Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Voting Section

With the messed up economy, the unConstitutional obamacare law, the high unemployment, the dissatisfaction of the citizens of this Country with the direction we are headed, you want to know how obama will get re-elected? This is how.

This is some very scary shit. It's a long read but well worth it. I had a pain in my gut when I finished it. But I have a much clearer understanding of what we are facing in the 2012 elections.

Email the link to this article to everyone you know. eric holder and obama have big plans and are stacking the deck in their favor.

Thanks to Marc Cote for the heads up on this...

by Hans A. von Spakovsky - Pajamas Media

Recently released documents — disclosed by the obama Justice Department only after a court battle — reveal that the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks. Typical Washington behavior, you say? Except the hiring in question is nearly unprecedented in scope and significantly eclipses anything the Bush administration was even accused of doing. And the evidence of the current political activity is far less impeachable than what was behind the libelous attacks leveled at officials from the Bush years.

For nearly a year, the Civil Rights Division rebuffed Pajamas Media’s Freedom of Information Act request for the resumes of attorneys hired into the Division during the tenure of eric holder. PJM was finally forced to file a federal lawsuit earlier this year. Only then did Justice relent and turn over the documents. The result leaves little wonder why PJM’s request was met with such intense resistance.

The Department’s political leadership clearly recognized that the resumes of these new attorneys would expose the hypocrisy of the obama administration’s polemical attacks on the Bush administration for supposedly engaging in “politicized hiring” — and that everyone would see just how militantly partisan the obama Civil Rights Division truly is. holder’s year-long delay before producing these documents — particularly when compared to the almost-instantaneous turnaround by the Bush administration of a virtually identical request by the Boston Globe back in 2006 — also shows how deep politics now runs in the Department.

As Richard Pollock of Pajamas Media observed in an article, none of this should surprise anyone even remotely familiar with Holder’s highly partisan nature. Indeed, Holder boasted to the American Constitution Society (an organization started as a liberal counterweight to the Federalist Society) back in June 2008 that the obama Justice Department was “going to be looking for people who share our values,” and that “a substantial number of those people would probably be members of the American Constitution Society.” The hiring records from holder’s initial thirty months in office underscore how serious he was about this mission.

This is the first in a series of articles by Pajamas Media about the Civil Rights Division’s hiring practices since President obama took office. These accounts will put to the test holder’s repeated (and all-too-rarely scrutinized) statement that ideological considerations play no role in the hiring of career attorneys in his Department — a test that the Department’s practices clearly fail.

The evidence will demonstrate that, in contrast to the Bush administration’s Civil Rights Division — which hired individuals from across the political spectrum — there has been nary a token conservative welcomed into the Division under holder. More than that, though, this series will show that the ranks of new civil servants arriving in holder’s civil rights shop in protected civil service slots are some of the most strident ideologues in Washington.

But don’t just take my word for it. Let the resumes speak for themselves.

We start today with the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. This Section is responsible for enforcing, among other things, all aspects of the Voting Rights Act. This includes reviewing redistricting and other pre-clearance submissions under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that covered jurisdictions throughout the country must submit to the Justice Department for approval. Redistricting maps, voter ID statutes, citizenship verification laws, and a host of other politically contentious election issues rest in the hands of these Voting Section bureaucrats.

Long a refuge of partisan activists and ideological crusaders, the Section has been filling its ranks over the last 30 months with like-minded liberals ready to do the bidding of left-wing advocacy organizations. Sixteen attorneys have come on board in this hiring binge. Who are these new radicals?

Bryan Sells: Mr. Sells was recently hired as one of the Voting Section’s new deputy chiefs. He comes to the Department from the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, where he worked for nearly 10 years as a Senior Staff Counsel. During his tenure, his organization strongly opposed all voter ID laws, and challenged the right of states to verify the U.S. citizenship of individuals seeking to register to vote. He also characterized state felon disenfranchisement laws – which are expressly authorized in the Constitution — as a “slap in the face to democracy,” and consistently took the most aggressive (and generally legally unsupportable) positions on redistricting cases throughout the country.

