I forget shit too

Actually, it’s not surprising that Obama sometimes forgets the magnitude of the Recession:

There certainly was no sign of the recession, here.

The Endless Campaign

Obama is fund-raising all-effen-day today:

9:40 am || Departs White House
11:55 am PT || Arrives in Seattle
12:50 pm PT || Speaks at a fundraiser; private residence
3:15 pm PT || Speaks at a fundraiser; Paramount Theater
4:15 pm PT || Departs Seattle
6:25 pm PT || Arrives Los Angeles
7:20 pm PT || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; private residence

Mark Knoller reports that Obama is on a 2-day, three state (mostly) fund-raising trip to Seatlle, LA, and Reno.

Pres Obama has 2 fund-raisers in Seattle, then a $14-million event hosted by George Clooney in Studio City, CA. Yes, $14-million, $40K per.—
Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 10, 2012

$14 MILLION dollar event.

While the people in his Chicago headquarters are crowing about Obama’s inevitable reelection, the SCOAMF has been endlessly fund raising. Private fundraisers, and public pleas to join this or that drawing (for as little as a $3 donation) to meet George Clooney, or have Obama shout-out a mother’s days greeting on Twitter.

Jim Geraghty on Obama’s campaign:

The folks in Romney-world would never, in a million years, want to be quoted in a manner that suggests they’re underestimating the competition. They know Obama will have an enormous fundraising advantage, a bully pulpit and megaphone that are simply unparalleled in American life; taxpayers will pick up the tab for untold sums in “official” trips that look and sound like campaign swings, and of course, the media will be much, much tougher on Romney than Obama.

But… periodically, when talking to Romney folks, they point out their rivals’ alleged billion-dollar fundraising goal, the 700 full-time staffers, the super-duper high-tech gadgets they have in their Chicago headquarters, and… you get the sense that they’re still waiting for the Obama campaign’s much-hyped A-game. This is it? This is what all of those resources and advantages have produced for Obama? “Forward”? The life of Julia? Bill Clinton talking about how terrible a botched SEAL mission would have been for Obama?

Obama has all sorts of advantages (except his dismal record) yet he’s running pretty much head to head against Romney. Overcoming the deficit, the economy, the job losses, he necessarily has to distract with 1) women’s rights 2) student loans and 3) now gay marriage.

It’s all he’s got. Shiny pennies to keep the electorate unfocused on what is truly important.

Higher “Education”

“Black Studies” reason d’etre revealed, in a piece by Naomi Schaefer Riley, who was fired last week from The Chronicles of Higher Education blog for daring to question the academic validity of the discipline:

As Ellen Schrecker, a Yeshiva University historian, writes in her book “The Lost Soul of Higher Education,” political ends were the goals of the founders of black studies. Ms. Schrecker—who is, by the way, sympathetic to these political goals—explains that the discipline’s proponents “viewed these programs as contributions to the continuing struggle for racial justice, not as conventional academic courses of study.”

What did Riley do to lose her job? She questions the academic quality of graduate student’s dissertations.

I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature.” Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have “played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.”

She, of course, was accused of racism, and the academic powers-that-be collected 6,500 signatures demanding she be fired. Trayvon Martin’s name was mentioned in criticism of her post.

This is the state of education. Buyer beware. WSJ editiorial on the subject:

It is hard not to note the context in which Ms. McMillen dismissed Naomi Riley for committing speech. Now more than ever, too many college graduates discover that their expensive higher educations send them into a modern workplace with skills that few employers want or need. The graduates sit home, unemployed and unemployable. Meanwhile, back inside the school walls, the Chronicle of Higher Education stands ready to eliminate any writer who causes distress to the modern generation of scholars who teach these students.

You cannot question.

What does “Black studies” qualify one to … do? I googled it. One answer:

* Advocate
* Business Manager
* Civil Services Worker
* Field Organizer
* Historian
* Public Service Worker
* Social Worker
* Museum Curator
* Non-profit Foundation Manager
* Professor

*****

Related, this story. Apparently, earning a PhD entitles you to a successful career.

I am not a welfare queen,” says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.

That’s how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.

She teaches TWO CLASSES. Two. Who is to blame? Certainly not her intellectual prowess in medieval history. No, It’s the “systematic defunding of higher education.”

“Everyone thinks a Ph.D. pretty much guarantees you a living wage and, from what I can tell, most commentators think that college professors make $100,000 and more,” he says. “But I’ve been hearing all year from nontenure-track faculty making under $20,000, and I don’t know anyone who believes you can raise a family on that. Even living as a single person on that salary is tough, if you want to eat something other than ramen noodles every once in a while.”

