In the wake of the 2010 tea partier conservative epic GOP mid-term election landslide that returned control of the House of Representatives to the party, this columnist urged Republicans to risk a government shutdown during the 2010 budget negotiations as more palatable than risking “default” during the likely debt ceiling battle the following year.

Speaker John Boehner and majorities of the Republican House shrunk from both battles, agreeing to enable Democrat Senate budget phobia in 2010 and a mindless Medicare/Defense “sequester” in 2011 which led the recently “resolved” fiscal cliff deal, despite President Obama’s refusal to re-visit scheduled military cuts deemed “disastrous” by his own defense secretary:

“We – we cannot – we cannot maintain a strong defense for this country if sequester is allowed to happen…” – Leon Panetta

The Fiscal Cliff deal put off the defense disaster for two months but did make the Bush Income Tax Rates permanent for most Americans in exchange for President Barack Obama’s demand that  the “rich pay their fair share” by allowing the lower Bush rates to expire for those earning over $400-450K/year. However, before the ink was dry on the auto-pen (while Obama was wet in Hawaiian waters) signed-bill, the President moved the goalposts on taxes again with the release of a campaign-style video aimed at holding the sequestration-mandated defense cuts as a Sword of Damocles over Republican heads:

President Obama cut a video, distributed by his reelection [sic] [campaign], to reiterate his belief that the wealthiest Americans still aren’t paying their “fair share” of taxes and to outline a second-term agenda ranging from environmental policy to gun control.

Obama started by celebrating the tax increases — “making our tax code more progressive than it’s been in decades,” he said — that will take place because of the fiscal cliff deal.

“Obviously, there is still more to do when it comes to reducing our debt,” Obama said in the video. “And I’m willing to do more, as long as we do it in a balanced way that doesn’t put all the burden on seniors or students or middle class families, but also asks the wealthiest Americans to contribute and pay their fair share.”

But adding insult to injury, we learned yesterday that throughout the fiscal cliff negotiations President Obama repeatedly told Speaker Boehner that, “We don’t have a spending problem.“:

The president’s insistence that Washington doesn’t have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called “a health-care problem.” Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—”They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system”—he replied: “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.” He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: “I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”

America held hostage by an irresponsibly reckless and re-elected ideologue who craves craves continuous crises 

This conservative has had enough of a Chief Executive that refuses to responsibly address our dangerous debt and anemic so-called recovery and the ongoing gargantuan level of resulting poverty in America. We hope that the Speaker and a majority of House Republicans understand that the risk from being blamed for a crisis resulting from a refusal to raise the debt ceiling absent serious and significant spending cuts (that can only be had on the entitlement side of the budget) is outweighed by the risks of not addressing the ongoing debt/poverty/jobs crisis, now over four years old, that could precipitate market panic even if the debt ceiling were raised.

The Republicans, even including former President George W. Bush, got blamed for the poor economy by an electoral majority of Americans despite the fact that Obama and the Democrats got their stimulus, Obamacare and financial “reforms” passed; and despite the failure of the post-tea partier election landslide House to exert its constitutional power of the purse. Maybe Republicans were justified in their risk-averse strategy before America re-hired Obama; but America is at risk and this conservative would rather lose future elections having tried to save the nation rather than trying to pursue a strategy thought less likely to have the In-the-tank-for-Obama blame us for the inevitable Natural Law result of our present course.

Republicans can easily make clear their support for means-testing entitlements, changing the cost-of-living index for benefits to reflect the price of goods, raising the retirement age, and repealing unpopular tax and regulatory provisions of Obamacare that raise the deficit; and calling out the President on moral grounds for his “default” scare tactics, as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) did last Sunday:

Let me be clear, I do not support default on the debt and we should never default on the debt and the only players who are threatening to default are President Obama and Harry Reid. This is an issue, and earlier in the show you played the President threatening default. In any given month tax revenue are 200 billion and interest is 30 or 40 billion. There is it plenty of revenue to service the debt and any responsible President would’ve stood at that podium and said ‘whatever happens with the debt ceiling, we will always pay our debt. We’ll never default on the debt’ and the reason the President isn’t doing that is he’s trying to scare people and raise the specter of financial apocalypse.”

It probably wouldn’t hurt to remind Americans that President Obama made this same threat before the last debt ceiling deal in 2011, which also included threats against Social Security checks and the salaries of our armed forces.