Meredith Bell-Platts: The other new deputy chief hired by the Voting Section, Meredith Bell-Platts, also comes from the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, where she, too, spent nearly 10 years. Much of her time there was devoted to blasting voter ID requirements, which she claimed were motivated by people who do not want to see blacks vote (an issue on which she consistently lost in court). Before arriving at the ACLU, Ms. Bell-Platts was a founding member of the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, a publication whose stated “mission is to explore the impact of gender, sexuality, and race on both the theory and practice of law” and thereby “complement[] a long tradition of feminist scholarship and advocacy at the [Georgetown] Law Center.”

Anna Baldwin: While all of the new trial attorneys hired into the Voting Section have streaks of radicalism, few can match Ms. Baldwin. A financial contributor to the obama presidential campaign, she clerked for two liberal Clinton appointees on the federal bench and then worked briefly at Jenner & Block (a D.C. law firm which has been a major feeder of Democratic political appointees to the Obama administration), where she primarily pursued liberal positions in pro bono litigation. During law school, she interned at the International Labor Rights Fund and Women’s Agenda for Change.

Prior to that, Baldwin served for three years as field coordinator for Equality Florida, where she “coordinated lobbying and state legislative policy work on behalf of Florida’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities.” Meanwhile, in her undergraduate days at Harvard, she was a member of the “Queer Resistance Front” and was frequently covered in the Harvard Crimson for her radical antics. A review of these campus newspaper articles suggests that Ms. Baldwin will have to work very hard to separate her activist politics from her role as an apolitical civil servant. Then again, if she takes her cues from most of her Voting Section colleagues, she won’t even need to attempt such separation. As the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case showed, partisanship and law enforcement are one and the same in Holder’s Civil Rights Division.

Risa Berkower: Ms. Berkower was hired into the Voting Section following a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney, a liberal jurist who President obama recently nominated to the Second Circuit and whose brother is the former state chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party. During law school at Fordham, she interned in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, a notorious hotbed of left-wing activity. She also worked on the “Student Hurricane Network” with members of the NAACP LDF, the Advancement Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. It was in her undergraduate days at Yale, though, that she really let her left-wing political colors shine. While on the Yale College Council, she wrote an editorial advocating support of unionization of Yale graduate students and advocated “neutrality” in card-check reform (which has become a major Obama initiative as a sop to organized labor).

It is quite ironic that a lawyer who refused to oppose the effort by unions to get rid of the secret ballot, a fundamental mainstay of our democracy, is now charged with protecting voting rights. All of the leadership positions on Berkower’s resume were conspicuously redacted by the obama administration in its FOIA response to PJM. And lest you think she abandoned her radical ways since arriving in the Civil Rights Division, Ms. Berkower is the same Voting Section attorney who negotiated the outlandish consent decree with the state of Rhode Island earlier this year in a case under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act which, as Christian Adams detailed extensively, ignored the requirements of federal law and represented a gross abuse of federal authority.

Read the rest at the link above...

Did you watch the debate last night?

I would liked to have watched the debate, but instead I was removing a nasty virus from my computer.

I did hear this morning though, that our conservative radio guy Greg Knapp, thought that Newt Gingrich was the big winner. I don't doubt Greg on this, it's just a little difficult to imagine. Newt's campaign seemed to self destruct right out of the gate.

I also heard there was a little bickering back and forth between Pawlenty and Bachmann. Is it really a good decision for Republicans to be slamming each other? There is PLENTY of things to slam obama on, so why not make the comparison between yourself and him? At some point the Republicans will have to take shots at each other, it just seems a little early for that at this point.

Anyway, if you have a thought on the debate let me know...

Rick Perry is in!

While he hasn't officially announced yet, his people have said that Rick Perry is officially a candidate for president.

Out of the current crop running, Perry is the most qualified for the job. There are a couple of things about Perry that I'm a little critical of, but nothing that outweighs his qualifications. There was the hesitant support of the Texas bill banning the tsa from improper touching. He should have been all over that hard and fast. In his younger days, he was a democrat, but, he was a conservative democrat and voted as often with the republicans as his own party. I'm sure that anyone can find things in the background of any politician that they consider negative, but we have to weigh those against the things we like.

