OBAMA: We had a yearlong debate, Ed. I mean, go back and look at your stories. The one thing we can’t say is that we did not have a lengthy debate about health care in the United States of America or that it was not adequately covered. I mean, I would just advise all of… every press outlet here, go back and pull up every clip, every story, and I think it’ll — it’s fair to say that there was not a — a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated, and was fully transparent.

Pelosi’s was out there saying, “You’ve got pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”  Nothing about this bill was transparent. Everything about the bill was hidden. The people that wrote the bill didn’t know what it said. It was 2,000 or 2,200 pages.

“I didn’t know about this! I just heard about this! I’m as mad about this as you are. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this,”

… blah, blah.

EXAMPLES:   March 2009 through November 2014.

OBAMA, GRUBER, 11/17/14: Uhhh, I just heard about this… [S]ome advisor who never worked on our staff, uhh, expressed an opinion that, uhh, I completely disagree with …

OBAMA, IRS SCANDAL, 05/13/13: I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.

OBAMA, IRS SCANDAL, 05/15/13: Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it.

OBAMA, OBAMACARE ROLLOUT, 10/21/13: Nobody’s madder than me!

OBAMA, FAST & FURIOUS, 10/14/11: I heard on the news about this.

OBAMA, FAST & FURIOUS, 10/18/11: It’s very upsetting to me, that somebody showed such bad judgment.

OBAMA, SECRET SERVICE SCANDAL, 04/15/12: If it turns out some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry.

OBAMA, IRS SCANDAL, 05/13/13: I’ve got no patience with it! I will not tolerate it!

OBAMA BP GULF OIL DISASTER, 06/03/10: I am furious at this entire situation.

OBAMA IRS SCANDAL, 05/15/13: We’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable.

OBAMA, IRS SCANDAL, 05/16/13:I certainly did not know anything about the IG Report before the IG Report had been leaked through the press.

OBAMA, IRS SCANDAL, 05/16/13:  The minute I found out about it, then my main focus is making sure that we get the thing fixed.

OBAMA, WALL STREET BONUSES, 03/18/09:People are right to be angry. I’m angry!

OBAMA, AIR FORCE ONE BUZZING MANHATTAN, 04/28/09: It was something, we found out, about along with all of you.

OBAMA, VA SCANDAL, 05/21/2014: I will not stand for it, not as commander-in-chief! None of us should. It is dishonorable, it is disgraceful, and I will not tolerate it. Period.

All of those, Obama claimed he knew nothing about until you knew.

Gruber, MIT Professor, in all of the sound bites, is telling everybody else how to do this. He is teaching here! He’s not bragging how he did it, or not just bragging. That he is instructing. He’s telling other people how they can get this done in their own walks of life. So he is encouraging this kind of thing for everybody else, and using it as a teachable moment for like-minded people.

Progressive Liberal Education Mindset Exposed… if your shocked, you haven’t been paying attention.

An audience member says to him,

My dad and I were talking about the Tea Party.  What will you do if these people are elected?

OBAMA:

America has a noble tradition of being healthfully skeptical about government.  That’s in our DNA.

We came in because, the folks, over on the other side of the Atlantic been, oppressing folks without giving reputation.  The problem with the debate that’s taken place, and, and some of these Tea Party events is I think they’re misidentifying sort of who the culprits are here. We had two tax cuts that weren’t paid for, two wars that weren’t paid for. We’ve got a population that’s getting older. We’re all demanding services but our taxes have actually substantially gone down, and so the — the challenge I think for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically: What would you do?

No, the challenge of the Tea Party movement is to get rid of the Democrats who are creating this mess.

The purpose of tax cuts is to, what… Pay for government?

That’s not the purpose of taxes. This whole premise here is misguided.

Tax cuts were not paid for? You don’t pay for tax cuts.

The whole concept of paying for tax cuts is foreign.  It’s wrong.  It’s irrelevant.

By the way, revenues to the US Treasury in 2003 were in the neighborhood of $2.1 trillion. In 2007 revenues to the Treasury were in the neighborhood of two and a half trillion – Heritage Foundation citing numbers from the Obama administration Office of Management and Budget.

So apparently government revenues went up from 2003 to 2007 after the Bush tax cuts.  Revenues went up.

The same thing happened in the 1980s.

So his whole premise is nothing but a lie.

Government is the single greatest repository of greed in the world, Washington, DC, including even all the tyrannical dictators around the world.