Given such an irresponsible President that would likely play debt ceiling-chicken more recklessly than James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Republicans should go into the abyss with their eyes wide open. And if the debt ceiling is not raised for very long, there would be draconian cutbacks that would hurt citizens. But absent compromise legislation that seriously addresses out of control spending, which would necessarily also cause pain to the same current entitlement beneficiaries, a financial crisis that would impose such suffering would only be a matter of time.

The fact is that we are in a crisis now, and have been for years, but refuse to act. Natural Law and Obama’s reforms are acting now to keep millions of Americans in crisis. Maybe its time for the rest of America to join them so a consensus can emerge to end the vacation from reality and re-build an America that could one day be exceptional again.

We can’t wait two, much less four, years for Republicans to somehow re-gain power and the courage to solve our huge problems. Let’s muster the courage now to confront Obama and get to the other side of the abyss where reconstruction is possible. Time and people’s lives are a wasting.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

And only by owning the definition of “default” does the minority party in control of only one house of Congress have any chance of using the debt limit debate to rein in the Democrats’ out of control spending, spur job-producing economic growth and win the political argument going into the next election.

Of course, the Republican House of Representatives can, under Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, refuse to authorize the borrowing of any additional money on the credit of United States, and thus impose the balancing of spending with tax receipts, i.e. “the budget”. In that event, the Executive Branch would have at its disposal only tax receipts to spend on all “obligations” of the federal government based upon current law including entitlements and “discretionary” spending covered by the continuing budget resolution still in effect. But tax receipts only cover approximately two-thirds of current budgetary obligations, with the discretion to prioritizing expenditures in the President’s hands, absent a new law setting such priorities that both sides would have to agree to; and of course, that won’t happen.

During the last debt ceiling debate in 2011, which produced the legislation that led to the recent so-called fiscal cliff sun-setting of tax and spending sequestration laws, President Obama threatened to default on nation’s sovereign debt to creditors and set spending priorities that put White House staff salaries ahead of those of the armed forces and the Social Security benefits of current retirees. This, despite the fact that sovereign debt accounts for only 6% of tax receipts with the remaining 94% sufficient to cover all of the national defense budget and current Social Security obligations.

Republicans can’t force our irresponsible Chief Executive to suddenly be responsible. It is likely that President Obama will never agree, under any circumstances, to cut/reform entitlement spending of any kind (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.). In the event of an end to government borrowing, President Obama could be counted on to use the crisis as a political tool against the GOP, no matter the level of suffering by Americans dependent upon the one-third of the budget not covered by tax receipts. In fact, he could be counted on to use his discretionary spending power to direct the suffering to its maximum political effect.

I can’t remember a time when Democrats didn’t regularly impugn the moral character of Republicans as not caring whether children, the poor, the elderly and the disabled have food to eat; no matter that when the GOP has held plenary power over the budget, entitlements always continued to be funded at rates equal to or greater than those imposed by Democrats. But just as President Obama changed course after the recent fiscal cliff tax rate compromise and now claims that the rich still don’t pay their “fair share”, so the test of whether Republicans “care enough” about the truly needy is always defined by the next bill introduced by Democrats that demands more, more and more.

Whether Speaker Boehner and the House decide to play debt ceiling chicken or not, Republicans must engage in a public relations campaign over which party cares the most about those they govern, as judged by the results of their respective policies.

People will suffer hardship if a balanced budget is imposed, cold turkey. People will suffer if a compromise is reached before the debt ceiling is breached. But people will also continue to suffer if Republicans cave on the debt ceiling and achieve no spending cuts, because people are suffering now, as they have since the Great Recession was followed by the anemic recovery.

Unemployment remains very high even if one accepts the 7.8% U-3 rate as informative. Under-employment remains at double-digit depression levels. More Americans have filed for disability than have found jobs since Obama was inaugurated. And much of the suffering in job losses and reduced standards of living are directly related to Obama and the Democrats’ tripling of budget deficits over those of former President George W. Bush and the Republicans.

Sadly, Republicans have been inept at explaining just how Democrats’ policies were primarily responsible for the bursting of the housing bubble and solely responsible for our ongoing failed economy. That must change if America, and especially its young people, can ever dream of a return to the prosperity that defined us as exceptional.

Ought Republicans invite a debt limit crisis even if they do improve their public relations campaign defining the Democrats as pursuing immoral policies responsible for the crisis? Maybe, but it is harder to make the case against Democrats’ decades-long failed economic policies than is for them to make their case blaming Republicans for specific checks not mailed on the other side of a debt ceiling not raised.

Republicans simply must make the case identifying those suffering this side of the debt ceiling for the past 5 years and those that will continue to suffer even if we eliminated the debt ceiling going forward; and that Democrats’ policies that punish jobs-producing investment at good wages are responsible.