I do wish that Perry were participating in the debate tonight (8:00 pm Central on Fox). I would like to see him side by side with Romney.

Poor Poor obama...

valerie jarrett says obama isn't getting any sleep because of the debt crisis. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?

Let me ask you, the people who are unemployed because of the obama economy, do you think they are getting much sleep?

The people who have lost their home to foreclosure, how about them, are they getting much sleep?

How about the business owners who are forced to lay off employees, how much sleep do you think they are getting?

So, do I feel sorry for obama? Umm, nope, not even a little bit. I do feel sorry for our Country though. But then again, 53% of the people in this Country elected a pretender. It doesn't seem like that will be the case next time around though. Sometimes learning a lesson can be very expensive, like this one. I only hope there is enough of our Country left to save when this experiment is over...

mobama’s South Africa Trip Cost Taxpayers Over $500,000

I'm willing to bet that mobama's trip cost every bit of $800,000 and probably more. I'm sick to death of these assclowns using the American taxpayers as their personal ATM machine. Why do we have to foot the bill for mobama's mother and the children of her brother? Is that a legitimate expense for the hardworking people of this Country to pay? I don't think so. This shit has got to be illegal, but, silly me, I forgot that the obama's are above the law. They are American royalty and can do whatever the hell they want.

You would never know our Country is in dire financial straits by the way these people tour the globe at our expense.

This entire Country, and our wallets, will breathe a huge sigh of relief when this pretender and his gang of thugs are booted in 2012.

by Keith Koffler - White House Dossier

first lady michelle obama’s trip to South Africa and Botswana last week cost taxpayers well over half a million dollars, possibly in the range of $700,000 or $800,000, according to an analysis by White House Dossier.

Many of the trip’s expenses cannot be obtained with specificity, including the cost of local transportation for the first lady, Secret Service protection, the care and feeding of staffers, and pre-trip advance work done by administration officials in South Africa.

But it is possible to estimate some of these costs and put a price tag on one of the major expenses – her transportation to and from southern Africa and her trips between cities there.

While the goals of her journey – “youth leadership, education, health and wellness” in southern Africa, according to the White House – are laudable, many may question whether such an expensive outreach overseas by the president’s wife is worthwhile given the threat of the ballooning federal debt to the economy.

This is particularly true given that the trip, while featuring many official events, also included tourist components such as visits to historical landmarks and museums, a nonworking chance to meet Nelson Mandela that Mrs. Obama described as “surreal,” and a safari. mrs. obama also brought along her mother, her daughters and two of their cousins – the children of her brother craig robinson.

In a conversation last week with a South African online newspaper, U.S. Embassy Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau made clear that the trip was partially a personal pilgrimage for the first lady.

“She’s coming on this trip to talk about women’s development and youth development, and South Africa is a leader in that, not only on the continent but globally,” said Trudeau. “A visit to South Africa is important for them as a family. She’ll be visiting many Struggle-era landmarks, including the Apartheid Museum (and) the Hector Pieterson Memorial.”

Based on the plane’s tail number and a description of it in a press pool report, it’s clear mrs. obama flew over and back on a C-32, a specially configured military version of the Boeing 757 that also ferries the vice president on occasion and is sometimes known as “Air Force Two.”

According to publicly available Defense Department figures, DOD charges other federal agencies $12,723 an hour to cover expenses for the use of a C-32. Based on the distance traveled and the flight speed of the plane, this adds up to about $430,000 for use of the aircraft alone.

Perhaps the best estimate of the other costs involved in such a trip comes not from official sources but from a reporter, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. In a 2002 article, he wrote that his reporting had found that a single presidential fundraising trip within the United States by then-President George W. Bush could cost close to $100,000 for items like staff, Secret Service and advance work.

While the first lady would certainly have a smaller retinue than a president, it seems very safe to say that a weeklong trip by mrs. obama to a high-crime country like South Africa would involve at least the expense of a single domestic trip by a president ten years ago, and probably much more.

