Obama's desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution

Is Washington capable of getting anything right?

Do not expect anything different after this election regardless of the outcome. The existing federal system, the one we are stuck with, will only change if things get far worse.

The American Middle Class is at greater risk than they were ten years ago and they know it. Why do I say that? Because ten tears ago, financial damage could have been repaired far more easily than it can be today.

Today, the consequences of wealth destruction will fall on the middle class. They will not be able to repair the damage done to them by the government because their money and wealth will be dragooned and redistributed to the recipients of federal largesse.

Local and state governments, mainly driven by federal laws, will compound the misery.

In a column posted by Pat Buchanan, he says:

..."Consider the critical issue facing America today – the budget and trade deficits, the soaring national debt, an unemployment near 10 percent for 14 straight months – and how neither party seems to have the cure.

While George Bush's tax cuts did not cause this, they did not prevent it. And if Republicans believe that his deficits did cause it, why have those Republicans not addressed the causes of those deficits – Bush's wars, Bush's tax cuts and Bush's social spending on No Child Left Behind and Medicare drug benefits?

Yet, if liberal Democrats are right and deficits are the correct Keynesian cure for recession, why have Obama deficits of $1.4 and $1.3 trillion failed so dismally? Paul Krugman says they are not large enough. Perhaps, but the country is about to end the experiment.

The Federal Reserve, having used and broken every tool in its toolbox, including doubling the money supply and setting interest rates at near zero, will now bet the farm on inflation, starting Nov. 3.

Both parties have lost the mandate of heaven, and neither knows if its economic philosophy even works anymore.

We are in uncharted waters. The country is up for grabs."

I cannot find much optimism in any of it.

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The great campaign of 2010

By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 9:45 PM
Washington Post

In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who "sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' " Quite a uniter, urging Hispanics to go to the polls to exact political revenge on their enemies - presumably, for example, the near-60 percent of Americans who support the new Arizona immigration law.

This from a president who won't even use "enemies" to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America - but the United States of America.

This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends - not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.

Yet press secretary Robert Gibbs's dismay is reserved for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the "disappointing" negativity of his admission that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

McConnell, you see, is supposed to say that he will try very hard to work with the president after the election. But it is blindingly clear that nothing of significance will be enacted. Over the next two years, Republicans will not be able to pass anything of importance to them - such as repealing Obamacare - because of the presidential veto. And the Democrats will be too politically weakened to advance, let alone complete, Obama's broad transformational agenda.

That would have to await victory in 2012. Every president gets two bites at the apple: the first 18 months when he is riding the good-will honeymoon, and a second shot in the first 18 months of a second term before lame-duckness sets in.

Over the next two years, the real action will be not in Congress but in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But major congressional legislation to complete Obama's social-democratic agenda? Not a chance. That's why McConnell has it right. The direction of the country will be determined in November 2012 when either Obama gets a mandate to finish building his "New Foundation" or the Republicans elect one of their own to repeal it, or what (by then) remains repealable.

Gibbs's disapproving reaction to this obvious political truth is in keeping with the convention that all things partisan or ideological are to be frowned upon as "divisive." This is pious nonsense. What is the point of a two-party democracy if not to present clear, alternative views of the role of government and, more fundamentally, the balance between liberty and equality - the central issue for any democracy?

The beauty of this year's campaign, and the coming one in 2012, is that they actually have a point. Despite the noise, the nonsense, the distractions, the amusements - who will not miss New York's seven-person gubernatorial circus act? - this is a deeply serious campaign about a profoundly serious political question.

Obama, to his credit, did not get elected to do midnight basketball or school uniforms. No Bill Clinton he. Obama thinks large. He wants to be a consequential president on the order of Ronald Reagan. His forthright attempt to undo the Reagan revolution with a burst of expansive liberal governance is the theme animating this entire election.

Democratic apologists would prefer to pretend otherwise - that it's all about the economy and the electorate's anger over its parlous condition. Nice try. The most recent CBS/New York Times poll shows that only one in 12 Americans blames the economy on Obama, and seven in 10 think the downturn is temporary. And yet, the Democratic Party is falling apart. Democrats are four points behind among women, a constituency Democrats had owned for decades; a staggering 20 points behind among independents (a 28-point swing since 2008); and 20 points behind among college graduates, giving lie to the ubiquitous liberal conceit that the Republican surge is the revenge of lumpen know-nothings.

On Nov. 2, a punishing there will surely be. But not quite the kind Obama is encouraging.

My prediction: The Dems lose 60 House seats, eight in the Senate. Rangers in seven.

Stealth Reparations - The Racial Aspect of Health Care

Like it or not and once again, a massive transfer of wealth is going to take place from the productive and responsible part of society to those perpetually at the government's tit.

Why will socialized health care disproportionately help one out of ten whites, two out of ten blacks and three out of ten Latinos? Mostly because of illegitimacy rates and existing government welfare that subsidizes bad behavior, but let's not be judgmental. You pay, don't judge.