All money is theirs and their little power games such that they believe you end up with whatever they deem is fair for you to have.

You don’t pay for tax cuts.  Tax cuts generate wealth creation.

The purpose of tax cuts is not to stimulate the government.  It’s to help the economy.

The purpose of tax cuts is to stimulate growth and prosperity in the American people, which clearly Obama’s not interested in.

The welfare, the well-being, the prosperity of the American people is not at all something he’s concerned about.  Otherwise he would be in favor of tax cuts.

Tax cuts are intended to leave money with the individual who earns the money.  Tax cuts are about private property rights.  Every dollar you earn is yours, until you are forced to pay taxes on it.  Then you have what discretionary income is left for you to spend as you choose.

Now, taxes are necessary, everybody knows this.  But the way the Democrats look at it, taxes are a punishment.  Taxes are a punishment for people doing too well. Taxes are class envy; taxes are a way to get even with other people; taxes are a way to buy votes for people who don’t think they’re doing well.

Now, the president said we had two wars that weren’t paid for.  Let me put it this way.  Medicare is not paid for.  The war on poverty is not paid for.  Social Security is not paid for.  Medicaid is not paid for.  The Department of Education is not paid for.  The EPA is not paid for.

Why does he single out the Pentagon when the whole government is in deficit?  Nothing is being paid for, Mr. President.  Nothing!  We’re bankrupt!  The country is broke.  We don’t have the money.

Everything is adding up to a deficit.  Social Security isn’t paid for, Medicaid is not paid for, Medicare is not paid for, the Great Society, not paid for, war on poverty, not paid for.  This deficit’s government-wide.  We’ve got spending increases, all of the president’s new regulations. None of it’s paid for.

We are on a deficit deathwatch.  That’s why the Tea Party exists.

Every penny the president spends today and from this day forward is not paid for.  Nothing is paid for that you are buying.  You’re not paying for a damn thing, Mr. President.  All of us are.  Everything you get’s gratis.  Your wife’s vacations, your trips on Air Force One, the perks and the parties.  You’re the only one not paying for anything.

The rest of us are in hock for the rest of our lives because of people like you.  And you dare to insult us and say that two wars are not paid for, that our tax cuts have led to this problem?

You blame the people of this country?  You are single-handedly destroying the wealth creation engine of this country, and you have the audacity to go to a town hall meeting and blame us?

Tax rates are not lower than after Kemp-Roth was passed.  Tax rates are not lower than they were in 1986. Tax rates are not lower than they were in 1988. To the extent that taxes are lower than when Clinton was in office, that’s thanks to the Bush tax cuts.

This president has intentionally bankrupted this country and now he claims that defense spending and tax cuts aren’t paid for?  But the rest of all his entitlements and the rest of his massive slush-fund spending, why, that’s paid for, how do you explain that?

All the things he’s spending money on are paid for but a couple of wars aren’t?

American Thinker

So national security, which is a constitutional responsibility, was not paid for but all the rest of this massive bureaucracy is paid for?  Tax cuts, which allows people to keep more of what they’ve earned the following year is already being spent by the government this year, so they’re not paid for.

Nothing’s paid for, except his precious little programs.  But everything that impacts us is not paid for.

He keeps spending.  He keeps running up deficits.  He keeps taking care of his union buddies, trial lawyer buddies, certain Wall Street buddies, and then there’s nothing left for those of you who pay the bills.

Suddenly he’s concerned about the budget and the deficit after he has single-handedly blown them up out of sight?

So essentially what we’re going to have to do is keep ponying up for Obama’s failures.  We’re going to have to keep ponying up to pay for socialism that doesn’t work. We’re going to have to keep ponying up to pay for huge salaries and benefits for bureaucrats and union people, and we’re going to have to hear all the while that defense and tax cuts aren’t being paid for.  This is our fault.  We had the audacity to accept the tax cut, and now we have to pay the price.

This is all lies, it’s irresponsible, and more than anything else, it’s dangerous because it’s destroying the very engine of wealth creation that has defined the greatness of this country and has given people, not just in this country, but around the world, hope.

“House Passes $800 Billion Stimulus Plan with No Republican Support.”

The headline ought to be:

“House Democrats Vote to Spend $800 Billion in Pork They Don’t Have, Republicans Fail to Stop It,”

or

“Republicans Don’t Support It.“

There’s nothing wrong with needed stimulus, by the way, if it’s stimulus. But this is not stimulus. This is fairness.

Do you remember…?