Republicans can’t right the American economy if they don’t try to use their remaining power effectively. That will require making the moral case for free market capitalism and making the moral case against Democrats, even if they decide they ought not precipitate a debt ceiling crisis with a President that doesn’t care enough about the suffering his refusal to compromise would cause. Americans chose to re-hire this venal man and will suffer the consequences no matter what Republicans do or don’t do. But as Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone With the Wind, “Tomorrow is another day”.

Republicans must start today if they want to win tomorrow so they can fix America.

G. Sand Lapper aka

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Christmas is over but discount sales have begun and its past time for a re-education in American essentials, including non-American literature that speak to the Judeo-Christian values necessary for a non-tyrannical state.

[Below are several lists of books we have found helpful in inculcating the values and principles upon with an exceptional America has rested. Many more could be added that I have read and have not read. These are the ones that I have chosen to highlight that have impacted my life.]

First, the Top Eleven non-fiction books that made possible this USC Gamecock’s Summer of 2001 conservative epiphany after 18 years of liberal Democratic Party activism:

1 – The Bible

2 – Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis

3 – Witness – Whittaker Chambers

4 – Slouching Towards Gomorrah – Robert Bork

5 – Reagan’s War – Peter Schweizer

6 – Free to Choose – Milton and Rose Friedman

7 – God and Man at Yale – William F. Buckley, Jr.

8 – Reagan: A Life in Letters

9 – Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

10 - Right from the Beginning – Pat Buchanan

11 – Born Again – Charles Colson

(See also Slander, Treason, Godless and Mugged by Ann Coulter…and all of her other books. All great reference materials documenting abhorent liberal Democrat behavior and “ideas”.)

Other essential non-fiction:

1. FDR’s Folly – Jim Powell
2. Up From Slavery – Booker T. Washington
3. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
4. What Went Wrong – Bernard Lewis
5. Losing the Race – John McWhorter
6. Battle Cry of Freedom – James McPherson
7. White Guilt – Shelby Steele
8. The Mind of the South – W.J. Cash
9. The Tempting of America – Robert Bork
10. Daniel Webster – Robert Remini
11. Liberal Fascism – Jonah Goldberg
12. The End of Racism – Dinesh D’Souza
13. The Death of Common Sense – Phillip Howard
14. Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Thomas Sowell
15. The Great Betrayal – Pat Buchanan
16. The End of Work – Jeremy Rifkin
17. Here I Stand (Martin Luther bio) – Roland Bainton
18. Let the Trumpet Sound (MLK bio) – Stephen Oates
19. Alone (Vol. 2 The Last Lion, Winston Churchill) – William Manchester
20. How to Beat Democrats – David Horowitz

Essential DeVine Fiction (self-imposed limit of one per author):

1. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
3. Macbeth – William Shakespeare
4. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
5. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
7. Ulysses – James Joyce
8. Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
9. Light in August – William Faulkner
10. The Hunger Games (3-volume series) – Suzanne Collins
11. East of Eden – James Steinbeck
12. Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
13. Catch-22 – James Heller
14. The Great Train Robbery – Michael Crichton
15. You Know Me Al, A Busher’s Letters – Ring Lardner

Other DeVinities:

1. The Kennedys: An American Drama – Peter Collier and David Horowitz
2. Born Fighting – James Webb
3. The Cost of Discipleship – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
4. The Embarrassed Believer – Hugh Hewitt
5. The Death of Outrage – William Bennett
6. Bonhoeffer Speaks Today – Mark DeVine
7. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
8. Amazing Grace – Eric Metaxas
9. Politics According to the Bible – Wayne Grudem
10. Rum, Romanism and Rebellion – Mark W. Summers

Please use the comments section to make your own lists. Happy Holidays!

G. Sand Lapper aka

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Editor – Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor – Political Daily

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist – Examiner.com

Whew. Who knew that the Republican tea partier class of the 2010 landslide, after 23 months of impotence at the hands of their establishment “leadership” posing as Bob Dole-like tax collectors for the welfare state, were brewing for a Boehner-bruising as their last hurrah?

The Reagan-Newt-Dubya Republican No New Taxes brand remains intact:

[Speaker John Boehner and his fellow] House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on [a] bill [to extend current tax rates only on those earning less than $1 million/year] after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m…The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

Americans can still read tea partier conservative lips as non-fiction, if not those of a Benghazi flu and concussion-afflicted Obama Administration’s, flapping fast and furious.