In addition, a military cargo plane typically accompanies a first lady on overseas trips to bring cars and other gear. It is not clear if a cargo plane also went along on this trip, but if it did – as is likely – it could easily have added another $200,000 to the cost, based on Defense Department rates for cargo planes.

mrs. obama’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

obama Gets 30% of Americans Certain to Support Re-Election in Economy Poll

It's kind of strange to me that "Americans are growing more dissatisfied". I truly don't get it. This guy hasn't done a single positive thing for this Country. Nothing. He has done nothing since day one except try to destroy every thing he possibly can in the shortest amount of time. He has looted our Country for his own benefit and the benefit of his friends and supporters, while making sure that it will take years to recover from the damage he has done.

America burns while he plays golf and goes on vacation. I have been dissatisfied since before election day. Anyone who did any research at all would have been an idiot to support him. And now that EVERYONE knows he is a socialist thug, how does he have ANY support for 2012? It doesn't make sense...

By Julianna Goldman - Forbes

Americans are growing more dissatisfied with President barack obama’s handling of the economy and say it will be hard to vote to re-elect him without seeing significant progress over the next year and a half.

By a margin of 61 percent to 37 percent, a Bloomberg National Poll conducted June 17-20 shows Americans say they believe that obama will have had his chance to make the economy “substantially better” by the end of 2012.

Only 30 percent of respondents said they are certain to vote for the president and 36 percent said they definitely won’t. Among likely independent voters, only 23 percent said they will back his re-election, while 36 percent said they definitely will look for another candidate.

“As far as the economy goes, I don’t see that he has delivered on the change that he promised,” said Sharon Ortiz, a 38-year-old independent voter from Hampton, Virginia, who supported obama in 2008. “The jobs that he promised -- I haven’t seen it.”

At the same time, Americans are skeptical that Republican control of the White House and Congress will be a better prescription for their economic wellbeing. Sixty percent said that any Republican candidate will need to move so far to the right on fiscal and social issues to win their party’s nomination that it will be very hard to back the nominee

Read the rest at the link above...

Stealing the Election of 2012

It's funny, most people stroll through life never imagining that stuff like this could or does happen, but it's real. This is the kind of crooked crap that acorn is infamous for. And obama is tied to them in many different ways.

I'm not going to pretend that there is no Republican voter fraud, but it is nothing like what is done by the democrats, acorn and other groups like them. These guys are organized and it is on a large scale.

There has never been a politician though, as actively involved in massive voter fraud as obama and his group of chicago thugs. The people of chicago have come to expect this type of behavior from their politicians. It has been "normal" there for many decades. Lucky us, we now get to experience it at the National level.

You can guess what kind of plans obama and his crooked thug friends are making even as I write this. The economy is in the toilet. Unemployment is out of control. obama's poll numbers are dropping like a rock. obamacare is a turd in the punchbowl. They have nothing to run on, not a damn thing. So what does a good democrat do in that situation? Cheat. It's what they are planning RIGHT NOW.

It's also interesting that the justice department can suddenly decide not to enforce a piece of a federal law. Not the entire law, just those portions that make it hard for democrats to cheat. Do you think they would change their minds and start enforcing that piece if the accusations were against Republicans? Yep, me too. They would be all over it like stink on shit.

There has never been an administration as corrupt and crooked as this gang of thugs and thieves we have now. There is no way obama will win in 2012, but it will probably be him taking the oath of office in January 2013. Remember this post, think about it after the election...

By Roger Hedgecock - Human Events

Americans take the integrity of our elections for granted. Every citizen has an equal right to vote, and every vote cast is counted. Rubbish.

The voter rolls of this country are stuffed with illegal aliens, felons and dead people, who not only vote, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Citizens in uniform serving overseas, who might vote Republican, are routinely denied the right to vote when ballots are mailed "too late" to be returned in time to count. When a Republican wins a close race, uncounted ballots are "found" in the backseat of a Democrat poll worker's car.

American elections are getting more corrupt every election year.

I heard Debbie Wasserperson-Schultz still whining the other day about the 2000 presidential election in Florida. You know, the one President Gore won, but Bush stole—even though every time the New York Times and other Democrat lapdog media counted and recounted those Florida ballots, Bush still won.

The Democrats don't care about the facts of Florida 2000. They need the Gore-win myth to cover their own deliberate corruption of the election process.