Remember that interview — and it might have been with Maria Bartiromo at CNBC. It was somebody in the financial community.

He was told that capital gains tax cuts generated more tax revenue and not less, and he said,

“That’s not the issue. The issue is fairness.”

So, at one point, he wanted high income capital gains people to pay a higher rate than lower income capital gains tax. That was just exhibiting a total lack of understanding about capital gains rate, what it is and who pays it.

I have to tell you, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, they are starting to come together. This is just fun. It’s now getting to be fun.

I want to tell you about a man name John Carter. He is a Texas Republican, member of the Congress. He introduced a bill yesterday to eliminate all IRS penalties and interest for paying taxes past due. He’s calling the legislation “The Rangel Rule,” named after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel.
This would enable

“citizens who fail to pay taxes on time to do so later” with no penalty, just like Rangel has done and just like Timothy Geithner has done. “

As of September 2008 the Harlem Democrat reportedly paid back more than $10,000 in taxes but that did not include any IRS penalties.

‘Your citizens back home should have the same rights and benefits that come to you as a member of congress. You shouldn’t be treated any differently under the law than your citizens back home…’

He added that citizens should receive the ‘same courtesy’ that the IRS is allegedly granting Rangel and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who also recently acknowledged a failure to pay taxes.”

That’s a great line. I love the way these guys are starting to think.

Now, let’s talk about the Republicans in the House and the vote on the stimulus bill last night. This was a great victory for conservatives. It was a great victory for Republicans.

If you listen to the media reports, you would think that the only members of the House to vote against the stimulus bill were Republicans. But there were 11 Democrats who voted against it, too.

Not a single Republican voted for it. That means there was a bipartisan vote against the bill. The vote against the bill was bipartisan. The vote for the bill is what was partisan.

Now, neither the media nor Obama want you to know this, because they still want you to believe that Obama is the great unifier, the great uniter, when he couldn’t even persuade a single Republican.

He could not persuade even a single Republican, not even a Republican in Name Only, to go along with this.

This is a huge failure for Obama and the media. They were counting on at least one Republican vote for this so they could spin the story as bipartisan support for the bill and cheer the incredible leadership qualities of Barack Obama.

Well, the opposite occurred, which calls into question his leadership qualities. They’re now saying,

“Well, you know, you can’t change Washington in a week. We knew this going in. It’s going to be a long, long time,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

As more things in this bill are learned, the more the American people are not going to want any part of this, and they’re being told once again this has to happen now or we’re going to have a terrible result in the economy. It’s going to get even worse — and they tell us, by the way, it’s going to get even worse if this “stimulus” bill goes to the Senate and the president signs it and so forth.

But this is not stimulating. If we’re going to stimulate the economy, there’s gotta be something in here that stimulates, and there just isn’t. It is just traditional typical Democrat spending.

Nancy Pelosi wrote this bill. She excluded the Republican Party. Obama went along with it, saying he wanted Republican input, but when he got Republican input, he rejected it. Remember, he said he won the election, meaning he’s going to do whatever he wants to do.

This entire sham of a bill and the sham of this great uniter and unifier has now been exposed. And, the House Republicans deserve our praise in this. They stood firm.

They understood that they had to stand up against what is the most irresponsible confiscation of wealth and power from the American people in modern history, and that’s exactly what this bill is.

It is a confiscation, the most irresponsible confiscation of wealth and power, from you, the American people, in our nation’s history. They had to say no. The House Republicans had to say no to a bill that has nothing to do with creating jobs, a bill that kills jobs. It has nothing to do with jump-starting the economy. All it does is jump-start the size of government. And they did. And they did so unanimously. And for this they deserve a standing ovation.

See, it’s really not that hard to do what’s right. It is not only good government and good politics. What they did is good for the country.

Our domestic oil companies are huge within the context of the continental United States — well, including Alaska and Hawaii, but in terms of the world, they’re tiny. They’re among the smallest oil companies out there.

“US Senate Republicans have blocked a Democratic plan to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies. Democrats on Tuesday failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican delaying tactic on the energy package, and bring the bill up for consideration. Democrats said the huge profits enjoyed by the largest US oil companies should be reined in with motorists paying more than $4 a gallon (0.64 per liter for gasoline and oil prices soaring well beyond $100 a barrel.) But Republican critics said higher taxes on oil companies would increase — not lower — gasoline prices.”