This tea partier conservative columnist bears no ill will towards the good and earnest man currently serving as Speaker of the House. We respect the desire and attempt to prevent yet another Obama Democrat attack on the poor, lower and middle-income earners, small businesses and the armed forces of the United States scheduled for New Years Day 2013. But we bemoan his apparent blindness to the motives and likely behavior of the re-elected Chief Executive and U.S. Senate in the face of a so-called fiscal cliff package of sunset laws they insisted upon during the 2011 Debt Ceiling negotiations that reflect their decades-long Democratic policy preferences, i.e. tax hikes and defense cuts.

Isn’t it time for John Boehner to resign the part of Charlie Brown to Barack Obama’s Lucy and admit that the football won’t get kicked until an honorable holder is substituted? Obviously. President Obama, especially in the wake of the electorate’s ratification of his class warfare agenda, will not (and never was going to) sign compromise legislation when by doing nothing he gets extra Christmas gifts, seven days after Christmas.

We hope the silent legislative nights between now and the return of Congress before New Years Eve results in reflection on the reality of what is and is not possible over the next 10 days and 104 weeks with a President pursuing goals diametrically opposed to economic growth policies and whose own goals are advanced by financial crises and budgetary chaos.

I don’t pretend to know how, or if, Barack Obama could be manipulated into being a responsible chief executive even if Republicans held both houses of the legislative branch of government, much less only the people’s house, but the least the GOP can do is recognize that symbolic votes ought to convey a message to future voters that they are on the side Americans suffering from a “recovery” worse than any recession we’ve had since the 1930s.

If it were possible to obtain meaningful spending cuts, including significant entitlement reform, even this tea partier would entertain a compromise on tax rates. But that IS NOT POSSIBLE. Even the supposedly draconian Paul Ryan budget would be too puny to justify such a compromise, much less any proposal that could possibly issue from Harry Reid or the President.

Therefore, what should elected House Republicans do? Establish a legislative record, by passing one issue bills, that spell out the stark contrast between their policy choices for economic growth and recession relief, and those of the Democrats and their cult figure leader, as follows (and as previously proposed, in large part, in this column):

1. Reduce income and FICA payroll tax rates for lower and middle-income, if not all earners (or maintain tax rates for all earners whose rates are not lowered), and make the rates permanent;
2. Adjust the Alternative Minimum Tax;
3. Repeal Obamacare taxes;
4. Make Medicare “doc fix” permanent;
5. Send the bills to the senate; and
6. Go home as the Champions of the poor, middle class and small businesses.

By enacting the above agenda, they will be much better positioned to combat the Demagogue-in-Chief after the liberal high tax and defense-gutting agenda becomes law on January 1.

Republicans must face the reality that Democrats will not allow policies that could possibly revive the economy to become law for the next two years, if not the next four. The campaigns for 2014 and 2016 have begun and the GOP writ large needs to be the clear conservative alternative before the next elections.

The recent election results, and exit polls seeming to assign blame for the last four disastrous economic years to a President Bush as Bogeyman Hoover II, that didn’t sign Obamacare, are disheartening. President Obama seems intent upon duplicating the long Depression, including a 2013 Double Dip mirroring 1937′s, presided over by Hoover I’s successor, but without the fireside chats at home nor absolute victories over enemies abroad. If the electorate of American people continues to be dominated by the economically ignorant desiring a bigger government, we are doomed in the short and medium run. But conservatives can’t fix a broken America by devolving into Democrat-lite status. GOP victories in that mode would only change the names of those issuing the checks to more and more unemployed.

But it’s just possible that the constitutional prohibition of a third term for The One and four more years of economic hardship that many more years distant from BushHoover, will result in a more rational electorate that refuses to reward Democratic Party failure a second time. That is our only hope.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Editor – Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor – Political Daily

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist – Examiner.com

The first female Indian-American governor in U.S. history today appointed the first African-American U.S. Senator in South Carolina history. Governor Nikki Haley’s appointment of the Palmetto State congressman that defeated the son of the state’s legendary Strom Thurmond in an 80%+ white district will make Tim Scott the only Black member of the U.S. Senate when it convenes in January.

That’s enough obeisance to the Mainstream media/Democratic Party myths concerning endemic Southern white tea partier racism and the supposed demographic problem of the Republican Party that prevented them from defeating Barack Obama in the Election of 2012. Let’ get to what really matters about today’s historic act:

Haley introduced Scott by saying no one could fill DeMint’s shoes, but appointing a trailblazer like Scott could show that it was a new day in South Carolina.

“The entire state understands this is the right U.S. senator,” said Haley, who became South Carolina’s first female governor in 2010.