Jimmy Carter shows up in every other country's election as a "fairness" monitor. He ought to stay home and monitor the tide of corrupt elections about to crest in 2012, when the Democrats plan to steal an Obama reelection win fair and square.

The plan goes something like this.

1) Sign up illegal aliens to vote.

I walked door-to-door in 2010 canvassing for Republican congressional candidate Van Tran in the Anaheim, Calif.,-area district now represented by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Our team ran across people who were listed as registered voters in rolls obtained from the county registrar who openly admitted they were illegal and stated they could not vote and had never voted.

How did the illegals get on the voter roll? The federal Motor Voter Law requires local welfare offices, social service agencies and motor vehicle departments to offer voter registration forms to everyone who comes in, no questions asked. ACORN-like groups have long practiced signing up new "voters" at places where illegals congregate.

In California, the voter registration card requires a check in the box stating you are a citizen of the U.S. The box is always checked and nobody ever questions it.

Does the illegal alien actually vote? Apparently not. Another box on the registration form requests a permanent mail-in ballot be sent to the "voter." The mailing address is different from the "voter's" residence address, meaning that the the illegal alien "voter" never receives a ballot and never votes. The mail-in ballots are sent to another location and someone else votes and mails back the ballot for the new "voter."

Random checks of these mailing addresses show the same addresses over and over. This is election fraud on an organized level. It's going on now in every state.

Any attempt to stop this corruption would cause Obama to go to court to defend the right of illegals to register to vote

The Obama administration is infamously suing Arizona for daring to enforce federal immigration laws that Obama will not enforce. One such Arizona law requires people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship. The case of Gonzalez v. State of Arizona challenges the validity of that law.

Last week, the Obama Justice Department filed a late amicus brief in the Gonzalez case urging the court to find that Arizona may not require information to validate claims of citizenship made on a voter registration form.

2) Sign up felons to vote.

Following the 2000 showdown in Florida, the Democrats started a nationwide campaign to register felons to vote. A 2004 editorial in the New York Times, for example, criticized Florida for purging 47,000 felons from the voting rolls while admitting that Florida law barred felons from voting. The editorial castigated 35 states that likewise had some level of restriction on voting by felons.

Time magazine, The Washington Post, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch all chimed in on the unfairness of barring the felon vote. The demand for "reform" became universal when polling showed that felons would overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

By 2011, only two states, Kentucky and Virginia, continue to bar felons from voting for life. All other states have "reformed" their voting laws to allow the felon Democrat vote to be counted in 2012.

3) Keep the voting dead on the rolls.

Dead Democrat voters are a tradition in Chicago. Today the tradition is metastasizing to the rest of the country.

In 2011, for example, the state of Ohio reported that 18,500 dead people were still listed as voters. Local registrars were requested to purge the rolls of dead people as required by Ohio law and apparently not consistently done.

A report from Houston, Tex., tells of 4,462 dead voters still on the rolls there, many still voting. Relatives of these dead voters expressed shock that their deceased loved ones were still so involved in politics.

Obama is an activist in this campaign to protect illegal, felon and dead Democrat voters.

A lesser-known provision of the federal Motor Voter law requires all states to make sure no ineligible persons (illegals, felons or dead people) get on the voter rolls. In November 2009, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandez (an Obama political appointee) told a stunned gathering of the Justice Department's Voting Section that her office would no longer enforce that section of the law.

Fernandez's exact quote was, "We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it."

All over the country, legislation to require voters to present identification at the polling booth is opposed by Obama's Justice Department.

Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has claimed that requiring people to present I.D. would deter voting, just as Jim Crow laws in the South used to do.

For the younger reading audience, Jim Crow laws (poll tax, literacy test to vote) were passed by Democrats to stop black American citizens from voting. Stopping ineligible voters protects the rights of all citizens.

Living, law abiding citizens just have to wonder, when they present an I.D. to conduct just about any kind of business in their daily lives, why the integrity of the vote shouldn't be protected by requiring voter I.D. at the polls.

Of course if that were required, Obama might not be reelected

Romney announces his run for president...

Come November 2012, I have to vote, it is my responsibility as an American. There is no way in HELL I would vote for obama, none, zip, nada, no way. That being said, I'll vote for the Republican nominee, but I may do it under protest.