Look, Jimmy Carter did this. Jimmy Carter, windfall profits tax on the big oil companies during that four years of malaise, and you know what happened…

Jimmy Carter did his windfall profits tax, and the oil companies said, “Okay, fine, we’ll stop producing as much in the United States. We’ll lower our production so we’re not paying taxes,” and that’s exactly what happened. They cut back production domestically. They went back and produced more in their offshore properties and tracts.

The Democrats know this.

This is not about revenue, it’s not about oil; it’s about punishment. It is about punishing risk takers. It is about class envy. It is about punishing people who then have success after taking a risk.

It’s like the minimum wage. They raised the minimum wage, it’s one of the few achievements that Nancy Pelosi had. And so we got the most recent unemployment report, 5.5%.

And of course, all hell broke loose on Wall Street, and everybody was panicking. Bbut very few people put together the fact that this new increase in the minimum wage rate combined with a flooded job market of both high school students and college graduates is what led to the 5.5% employment number.

Jerry Bowyer was posted a piece at Townhall.com called: “What the Media Didn’t Tell You About Friday’s Unemployment Spike.”

“It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate layoffs?”

If unemployment went up this high, where in the hell were all the people that lost their jobs, is what he’s saying. There weren’t lost jobs and yet unemployment is up a half a point?

“The answer to all of these questions is the same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy — hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of spring? That’s right — students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25.
…
Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment — that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest.”

You know the percentage of people earning the minimum wage in this country on any given day is well over 50% teenagers. It’s not people who are providing for a family of four or a family of two.

“Rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase. Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls.”

Which is exactly what the minimum wage is. It’s a wage control, and it is an arbitrarily established number that has nothing to do with productivity, experience, qualification.

So it’s a wage control. And the logical outcome of such “rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable.

Friday’s unemployment spike occurred overwhelmingly among teenagers, and secondarily among African Americans. Just like we said it would. A kid who is at entry level of job skills may be a good deal at 5 bucks an hour, but not at 7.

Our anointed leaders gets to glory in their generosity (with other people’s money) and just so long as very few people in the media know that a demand curve slopes downward (a good bet, there), no one calls them on it. This summer the left will make political lemonade out of a tough student job market. Heck, it may provide a small army of angry unemployed youth to man the campaign, hungry for hope and (loose) change, never once realizing that they’re working to entrench the leftie war on business, which left them jobless this summer in the first place.

The key to understanding this is very simple.

Hardly anybody lost a job in May when the unemployment rate went up half a point, five to five and a half percent. And those who couldn’t find work were the new job market entrants.

What’s all this got to do with price of oil, the windfall profits tax? Because none of this is aimed at actually helping anybody, and it’s typical liberalism, it ends up harming the very people it’s intended to help.

Look at Obama and his predicted, at least he says this is what he wants to do, tax increases. He wants to raise taxes to 39% on people who make $200,000 a year or more. To him that’s rich. Current rate’s 35%.

He wants to take it back to the glory days of the Clinton administration of 39%.

All right, fine and dandy. Well, what’s going to happen here?

Well, how many small business owners, the largest employers collectively in the country, they file their sub-S, Subchapter S corporations, but they file their returns on a personal return, or 1040. So their rate’s going to go from 35 to 39, guess what?

The very people that Obama says, look, I’m going to get even with the rich people for you. I’m going to raise their taxes. I’m going to make things fair. And these people are going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you stick it to them. And who gets it stuck to ’em? The guy who loses his job who’s not making $200,000 because his employer has to fire him in order to pay the federal government’s new taxes authored by Obama.

When Congress directs small business, everybody, to raise the minimum wage on a graduated scale up to $7.15, well… small business owners are not going to sit there and say, oh, well, okay, because they don’t have, just like you probably don’t at home, they don’t have an unlimited supply of cash sitting around that they’re not doing anything with. They might have some cash flow, but it’s allocated or it’s there for insurance or what have you.

But if somebody comes along and says, “Look, the four guys you’re paying minimum wage you’ve gotta increase them by X,” one of them is going to lose a job because the business owner is going to do his best not to sit there and lose money, ’cause if he loses money for too long he’s out of business, and then everybody that works there is fired.

This is the incremental loss of basic liberties and freedoms.

All of these well-intentioned people who have convinced way too many Americans that their intentions are honorable and they love people and they’re filled with compassion and yet everything or most everything they try as a remedy to some social problem, not only doesn’t work, it exacerbates the problem.

McCain went down to talk to Big Oil execs. He gave a speech on energy and conservation. Here is the first of two portions.