Who will pay the freight for this expanded welfare program? Not the recipients.

Who will pay as the programs inevitably expand? You will.

Who will continue to vote for those who support the expansion of the welfare state? The non-payers of course. Rob from Peter to pay Pablo and you will always get Pablo's vote.

Are whites and Asians responsible for black illegitimacy rates close to 70 percent? Less than 40 percent of black children live in two-parent families. Of course they cannot afford health care, or education, or housing or food. That is why society invented the family structure. Who wrecked the family structure with financial rewards?

Who is responsible for that? Has government created that problem and will more government make the problem worse?

Yes and yes, but let's not discuss it less we offend.

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Health reform's true colors

The real racial issue in this debate is not about Obama. It's about inequality. While all 46 million uninsured Americans would benefit from health-care legislation promoting high-quality, affordable health care, twice the share of the African American population and three times the proportion of Latinos would benefit. For people of color, health-care reform is not just important; it's urgent.

By Michael Bader Philly.com

The "tea party" protests that started last spring sparked a debate over whether racism was motivating the opposition to President Obama's health-care reform proposals. The issue was revived by a recent Internet advertisement depicting regular folks who oppose health-care reform saying facetiously, "I guess I'm racist."

While this offers another opportunity to have a national conversation about race and health care, I fear that we are once again going to fail to discuss the most important racial aspect of health care.

Rather than focusing on whether health-care reform opponents are somehow motivated by racism, we should be focusing on the fact that African Americans and Latinos have the most to gain from health-care reform - and the most to lose from its failure.

After the election of the first African American president, we shouldn't be surprised that race enters our national debates more easily. The "guess I'm racist" ad reflects frustration over the fact that criticisms of presidential initiatives are caught in that web. Sometimes legitimate policy criticism can be carelessly linked with the racist motivations of a small minority - such as those who forwarded e-mails depicting the president as an African witch doctor.

But race is part of the health-care debate in a more important way. Health care reveals our racial divide. Almost all of our institutions - including those involved in the delivery and financing of health care today - were built on a legacy that treated people of color as second-class citizens. While we have made great strides to move past this legacy, people of color are still paying the accumulated costs of past discrimination today.

Forty-six million Americans do not have health insurance, according to the most recent census estimates. About one in 10 whites is in that group, compared with two in 10 African Americans and three in 10 Latinos. And these disparities start early in life: While children are covered at higher rates than the U.S. population as a whole, racial inequality occurs in all age groups.

Thus, while all 46 million uninsured Americans would benefit from health-care legislation promoting high-quality, affordable health care, twice the share of the African American population and three times the proportion of Latinos would benefit. For people of color, health-care reform is not just important; it's urgent.

While the nation fretted about the total unemployment rate passing 10 percent last month, African Americans had passed that point more than a year earlier, with current rates reaching close to 16 percent. Latinos, meanwhile, face unemployment rates around 13 percent. The unemployed are, of course, far less likely to have health coverage.

Furthermore, both African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately represented in service-sector jobs that offer less security and fewer benefits, making it likely that any recovery will come later and be less complete for those groups.

Racism in our country has been defined by actions. But racism can also take the form of inaction in the face of inequality. In 1899, W.E.B. DuBois wrote in The Philadelphia Negro that the "most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being of the race. There have, for instance, been few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference."

Those fighting health-care reform now are showing the same "peculiar indifference" toward the welfare of blacks and Latinos in this country at the beginning of the 21st century that DuBois identified at the end of the 19th.

I doubt that most critics of health-care reform today are motivated to criticize the president because of his race. But without health-care reform, people of color will suffer the most. Is that outcome an acceptable by-product of inaction? That is the conversation about race and health care that we should be having.

Clinton Getting Screwed by the Blacks.

It is all about color

White liberals always have a problem in intellectual honesty. Facts get in the way of evidence, observation and common sense. In this article from the NYT and many others the MSM freely talk about how white men are voting and analyze how single mothers and Hispanics vote, but they can't state the obvious; in this election blacks are acting as racist as any other group, except more so.

You will hear smug surprise that white men are actually voting for Obama or Obama is not doing well in a state where there are large groups of Hispanics, but nothing about the implications that blacks, en-masse, are voting against whites for a black candidate.

There is no other explanation for the almost complete support for Barack Obama from Afro-Americans, after all, Obama is no product of slavery. He is a product of privilege. He has the only requirement needed by Afro-American voters and that in skin tone.

Despite near perfect support for black causes by the Clintons over many years and impeccable liberal credentials, black American voters have thrown Clinton not to the back of the bus, but under the bus. It is a disgrace and no amount of liberal white washing will erase the stain of the obvious.

It should come as no surprise that years of tolerance of such overtly racial black exceptionalism in such things as a “black caucus" has fostered the license for Afro-Americans to practice what would be called racist if done by any other group.