Scott grew up in poverty in North Charleston. His parents divorced when he was 7, and he remembered his mom working 16 hours a day to support him and his brother. Scott, who is single, introduced his mother at the beginning of his speech.

But growing up with a single mother wasn’t always easy, Scott said. In high school, he was in danger of flunking out until he met the late John Moniz, a conservative entrepreneur who ran a Chick-fil-A beside the movie theater where Scott worked.

They became friends and Scott said Moniz taught him important values, like how enlightened self-interest requires giving first before reaping the reward of receiving and how growing the value of how you see yourself will make you look more important in other people’s eyes.

Scott would go on to get a degree in political science from Charleston Southern University, which is affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention and touts how it integrates faith into learning and serving.

Scott said he wouldn’t have agreed to be a U.S. senator if he didn’t think he could make a difference.

“The future is incredibly bright for America,” Scott said. “We have our challenges and we have things to overcome, but boy, does the future look bright in South Carolina.”

The major influences in Scott’s life: Hard working mother, a Chick-fil-A conservative entrepreneur, and Southern Baptists.  Not one mention of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or South Carolina’s Democratic Party race-baiting Congressman Jim Clyburn.

But was Tim Scott just a place holder appointment of a RINO to placate Georgetown-NYC-Boston liberals? Not after cruising to his re-election to the House of Representatives last month and not with one of the most sterling tea partier conservative voting records since the Election of 2010.

This is a new day in South Carolina, but Scott’s landslide victories that led to this day proves that this new day could have occurred much sooner had conservative Blacks run for such offices long ago. The people of South Carolina voted for him. They too have long been influenced by the example of hard work, conservatism, Christian values and yes, even fried chicken, but I digress.

It was in South Carolina that textile magnate Roger Milliken, former S.C. Governor Carroll Campbell and Strom Thurmond built the modern Republican Party in the aftermath of Barry Goldwater’s devastating 1964 defeat. Yes, Thurmond had been a segregationist candidate for President who led a “Dixiecrat” bolt from the Democratic Party for the GOP. But he never asked for any racist quid pro quo and revisionist historians still search in vain for any ever given from the party of Lincoln.

No, Strom Thurmond, as a Republican hired the first Black legislative aide in the U.S. Senate from the South. He advanced conservative economic values, championed Ronald Reagan for President and a strong defense, and co-sponsored the Martin Luther King holiday that President Reagan signed into law.

It seems that Tim Scott was paying attention to the facts on the ground over the years instead of the lies from the Lying Liars of the democratic Party and their Media branch. He was born in poverty but thanks to the Reagan Recovery beginning in 1982 his hard work was able to payoff and lift him out of poverty rather than settling for a subsistence existence on Jim Clyburn’s liberal plantation. He didn’t fall for the drawl and that’s all faux conservatism of former Senator Ernest Hollings and Jim Spratts of S.C., i.e. Democrats. Too bad that so many other Blacks and Hispanic have fallen for the Siren songs of Big Government.

Liberal Democrats talk the talk about diversity and caring for the poor. Conservative tea partiers walk the walk and do what’s required to minimize poverty and its suffering.

Praise be to God that the tea partier cause will suffer no blow from the Palmetto State’s loss of Jim DeMint. This Gamecock has long been proud of his native state, but no more so than today. In fact, I’m so proud that I can’t help but sing a song all South Carolinians sang as children celebrating the “Sandlapper” nickname for our citizens:

We are good sandlappers,

Yes, we’re good sandlappers,

And we’re mighty proud to say

That we live

Yes, we live

In the very finest state

In the very finest state

In the very finest state

In the USA!

Thank you Governor Haley. You are a great Sandlapper.

[Originally published by G. Sand Lapper at Examiner.com)

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Editor – Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor – Political Daily

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist – Examiner.com

America went over the fiscal cliff years ago

I’ve never bungee jumped or sky dived. Heck, since that candy apple leapt out of me at age 12 on the downswing of the roller-coaster at the Piedmont Interstate Fair, I’ve settled for such thrills on the Travel Channel; but I hear that many Democrats experienced the euphoric weightlessness of space when casting their recent vote for four more years. I hear its akin to the feeling of security a lobster feels while lying in a temporarily lukewarm pot of water on the kitchen stove while guests in the parlor await the main course.