MCCAIN: We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States, but a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production, and I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and put our own reserves to use.

All right, all right, all right, drill here, drill now, pay less.

Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.

Folks, this is the issue. It’s not the equivalent of going to the moon, but it is close. This is a goal, a national goal, to become energy independent.

We have the crude. We have the supply. We have it. We just have to go get it. And you don’t get it by sitting around waiting.

You gotta take the first step. In building anything, it takes time. So this is something to rally the people behind. We’ve got the tipping point here, four dollar a gallon gasoline, and it’s going to be great because the Democrats are going to oppose this. They’re going to stand in the way of it. They’re going to be easy to caricature. It will be easy to explain to people. This is not a complicated issue at all. Here’s another McCain qoute.

MCCAIN: He wants a windfall profits tax on oil. To go along with the new taxes he also plans for coal and natural gas. My friends, if the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea, too. And a lot of good it did us.

He’s right about that. It’s accurate, it’s correct, and he’s telling the truth about Obama.

He wants to raise taxes on all these things. The more you tax an activity, the less of that activity you get.

It’s just that simple, proven by years and years and years of human existence.

Here is Obama. This is aboard his campaign plane, he’s trying to paint McCain here as a flip-flopper while he has on his staff the original flip-flopper, John Kerry. Here’s Obama, first of two.

OBAMA: This is yet another reversal by John McCain in terms of his earlier positions, and I think we could set up an interesting debate between John McCain 2000 and John McCain 2008.

Let me help out here, Senator Obama…

If you say no to offshore drilling or drilling in ANWR when oil is at $20 or $30 a barrel, and then you change your mind and say yes to offshore drilling when oil is $140 a barrel, sir, that’s not a flip-flop. That’s just common sense.

It’s like John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist, was asked, “Sir, how come you’ve changed your mind?” He said, “Sir, when the facts change, I change my mind.”

The facts have changed here. Oil is no longer $30 a barrel, it’s $140. It’s now profitable to get the shale oil the president was talking about. This is not a flip-flop.

What we have here, the “No-Drill Democrats“ — are on a crash course not to meet our energy needs. They are in a full-court press to cover their rear ends.

This is almost, not quite, but similar to what’s happening in Iraq. Last year at this time and the year before that, the Democrats were openly embracing defeat, saying our troops couldn’t win, they had no chance, we were fighting an unjust war, we need pull out, we need to lose, and Harry Reid was saying we already have lost.

Now we’ve done a 180 and all of a sudden the news out of Iraq is good, but Democrats don’t dare admit it. Same thing’s happening here with the price of oil, energy independence. They continually are on the wrong side of every major issue facing this country and its growth and its future.

So the Democrats are doing everything they can to cover their rears here, not meet our energy needs. As the law of supply and demand jacks up prices, as more voters realize they’re paying the price for liberal special interests, as the polls swing in favor of more drilling, which they are doing, the last refuge of liberals is always to lie and mislead.

They pop up on television, they smile, they say drilling will not lower prices now.

— Wake up people: Nothing will right now.

DEMOCRAT: There’s not one thing we could do to lower prices right now. ANWR alone won’t make us energy independent for more than six months.

–– Nobody ever said that it would. But I’ll tell you what, just this announcement, just the announcement of this initiative, I’m going to be curious to see what goes on in the speculation market, in the futures market.

I’m going to be interested to see how it affects the overall market.

I’ll guarantee you that if the Democrats ever got wise and went along with this and we lift the executive order that prohibits offshore drilling, you watch what happens to the price of oil, once the world knows that the United States of America is going to go get.

They know it, they resent it, and they fear it, as do the Democrats. Democrats don’t like us being this big. They don’t like us being a superpower. They think it creates victims in the rest of the world; we need to be cut down to size.

This issue fits perfectly.

We could probably have a fairly immediate effect on price just by announcing our intention to start drilling. Democrats are saying that there are drilling leases out there. Is it, what, millions of acres?

Well, the leases are too short-term to allow for EPA rules and test drilling. So then they blame it on Big Oil or Big Speculators or Big Bush or Big Cheney.

They blame it on everything but themselves, and their no-drill, no-refine, no-nuclear-plant policies, and that’s exactly who they are: the no-drill, no-refine, no-nuclear-plant Democrats.

Links to series post:

1. OBAMA; the solution to the rising gas prices…

2. Democrats attack failed policies of the past.

3. Simple TRUTH about oil in the U.S.A.

4. Domestic drilling – only to reduce price by a few cents?