I'm not a Romney fan, never have been. It's not that he is a bad guy, and I'm sure he would make a decent president, but I have concerns. He does tend to change his opinion based on the political winds. He isn't a true conservative. And he seems a little too uptight, with the suit all the time. Although he does seem to be trying to lighten that image a little. The more I hear about his RomneyCare, it sounds like a miniature version of obamacare. While it did cost his State less than anticipated, it's still socialized medicine.

I've heard it said lots of times that people want to vote for someone they could picture themselves having a beer with, Romney isn't that guy. He seems more like the big shot that owns the bar and kicks you out for getting too rowdy.

Herman Cain is a guy I could drink a beer with. So is Gov. Rick Perry.

I can't think of a single democrat I would want to share a beer with. About half way through they would piss me off with some stupid crack and the fight would be on.

Anyway, I hope to vote for someone I truly want to see as president instead of just some guy lucky enough to be the nominee. I would like to see a business person or a governor. They seem to have the experience needed to lead something. Senators and representatives  are out in my opinion. They don't have the knowledge level I would like to see. If you think differently, look at obama, and look at where his "leadership" has taken us. We sure as hell don't need more of that. We need a true leader, someone that loves this Country more than life itself...

What can Newt be thinking?

Day one, right out of the chute, Newt has to start kicking other Republicans in the nuts. Does he think that by alienating a bunch of people he increases his chances at becoming the nominee?

Paul Ryan's plan may not be perfect, but he is willing to do SOMETHING. We didn't get into this entitlement mess over night. It took many years of BOTH PARTIES passing the buck. Politicians are far more worried about their political careers than they are the welfare of our Country. Ryan has shown, with his plan, that he has the future of our Nation in mind. It may not be popular to talk about changing social security and medicare, but is a conversation we need to be having.

Newt has flip-flopped on so many issues, most people have lost count. He has no chance at becoming the Republican candidate. None. He may have the most name recognition out of the current bunch, but that isn't always a good thing. Especially when you are notorious instead of famous...

What about Ron Paul?

Could you vote for Ron Paul?

I agree with his stance on about 80% of the issues. The other 20%, not so much. And some of the areas I disagree with him on are some of the most troubling.

I don't think we should have an isolationist attitude as a Country. I'm not suggesting that we continue a policy of being the police force of the world, but some issues are worth getting involved in. But, sometimes we should let people work stuff out themselves. I disagree with him on Iraq. That was an issue worth getting involved in. saddam hussein was a very bad man and a supporter of terror. He had weapons of mass destruction and he proved he was capable of using them. In my opinion, our biggest mistake in Iraq was worrying too much about saving infrastructure and political correctness. Because of our desire to be politically correct, we let scumbags like muqtada al-sadr live to fight another day. We should have taken his ass out at our earliest opportunity.

Ron Paul belives terrorism is just like any other murder, I disagree. Terrorism is a state of mind. Terrorists have no motive other than furthering their own beliefs. No amount of analyzing will find a cure for it. The only way to deal with terrorists is with force. Superior firepower.

He opposes the death penalty. I am a supporter. I don't think tax payers should be burdened with taking care of a murderer for 5, 10, 20 years while we wait for them to die of natural causes behind bars. Murderers have proven that they have no regard for the rights of others.

Ron Paul supports legalizing some drugs. Bad idea. I believe in stopping the flow of drugs into our Country by sealing our borders. At that point we can concentrate on the scumbags in our own Country who are making and selling illegal drugs, like meth. Is allowing people to do drugs legally going to lessen the drug problem in this Country? It would drastically reduce the number of people in prisons, but increase the number of people who should be in prison roaming the streets.

Those are the big ones.

What do you think?

The Grand Compromise

Someone in our government should recognize the absolute genius of Charles Krauthammer and put him to work for the good of our Country. I have never read a single word he has written that I didn't agree with. Without a doubt, he is smarter than the entire obama administration combined.

obama is quick to citicize the Ryan plan without offering anything of substance himself. It is standard operating procedure. Just like Libya, he refuses to make any kind of a plan that can be pinned directly to him. Instead he lets others do the heavy lifting and attempts to take the credit. What a small person he is.