Many Republican voters thought the American lobster, that had lain in the warmth of Bush-Pelosi-Reid deficits, would suddenly arouse with hopes of survival after being doused with Obama’s scalding hot and stimulating Obamacare waters, tripled deficits and doubled gasoline prices. Instead, while many John McCain voters  indulged a tea party and helped fire Pelosi; class envy or despair trumped too many of their old American dreams as they sat on their butts rather than take a chance that Mitt Romney would return America to the pre-Obama nirvana that was Clinton-Gingrich work requirements for welfare.

It seems now that many Obama-Biden voters that voted to re-hire those that couldn’t fix the mess left by President George W. Bush in “only” four years (I hear mother Barbara performed the job thousands of times in less than four minutes, but I digress), somehow think that “it” can be fixed in just four more weeks by a Lame Duck Republican House if only it would heed the “obvious mandate” from the American people and reinstate some of those same Bush tax cuts (aka Taxmageddon) etc:

1. The payroll tax reduction passed in 2010 will end.
2. The temporary tax rates passed under President Bush will lapse.
3. Obamacare’s taxes will come due.
4. The Alternative Minimum Tax will expand to many more taxpayers.
5. Extended unemployment benefits will expire.
6. Some $78 billion in federal spending will be sequestered.
7. Medicare “doc fix” will expire.

Of course, the only things that compromises, between those that favor diametrically opposed prescriptions, accomplish are half-baked non-solutions for the real problems and campaign ad fillers claiming that words on paper solved the problem. And if the problem persists, they can sign another bill and shake hands before a fawning bi-partisan group of the Ruling Class of Democrats and Republicans.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the $4 Trillion of debt run up the last four years is the side of the cliff you see when you open your eyes after the Hope & Change II party is over. That rushing sound you hear are the jobs being eliminated or reduced to part-time by pending Obamacare rules. The ground you see rushing up to meet you is Greece and the cost of the cab ride for survivors back to the Shining City on the Hill must cover $4/gallon, minimum, gasoline and your $250K share of the debt owed to China or Ben Bernanke.

President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Reid and all 533 of the remaining members of Congress could pass, alternatively, either all of Obama’s tax-the-rich Christmas wish list or Paul Ryan’s supposedly draconian Medicare voucher dreams, and it still wouldn’t save the Coyote another trip to ACME.

Natural Law cannot be repealed.

Nothing Obama and Boehner can agree to can prevent a double dip recession or worse, what passes for “recovery” in the Age of Obama. For instance:

The markets are going to go into meltdown soon, so expect stocks to lose 20 percent of their value, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report told CNBC on Tuesday. “I don’t think markets are going down because of Greece, I don’t think markets are going down because of the ‘fiscal cliff’ — because there won’t be a ‘fiscal cliff,’ ” Faber told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “The market is going down because corporate profits will begin to disappoint, the global economy will hardly grow next year or even contract, and that is the reason why stocks, from the highs of September of 1,470 on the S&P, will drop at least 20 percent, in my view.”

Oh yeah, corporate profits. Those evil things that corporations (built by welfare recipients paying taxes for roads and bridges) make and that pay for all Democrat dreams, but that they hate so much that they tore them down, holds Obama’s fate; and not some kumbaya deal with Mitch McConnell.

But wait, Obama was just re-hired, never has to face the voters again, already has Obamacare and the EPA in place to transform America; and has a pension that even Greece II can’t threaten.  But that can threaten the welfare dream futures of those butts that loathed Romney more than McCain or Obama in Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

As First Lady, Hillary Clinton famously defended her known adulterous husband to protect their political partnership. Throughout the impeachment, President Bill Clinton’s defenders repeatedly told the nation not to worry, since it was “only about sex.” Of course, it was also about obstruction of justice, including perjury, in a sexual harassment lawsuit, but accountability is not the strong suit of the Democratic Party and its dependents; the latest example of which occurred on Election Day when epic failure to revive the economy was rewarded by economic dropouts, but I digress.

Prior to Election Day, we learned the following:

On June 6 of this year, a bomb planted at the U.S. compound in Benghazi ripped a 12-foot-wide hole in the outer wall.

On June 11, the British ambassador’s motorcade was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, wounding a medic and doctor. The next day, the ambassador was gone, and the British Benghazi post was closed.

At the same time, the Red Cross, after a second attack, shut down and fled the city.

“When that occurred,” says Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the military security team in Tripoli, “we were the last flag flying in Benghazi; we were the last thing on their target list to remove.”

On Aug. 15, at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, an emergency meeting was convened to discuss the 10 Islamist militias and their training camps in the area, among them al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sharia.

On Aug. 16, a cable went to the State Department describing the imminent danger, saying the compound could not defend itself against a “coordinated attack.”

