), why did Barack Obama support them in the Senate?  Could it be that the president is flogging a perennial Lefty bogeyman simply to distract attention from his dismal economic record, persistently high unemployment, an out-of-control national debt, and his wildly unpopular healthcare law?  (2) Even if these particular subsidies are wasteful and unnecessary -- conservatives would argue in favor of lowering the corporate income tax rate in exchange for zeroing out spending in the tax code -- how will increasing energy companies' tax burden lower energy costs for consumers?  Here's a friendly reminder of the answer to that question, courtesy of Senate Democrats:
 
Dems Say Gas Prices 'Not The Issue'

The ad also boasts of Obama's efforts to "double renewable energy."  How's that grand project coming along?
 
A California solar energy company that was unable to meet a deadline for an Energy Department loan guarantee last year has sought bankruptcy protection in Delaware.  Solar Trust of America’s Chapter 11 filing on Monday listed assets between $1 million and $10 million, and liabilities between $50 million and $100 million.  The filing comes amid the ongoing controversy surrounding Solyndra, a solar firm that received a half-billion dollar federal loan and was touted by the Obama administration before declaring bankruptcy last year.  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Gov. Jerry Brown were on hand last June when Solar Trust broke ground on a 1,000-megawatt project in California. The project was touted as the world’s largest solar power plant and a keystone of the Obama administration’s efforts to promote solar energy.

Ah, that's right.  But it's somehow Mitt Romney -- and not the president squandering billions of taxpayer dollars to fend his failing pet projects -- that's the problem.  The Romney campaign fired back:

"It's no surprise President Obama is spending his soon-to-be $1 billion war chest to attack Mitt Romney and deflect blame for his failure to control gas prices.  His own Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, said in 2008 that we have to find a way to get the price of gas up to the level of Europe.  It looks like he's succeeding, and, unfortunately, the American people are worse off for it," said Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul.

Smart.  Remind Americans that higher energy prices are the end goal for this crew -- and that it's supposedly for our own good.  Right, Mr. President?

Barack Obama Admits: Energy Prices Will Skyrocket Under Cap And Trade

I'll leave you with two ads from conservative SuperPAC American Crossroads.  The first confronts the president's energy policy head-on, and has been airing since late March:

Crossroads GPS: Deflect

The second takes a fresh, cheeky look at Obama's open mic "flexibility" admission, another instance of American interests taking a back seat to a hard ideological agenda:

American Crossroads: Operation Hot Mic

In a world...

[sirs]

The Pre-election Template

In his excellent daily Web news summary, "The Transom," Ben Domenech says that President Obama's speech at the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday "is likely to be Obama's campaign speech from here on out." He's probably correct, so let's take a look, with an eye to whether it's likely to work.

Obama's template is nothing new.

He first repeats his claim as to the catastrophic conditions he inherited from President Bush. "It's hard to remember sometimes how perilous things were when I was sworn in."

So Obama took immediate action "to save the auto industry, to get the banks lending again" and to make sure state and local governments didn't lay off teachers and first responders. Indeed, he moved so fast that "people didn't fully appreciate the scope and magnitude of what got done in those first six months, that first year."

He acknowledged he destroyed millions of jobs and presided over the worst unemployment rates in modern times, which at their best are still more than 60 percent higher than the norm and much worse when you factor in people who have quit looking for work. I mean he said that he "created almost 4 million jobs" and that "we have seen the unemployment rate start ticking down." Companies, he said, "are hiring and investing again."

Obama related that after the inconvenient distraction of saving America from President Bush, he then got about the business of fulfilling his campaign promises. He noted that he unleashed his economy-destroying, pie-in-the-sky green energy projects and war on domestic energy, er, I mean he "followed through on commitments to invest in clean energy and doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars -- and trucks -- in an unprecedented fashion."

I'll say "unprecedented." The standards were not only Draconian and utopian but also imposed through administrative orders when he couldn't get enough votes in Congress to do it democratically.

Moreover, he passed Obamacare, which Americans were obviously clamoring for and remain enraptured by. And, lest we forget despite his incessant reminders, he killed Osama bin Laden, just as surely as if he'd fired the kill shot himself.

He also boasted that he made college more affordable. Perhaps, but not for the people who will actually pay, including the taxpayers, who will have to bear the cost of more unpaid student loans and the higher tuition he's ensured through government subsidies of those loans.

He reminded us that he's thrown a record amount of federal money at education with no positive results. Scratch that; he's "reformed" education.