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February 12, 2008
For Clinton, Bid Hinges on Texas and Ohio

By PATRICK HEALY

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday.

Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.

They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.

“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.

Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington State, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend.

Some said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, might ultimately “go with the flow,” in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.

The Clinton team moved on Monday to shift the spotlight off the candidate’s short-term challenges and focus instead on “the long run,” in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.

“She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said. “Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.”

Clinton advisers have said that superdelegates should support the candidate who they believe would be the best nominee and the best president, while Obama advisers have argued that superdelegates should reflect the will of the voters and also take into account who they believe would be the best nominee. Superdelegates are Democratic party leaders and elected officials, and their votes could decide the nomination if neither candidate wins enough delegates to clinch a victory after the nominating contests end.

With primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, Clinton advisers were pessimistic about her chances, though some held out hope for a surprise performance in Virginia.

And as polls show Mr. Obama gaining strength in Wisconsin and his native state, Hawaii, which vote next Tuesday, advisers, donors and superdelegates said they were resigned to a possible Obama sweep of the rest of February’s contests.

Some donors also expressed concern about a widening money imbalance between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: Obama fund-raisers say he is taking in roughly $1 million a day, while Clinton fund-raisers say she is taking in about half of that, mostly online. Mrs. Clinton’s aides say that the campaign was virtually broke as of the Feb. 5 primaries, but that finances have stabilized.

Mr. Obama’s financial edge allowed him to begin running television advertisements in Ohio and Texas on Monday, while the Clinton campaign plans to begin advertising on Tuesday. Clinton advisers say that she will have advertisements running statewide in both Ohio and Texas, and that she will have advertisements in English and Spanish in Texas.

“I think that clearly things have not been going as great as they were with her victories on Super Tuesday, and we can’t wait to get to March 4,” said Alan Patricof, one of Mrs. Clinton’s national finance chairmen.

Mrs. Clinton will have “a major ad buy” through the next week in Wisconsin, a senior adviser said Monday, and spend a few days campaigning there. But this adviser and others said the bulk of her time would be devoted to campaigning in Ohio, Texas and a bit in Rhode Island. In a sign of Texas’s importance, she plans to fly there Tuesday, even though Wisconsin votes next week.

While Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and allies emphasize that she has the time and the financial resources to regroup, they say she will have to take more significant steps to shore up her candidacy beyond the staff shakeup she engineered on Sunday, when she replaced her campaign manager and longtime aide, Patti Solis Doyle, with another veteran adviser, Maggie Williams.

Campaign advisers said they expected Ms. Williams to bring new energy to both the campaign team and Mrs. Clinton, after a long year of campaigning, and to encourage her to show more spunk and determination on the campaign trail. They say they do not expect the candidate’s political message to change appreciably; she will increasingly focus on the concerns of working-class voters, a key demographic in Ohio, as well as of Hispanics, a significant population in Texas.

As she seeks to erect a fire wall for her candidacy in Ohio and Texas, Mrs. Clinton will deploy her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to campaign in both states, particularly in Ohio, where her advisers believe his popularity will help her with working-class voters, labor union members and black voters.

In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Mr. Penn, who is also Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, played down some polls that showed strength for Mr. Obama and highlighted Mrs. Clinton’s abilities to beat the leading Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

“We believe that Hillary Clinton in the long run is better positioned to take on John McCain,” Mr. Penn said.

Yet some Clinton donors and superdelegates worry that the focus on Mr. McCain is premature, and that other strategic decisions by the campaign — like counting on Michigan and Florida delegates to be seated at the convention even though their status is in limbo — show faulty thinking that suggests the Clinton campaign does not have a short-term game plan against Mr. Obama.

“They are looking way too much at Florida, Michigan and McCain, because all three won’t matter if she doesn’t blow Obama away in Texas and Ohio,” said a Democrat who is both a Clinton superdelegate and major donor, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of campaign strategy. “Obama has momentum that has to be stopped by March 4.”

Clinton advisers took issue with the notion that Mr. Obama’s momentum was significant, noting that his victory in the Iowa caucuses did not translate into winning the New Hampshire primary five days later, and his South Carolina victory did not prevent Mrs. Clinton from winning the biggest states on Feb. 5.

“There is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum — in fact the evidence is to the contrary,” said Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director.

Hassan Nemazee, another national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton, said he was also telling his network of allies not to get caught up in the headlines about Obama

“I’m telling donors and supporters: Don’t be overly concerned about what goes on in the remainder of the month of February because these are not states teed up well for us,” Mr. Nemazee said.

Asked if that message was sinking in, he pointed to the campaign’s announcement that Mrs. Clinton had raised $10 million online so far this month, and was on pace to raise more than $25 million in February.

“I predict for you we will have our best single fund-raising month in February, and that’s significant,” he said.