It’s called supply and demand. And if you are unable to get a full-time job in academia … just as if you can’t get a full time job out in the real world, you are not going to be making a lot of money.

Rainy days, Monday, and Obama bring me down

DOOOOOOOOMMMMM

Now, here in fantasy land …

Obama has SAVED AMERICA.

*****
Robert Reich is insane. Remember, though, they are not socialists. They’re just for redistributing income.

And this is why a second Obama administration, should there be one, must focus its attention on more broadly distributing the gains from growth. This doesn’t mean “redistributing” from rich to poor, as in a zero-sum game. To the contrary, the rich will do far better with a smaller share of a robust, growing economy than they’re doing with a large share of an economy that’s barely moving forward.

This will require real tax reform — not just a “Buffett” minimal tax but substantially higher marginal rates and more brackets at the top, with a capital gains rate matching the income-tax rate. It also means a larger Earned Income Tax Credit, whose benefits extend high into the middle class. That will enable many Americans to move to a 35-hour workweek without losing ground — thereby making room for more jobs.

It means Medicare for all rather than an absurdly-costly system that relies on private for-profit insurers and providers.

It will require limiting executive salaries and empowering workers to get a larger share of corporate profits. The Employee Free Choice Act should be an explicit part of the second-term agenda.

This isn’t socialism.

We don’t need socialism. We need a capitalism that works for the vast majority.

*blink blink*

Ok.

*****

Offered without comment: movement for “tuition equality” for illegal aliens at University of Michigan

It is time to make education at University of Michigan accessible to all undocumented Michigan students!

Undocumented students who graduate from Michigan high schools are denied the same tuition rate at the University of Michigan as their fellow in-state classmates, which nearly triples the cost of tuition.

Sign the petition and tell the President of the University of Michigan to ensure tuition equality for all of her students, regardless of their immigration status!

****

Obama kicked off his campaign (I know, don’t laugh) this weekend. Scene of the over-flowing crowd:

A bit of an enthusiasm gap, if you ask me. BUT, things were looking better up in the front:

Andrew Malcolm sums up his speech:

We were going to publish the complete text of the president’s alleged “opening” remarks, but we changed our minds. Talk about going through the motions. It’s the same yada-yada he’s been peddling at his record-breaking number of fundraisers.

We read it so you don’t have to: 3,930 words recounting how he never said change was easy, he’s already done a lot to fix America, he needs to do more to cement the transformation of this country and this campaign will be harder than the last one.

FORWARD.

FIAF

Obama’s campaign strategy? Create fear, division, and stir up resentment with bogus court challenges, dead-end Senate bills, and a forest of straw men. This isn’t just politics “as usual”, but lowering it to new unseemly depths.

There is a problem, however. It makes a mockery of Obama’s pose as the great transcender, uniter, healer of divisions. This is the man who sprang from nowhere with that thrilling 2004 convention speech declaring that there is “not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Obama’s taking his Hope and Change FORWARD to socialism message to the kiddies today:

10:30 pm || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
11:25 am || Holds a roundtable discussion with a group of seniors and their parents; Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, Virginia
11:50 am || Delivers remarks on student loans; Washington-Lee High School
4:55 pm || Welcomes the NCAA Champion University of Kentucky men’s basketball team to the White House; Rose Garden

*****

Oh, GOOD NEWS. John Dingell just filed for his 30th term in the U.S House. He’s been in office since 1955. He is 85.

*****

Forward

On Monday, the Obama campaign floated the slogan “Forward.” It’s his re-election argument in a nutshell, apparently. There is still much work to do, moving forward, etc.

Yea, whatever. We know what the word is referencing.

The slogan “Forward!” reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

This is also what the term “Progressive” means. We’re going to progress – as a society – to our next stage of social evolution. That of socialists.

And, Obama is a progressive.

“I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive.”

While many could argue that he has failed to completely satisfy the progressives in his first term, he is determined to promise that he’s still moving “Forward.”

How about a look at what he’s moving us toward; Daniel Henninger:

Last May, the Nobel laureate economist Robert Lucas, an expert on economic growth, put together a lecture on the economy because so many people asked him why the U.S. economy’s post-recession growth rate was struggling around 2%.

He noted that in the years after World War II, both the U.S. and Europe grew at an annual rate of about 3%. But in the mid-1970s, Western Europe dropped below that growth rate and stayed there, creating a 20% to 40% gap in income levels between Europe and the U.S. Prof. Lucas suggested this had to do with the cost of maintaining the social-welfare commitments Europe accumulated in the postwar years.