He allowed as how he ushered in a new era of enlightenment with a new respect for science, by which I'm sure he didn't mean that his administration would
a) examine all the scientific evidence on so-called man-made global warming,
b) discontinue government subsidies for morally controversial and scientifically dubious embryonic stem cell research and ramp up support for the noncontroversial and already successful adult stem cell research,
or
c) encourage his soul mates at Planned Parenthood to examine recent peer-reviewed studies showing that significant numbers of women who undergo an abortion suffer mental health problems.

He contrasted his record and vision with those of Republicans. He said that unlike him, Republicans have actually presented a plan that would deal with our deficit and debt crises by implementing economic policies to unleash market forces and stimulate private-sector growth, as well as enacting structural entitlement reforms -- as opposed to smothering the private sector, spending borrowed money in failed efforts to artificially boost aggregate demand through yet more reckless government spending, and utterly ignoring the deficits and debt, with particular emphasis on shunning entitlement reform on the spurious basis that it would harm seniors and the poor.

Excuse my fantasies; he actually said the Republicans have "one message, and that is (they're) going to make sure that we cut people's taxes even more so that by every objective measure our deficit is worse and ... slash government investments that have made this country great, not because it's going to balance the budget, but because it's driven by (their) ideological vision about how government should be."

Wrong again. Republicans want lower tax rates -- income and capital gains -- to help grow the economy, not to steal from the poor, which, in saner times, would be understood as a logical contradiction. And they sure wish he would quit calling income redistribution schemes and reckless Keynesian larks "government investments." What is it with Democratic politicians and the English language?

But if he insists on calling government expenditures for stimulus projects, Obamacare, green energy and education "investments," I'm sure the GOP would ask that we evaluate our return on those investments using empirical -- scientific -- evidence.

President Obama's precious government "investments" are not what has made this country great, but they are helping to destroy those things that have, especially its political and economic freedoms.

So by all means, let's have this debate as we approach November.


(just don't expect any help from the MSM.  In fact, prepare for a circling the wagon's defense of the above, by them)

[Xavier_Onassis]

Cutting taxes will NOT increase revenues. It will not lower expenses.

[sirs]

The FACT is, that it has done precisely that, when the results of those tax cuts leads:
- people to spend more --> (increased sales tax revenues gathered)
and
- businesses to invest more, creating more jobs --> (increased payroll tax revenues gathered)
and
- with more people working --> (increased income tax revenues gathered)

All those increased revenues speaheaded by actual tax rates cuts

I realize this concept is abhorhent to the coolaide left, but facts are facts.  Whether they come from the FBI or previous efforts in reducing tax rates

[BT]

Not sure what sales taxes have to do with federal revenues.

[BSB]

sirs "Yawn:"

That's what I do every time I see one of you multi-colored posts.

BSB

[sirs]

Not sure what sales taxes have to do with federal revenues.

Has to do with subsequent increase in tax revenues, as a result of cutting tax rates.  You did note that Xo was referencing revenues in general, no?

sirs "Yawn:"

That's what I do every time I see one of you multi-colored posts.

BSB

Yea, yea, I realize facts, logic and common sense can cause some libs to mentally shut down.  By all means, avoid such, as often as possible.  You need your rest, to try and rationalize more of your anti-constitutional rants

sirs

[BT]

Has to do with subsequent increase in tax revenues, as a result of cutting tax rates.  You did note that Xo was referencing revenues in general, no?

I think he was responding to your Federal tax thread.  And thus increases in Federal Revenue. I don't think you mentioned any state level tax cuts.

[sirs]

I think he was responding to the notion that tax cuts wouldn't increase revenues.  In fact, that's precisely what he said, to which I demonstrated how it'd be just the opposite.  But cudos on the mind reading, not to mention that my response can be applied to all levels of government

[BT]

I guess we will leave it to XO to clearly explain his response...  or leave it to you to show where you were including state tax cuts in your thread.

[sirs]

One more time on clarification....my response can be applied to all levels of government

[BT]

really?

What sales taxes do the feds collect?

[sirs]

Yea, Really

The FACT is, that it has done precisely that, when the results of those tax cuts leads:
- people to spend more --> (increased sales tax revenues gathered - Local & State level)
and
- businesses to invest more, creating more jobs --> (increased payroll tax revenues gathered - State & Fed)
and
- with more people working --> (increased income tax revenues gathered - State & Fed)


Translated, it can be applied to all levels of government


 

[BT]

seems to me that if lowering income taxes led to a net increase in general revenue due to an explosion of sales taxes the several states would not have income taxes at all. And i don't think that is the case in most of them even with the added burden of producing a balanced budget year after year.

So where is the flaw in your theory?