He pulled the same stunt in congress, voting "present" on the tough votes to avoid a record that could be quoted later. But the silence in those "present" votes is deafening. He has spent his entire political career being non-commital yet critical of those who dare to make a commitment.

The rudimentary plan he did devise is more of the same liberal crap, tax and overspend. It's the only answer their limited range of vision can come up with.

2012 can't come soon enough for me. We need to clean house on election day...

by Charles Krauthammer - Human Events

The most serious charge against Rep. Paul Ryan's budget is not the risible claim, made most prominently by President Obama in his George Washington University address, that it would "sacrifice the America we believe in." The serious charge is that the Ryan plan fails by its own standards: Because it only cuts spending without raising taxes, it accumulates trillions of debt and doesn't balance the budget until the 2030s. If the debt is such a national emergency, they say, Ryan never really gets you there from here.

But the critics miss the point. You can't get there from here without Ryan's plan. It's the essential element. Of course Ryan is not going to propose tax increases. You don't need Republicans for that. That's what Democrats do. The president's speech was a prose poem to higher taxes -- with every allusion to spending cuts guarded by a phalanx of impenetrable caveats.

Ryan reduces federal spending by $6 trillion over 10 years -- from the current 24 percent of GDP to the historical post-World War II average of about 20 percent.

Now, the historical average for revenues over the last 40 years is between 18 percent and 19 percent of GDP. As we return to that level with the economic recovery (we're now at about 15 percent), Ryan would still leave us with an annual deficit in 2021 of 1.6 percent of GDP.

The critics are right to focus on that gap. But it is bridgeable. And the mechanism for doing so is in plain sight: tax reform.

Real tax reform strips out exclusions, deductions, credits and the innumerable loopholes that have accumulated since the last tax reform of 1986. The Simpson-Bowles commission, for example, identifies $1.1 trillion of such revenue-robbers. In one scenario, it strips them all out and thus is able to lower rates for everyone to three brackets of 8 percent, 14 percent and 23 percent.

The commission does recommend that, on average, about $100 billion annually of that $1.1 trillion be kept by the Treasury (rather than going back to the taxpayer) to reduce the deficit. This is a slight deviation from revenue neutrality, but it still yields a major cut for the top rate from the current 35 percent to 23 percent. The overall result is so reasonable and multiply beneficial that it rightly gained the concurrence of even the impeccably conservative (commission member) Sen. Tom Coburn.

That's the beauty of tax reform: It is both transparent and flexible. That flexibility and transparency can be applied to the Ryan plan. If you need a bit more deficit reduction to bridge the 1.6 percent GDP gap that remains after 10 years, you can get there by slightly raising the final rates.

Ryan's tax reform envisions three brackets with a top rate of 25 percent. There's nothing sacred about that number. In principle, you could raise all the rates slightly with the top rate going to, say, 28 percent -- the top rate that came out of Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax reform. You're still much lower than the current 35 percent. And yet that final boost could bring you closer to a fully balanced federal budget at roughly 20 percent of GDP.

Nor would any great conservative principle be violated. The historical average of revenues -- 18 percent to 19 percent of GDP -- could be raised one point or so on the perfectly reasonable grounds that we are a slightly older society, and that we wish to avail ourselves of the extraordinary but expensive medical technology that can increase both the quality and length of life.

This one concession would yield a fully balanced budget more quickly than Ryan's plan and would reduce the debt/GDP ratio even more steeply (because GDP would be growing, while debt would not). The effect on America's financial standing in the world would be dramatic: Restored confidence in U.S. fiscal health would reduce interest rates, which would lower the overall debt burden, which could allow lower taxes, which could stimulate yet more economic growth. A virtuous circle.

That's the finish line. But it starts with spending cuts. Serious cuts, as Ryan suggests -- not the smoke and mirrors the Obama speech shamelessly presented as a plan.

Given the Democrats' instinctive resort to granny-in-the-snow demagoguery, the Republicans are right not to budge on taxes until serious spending cuts are in place. At which point, the grand compromise awaits. And grand it would be. Saving the welfare state from insolvency is no small achievement.