He then looked at the levels of U.S. social-welfare commitments, including the new Obama health-care entitlement, and ended with a simple observation: “Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare and taxes, the U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend? If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get.”

It’s not all gloom and doom. Henninger has some advice for those college graduate who are facing high unemployment rates after shelling out big money for their education; join a union.

If your new goal in life is to join the United Auto Workers (saved by Mr. Obama with your parents’ taxes) or work for a government agency somewhere for the next 40 years, the president is your candidate. The modern Democratic Party from top to bottom is the party of all unions, hardly different than the European political parties whose union members and unemployed college graduates filled city squares Tuesday in forlorn May Day demonstrations. If a career inside an American union is what it’s all about, then an Obama vote (“Forward”) is a no-brainer

This is what Obama is taking us FORWARD to. European style social democracy. European style growth and unemployment.

Do it for Trayvon

Justice for Trayvon-:

Two weeks have passed since reporters Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami – friends to me and many others at the newspaper – were attacked on a Saturday night as they drove home from a show at the Attucks Theatre. They had stopped at a red light, in a crowd of at least 100 young people walking on the sidewalk. Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that’s when the beating began.

Police didn’t take any statements, and made zero effort to find any of their attackers. It was listed a “simple assault”, despite the fact that at least 30 participated.

The officer pointed to public housing in the area and said large groups of teenagers look for trouble on the weekends. “It’s what they do,” he told Forster.

Could that be true? Could violent mobs of teens be so commonplace in Norfolk that police and victims have no recourse?

Oh, well. If it’s what they do. Carry on.

“I feel for the white man who got beat up at the light,” wrote one person.

“I don’t,” wrote another, indicating laughter. “(do it for trayvon martin)”

It’s like “Lord of the Flies.”

University of Michigan has gone crazy

Study by University of Michigan on Climate change was just released: DOOM. The only thing to save our planet is to shut down the economy with a global recession.

Or, CO2 tax.

Will update when I can find the piece. It’s being reported by WJR Detroit.

Found it. Global warming: New research emphasizes the role of economic growth.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—It’s a message no one wants to hear: To slow down global warming, we’ll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world’s economies work.
****
“If ‘business as usual’ conditions continue, economic contractions the size of the Great Recession or even bigger will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO₂,” said Tapia Granados, who is a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

It’s not all gloom and doom. They have the answer.

To break the economic habits contributing to a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming, Tapia Granados says that societies around the world would need to make enormous changes.

“Since the 1980s, scientists like James Hansen have been warning us about the effects global warming will have on the earth,” Tapia Granados said. “One solution that has promise is a carbon tax levied on any activity producing CO2 in order to create incentives to reduce emissions. The money would be returned to individuals so the tax would not mean any extra fiscal burden.”

The money “would be returned to individuals” so that the tax wouldn’t be a fiscal burden?

Returned to them … how? I bet through “investments in education” and such things.

Happy Commie Day

It’s May Day, so go hug a commie. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding one, because they’ve planned events all over the world. In the U.S. the occupy folks plan on participating in a “general strike” against “a system that does not work for us.”

Like most commie leaders, Obama is taking it easy today.

10:30 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
11:00 am || Meets with senior advisers
4:30 pm || Meets with Defense Secretary Panetta

Of course, all that football spiking is prolly wearing him out. Here, he addresses his role in the event. Smirk warning.

‘I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did,’ Mr Obama said. ‘If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.’

Go ahead and admit it; when he said that, with that smirk on his face, you wanted to throw something.

The irony is rich, though – Obama as a man of his word? Yea, about that … Peter Kirsanow has a nice list of things he’s said. A few of my favorites:

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

“My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”

“I will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American people an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website.”

“No political appointee in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

The Seals are not very happy about Obama using the OBL killing in his re-election:

A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.

‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’

Even Jimmy Carter would have made the call, as Romney said yesterday.

‘In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.’

Senior military figures have said that Admiral William McRaven, a former SEAL who was then head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made the decision to take bin Laden out. Tactical decisions were delegated even further down the chain of command.

In addition, Obama’s “Gutsy Call” apparently had an escape clause for blame.

A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president’s celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: “The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.”

Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven’s, not the president’s.

But, of course, the mission went pretty well. When George W Bush announced the capture of Saddam Hussein, the speech went like this:

He called that success “a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.” He attributed it to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks.”
He did mention himself at the end: “Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.”

The I-Me-Mine President announcing the killing of OBL did things a little differently:

“I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . .”

He’s a little man.