The cable was sent to Hillary Clinton – and signed by Ambassador Chris Stevens.

On Sept. 11, Ambassador Stevens died in a coordinated attack on the Benghazi compound by elements of Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaida.

After tales of imaginary mobs unhappy about an anti-The Prophet Mohammed video were bandied about for weeks, lest anyone discover that Commander in Chief Barack Hussein Obama’s-ordered killing of Osama bin Laden didn’t decimate al Qaeda, the Secretary of State accepted full responsibility for the debacle in Benghazi, just in time to give her president cover before his final debate with Mitt Romney.

Yet, full responsibility in the Age of Non-Accountability, means well, nothing. The Secretary remains The Secretary, much as an impeached President not removed from office remained The President with iconic status within the Democratic Party in his future.

After the election, the Director of Central Intelligence announced his resignation, purportedly due to an adulterous affair accidentally discovered by the FBI, just days before he was scheduled to testify under oath about all matters Libyan, after having mouthed video/mob excuses weeks earlier, subsequent to the latter of  which we discovered the following:

From an Oct. 26 report by Jennifer Griffin, also of Fox News, we now know there were two drones over Benghazi the night of Sept. 11 capable of sending pictures to U.S. commanders within reach of Benghazi, and to the CIA, Pentagon and White House.

We also know that ex-SEAL Ty Woods, in the CIA safe house a mile away, was denied permission to go to the rescue of the compound, and that he disobeyed orders, went and brought back the body of diplomat Sean Smith.

After the attack on the compound, the battle shifted to the safe house – for four more hours. Another ex-SEAL, Glen Doherty, made it to Benghazi from Tripoli. Seven hours after the initial assault that killed Ambassador Stevens and Smith, Doherty and Woods were still returning fire, when, having been abandoned on the orders of someone higher up, they were killed by a direct mortar hit.

This incident isn’t the first to juxtapose Hillary with General David Petraeus.

While preparing for her eventual run for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination, the then-junior senator from New York, along with her then-fellow senator Obama (D-Il) voted twice in 2007 against funding our armed forces in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, while interrogating General Petraeus concerning his report on the Surge in Iraq, Senator Clinton commented that “the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief”? (sic)

Meanwhile, the political action committee born during her husband’s impeachment to admonish us all to “move on” from his Lewinsky affair, Moveon.org ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling Petraeus, “General Betray Us”, which the senator repeatedly refused to condemn.

The previous statements of CIA Director Petraeus lending credibility to video as cause of the Benghazi attack, his deafening silence before the election after the White House sought to blame the “intelligence” for the Benghazi failure, and his after election/before scheduled sworn testimony, resignation; now raise the question of whether he has betrayed and continues to betray veterans on this Veterans Day and beyond.

Clearly, given the cables and other evidence concerning the State Department, the only honorable action for Secretary Clinton to take is to immediately resign.

And isn’t it also clear, no matter what we discover later, that adultery is incompatible with the responsibilities and vulnerabilities of government officials in top executive positions? Was David Petraeus kept mum due to threats against him by those who knew of his adulterous affair? What about Bill Clinton’s actions in the late 1990s when he was giving away the nuclear and ballistic missile store to China and North Korea?

Whittaker Chambers, the witness who exposed Deputy Secretary of State Alger Hiss as a paid agent of the Soviet Union, when recounting why he left the Communist Party in his book “Witness“, says that all are eventually awakened from their sleep when they “hear the screams” of the victims killed as a result of their efforts.

Do Hillary and David yet hear the screams of veterans and the Ambassador from Benghazi? Or only the siren songs from their sycophantic friends.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

This is how a Democratic Party, with no Gene McCarthy (pictured), feels compelled to frame re-election issues given a failed incumbent with no record of popular achievements to run on. At least LBJ declined to run and Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980, but I digress.

It is apparent that the main message of this week’s Democratic National Convention from David Axelrod to Bill Clinton, and President Barack Obama himself, will not be to ask Americans if they are better off than they were four years ago. Too few can answer that Reaganesque inquiry in the affirmative. Instead, President Obama will insist that he inherited a crisis solely of the Republicans’ making, single-handedly prevented a second Great Depression, was prevented from implementing Democratic policies that would foster a robust recovery by the Republicans; and that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Republicans generally are rich, racists, sexists, bigots and homophobes that don’t care about Medicare, the elderly, the disabled and the poor.

George Will recently described Obama’s message as a perpetual alibi, since he was the first Chief Executive to inherit an imperfect world. But what exactly did the 44th President of the United States inherit, and from whom?