FIAF- Fleece the Taxpayers edition

Whew. Busy day for Obama:

9:05 am || Departs White House
10:55 am || Arrives Hinesville, Georgia
12:35 pm || Delivers remarks to troops, veterans and military families; Fort Stewart
2:05 pm || Departs Hinesville
3:45 pm ||Arrives White House
4:55 pm || Attends a fundraiser; Washington Convention Center
6:10 pm || Attends a fundraiser; private residence

Michelle’s day

Introduces President Obama at a gathering with veterans, service members, and military families; Hinesville, Georgia

Arrives at Naples Municipal Airport where she will be greeted by students from Avalon Elementary and Mike Davis Elementary Schools, who are performing Let’s Move-related activities.

Meets with campaign volunteers; Naples, Florida

Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Naples, Florida

Four Obama fundraisers today!

*****

Michigan teacher pissed that her planned retirement may be postponed. This is the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time.She had planned to retire at the ripe old age of 47. But now, if she does that, she’ll have to pay for her own healthcare.

List was highlighted by the Michigan Education Association as one of the critics of Senate Bill 1040, which would require public school employees to contribute at least 5 percent of their compensation to their retirement plan.

The MEA reported on its website: “Saginaw Township teacher Terry (sic) List had hoped to retire in the next three years when she was 47 years old. That wouldn’t be possible under SB 1040. List would have to work another 16 years to be eligible for health benefits.”

“By the time I’m 60, I would have put in 43 years of service, earning a salary at the top of the pay scale. How does that save the district money? You could hire two people for the cost of one and encourage young people to join the profession. Right now, I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.”

She’ll have to work until she’s 60? I’m gonna have to get some tissues, because if we’ve become the kind of country where a teacher can’t retire at 47 with a pension and free healthcare, I don’t know how we can call ourselves humane.

Ninety percent of public employees in the United States enjoy defined-benefit pension plans, meaning they will receive a guaranteed income, and usually health insurance, until death. These benefits are prohibitively expensive, and more so when they are tied to retirement ages that are atypically low. Given rising life expectancies, we could see a raft of public pensioners spending more years collecting retirement benefits than they spent working their government jobs, and in fact this isn’t uncommon already.

20 and OUT. It’s the American (public worker) way. The rest of you slobs can work until you’re 62, or die, but not public union workers.

******

Well, this week saw a momentous leap forward in insuring we will NEVER AGAIN stand idly by while massacres are occurring in the world. Obama created an Atrocities Board.

Yes, we cannot “do nothing” because it would be “a betrayal of who we are.” So, instead we’ll stand around with whiteboards discussing the issue, and send strongly worded letters to the UN.

I feel better about us already. USA. USA. USA.

The Hammer isn’t getting the same warm fuzzies from the dealio that I am.

If we are not prepared to intervene, even indirectly by arming and training Syrians who want to liberate themselves, be candid. And then be quiet. Don’t pretend the U.N. is doing anything. Don’t pretend the U.S. is doing anything. And don’t embarrass the nation with an Atrocities Prevention Board. The tragedies of Rwanda, Darfur, and now Syria did not result from lack of information or lack of interagency coordination, but from lack of will.

*****
Think Obama will tone down the vacations THIS summer?

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.

You see, the Obama’s don’t care cost the taxpayers.

****

I think a good rule of thumb to follow is that just about everything the President says is untrue. It’s hard to just pick on thing to focus on, but this one is fun; the Obama’s claim that they struggled to pay off their student loans.

President Obama told students at the University of North Carolina Tuesday that he knows what it is like to struggle with student loan debt because he and his wife didn’t pay off their student loans until eight years ago.
*****
“We only finished paying off our student loans off about eight years ago,” the president said. “That wasn’t that long ago. And that wasn’t easy – especially because when we had Malia and Sasha, we’re supposed to be saving up for their college educations, and we’re still paying off our college educations.”

Now, my husband and I struggled to pay back our student loans. I bartended, so we could keep our babies out of daycare, and my husband worked days. We had one car, and struggled with beaters as a second car until we could finally buy a new one when the first was paid off. The Obama, on the other hand …not so much.

Here’s a rundown of the president’s income, according to his tax returns, in the years before he paid off his student loans:

2004: $207,647

2003: $238,327

2002: $259,394

2001: $272,759

2000: $240,505

The Obama’s were millionaires. I mean, they would have just had to save their money for about four years, and they would have been millionaires, right?

I sure hope Obama has some time for golf this weekend.

A quick reminder of why we simply have to support Romney/ham sammich over Obummer.

Are you in?