Technically, the newly inaugurated Obama inherited a then-14 month recession on January 20, 2009, that would end five moths later before any of his policies could be implemented. Most of the TARP and Federal Reserve heavy lifting many credit with staving off a financial meltdown had already been authorized and implemented by President George W. Bush and the Congress that Democrats, including then-Senator Obama, had controlled since January of 2007. Senator Obama voted for TARP and the budget bills his party passed immediately preceding the beginning of the recession in November of 2007 and the bursting of the housing bubble.

The October of 2008 financial crisis was history by Inauguration Day 2009 and the federal budgetary situation President Obama faced was one that he had voted for, hence he was an heir to his own inheritance. Moreover, both Community Organizer/Lawyer and Senator Obama were supporters of the “affordable housing” push begun by Democrats in the 1990s and continuing into the 21st Century by congressional Democrats and their ACORN, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac allies. Obama is no where on record in favor of reigning in Fannie or Freddie or legal threats against home lending institutions lest they raise their lending standards. Obama at no time sought to end government guarantees of sub-prime mortgages nor any regulatory regime that would have reduced the risk of foreclosures. In fact, even after taking office he has continued much of the same practices that led to the housing crisis via Dodd-Frank and bailed out Fannie and Freddie.

But wasn’t Barack Obama outspoken against the War on Terror and didn’t “Bush’s wars” (all of which majorities of congressional Democrats voted for) cause the budget deficits that contributed to the recession and ongoing anemic recovery? In a word, no, since defense spending, that includes money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, peaked at 6% of GDP in 2010 from its low of 4% in 1999; all lower than the post-WWII average of between 15% at the height of the Korean War and 7% in the 1980s.

There is no doubt that decades of budget deficits and the resulting national debt are an impediment to recovery, but can anyone remember an election cycle in which the Democrats advocated less government spending than the Republicans? I didn’t think so. Moreover, the Obama deficits have tripled the supposedly draconian Bush deficits because Democrats always want more, more and more, no matter the level of deficits and debt. The only way Republicans are ever offered to prove they “care” about the “non-rich” is to vote for the next specific bill that liberal Democrats introduce in Congress.

None of those Democrat-sponsored bills since at least 1978 have authorized expanded territory within which Americans can exploit our natural fossil fuel resources of oil, natural gas or coal. To the contrary, Democrats have blocked any increase in the supply of energy for which there is a non-government subsidized market with votes against Republican bills. Additionally, the Obama Administration, after failing to get energy tax increases aka Cap&Trade through a Democrat Congress, has used regulatory and other alleged Executive Branch powers via the EPA and otherwise to wage the war he promised to bankrupt the coal industry and impose “skyrocketing energy prices” on a nation of spoiled SUV drivers.

The result? The poor and the rest of America have seen gasoline prices nearly double  from where they were on Inauguration Day, including up to and over $4/gallon for long periods of time including today in some parts of the country.

Does anyone think that Republicans are  the authors high energy prices and that $4/gallon gasoline is conducive to fostering a recovery? Didn’t think so. Does the prospect of the implementation of Obamacare that passed on the third try with only Democrat votes, and in face of repudiation of same at the polls, encourage job creation or on any way affirm the notion that Republicans got us into the mess? Do Republican votes to repeal Obamacare constitute not letting America recovery? Poppycock!

There is no great mystery concerning what government policies foster economic growth. They happen to be those policies, consistent with the Founder’s principles of  Liberty to pursue happiness, including profits and private property, that keep government smaller, taxes lower and regulations to minimal necessities.

President Obama recently famously declared that if you built a business that “you didn’t build that” or did “you” build that American system” that made our prosperity possible. Candidate Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America, so not only didn’t Obama build that American system, he has been an agent of tearing down that system and replacing it with a system in which “the Secretary of HHS shall decide” from day-to-day, what health care “law” obtains; Presidents defy federal judges to keep illegal oil moratoriums in place; and change welfare to work and illegal immigration law at the whim of the Executive.

Under Obama, we no longer live under the Rule of Law. Is it any wonder that we continue to endure the most anemic so-called “recovery” since the 1930s? And is there any doubt as to which party is overwhelmingly responsible for the housing crisis and the Hard Times they ushered in and the failure of the economy to robustly rebound? Didn’t think so.

President Obama and the Democrats have the economy that their policies made inevitable,especially including the Stimulus, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank etc. that they passed while they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress after the 2008 election. Despite the atrocious record, it still astounds, despite the race-based envy of the world’s oldest political party, that no Democrat had the guts of a Gene McCarthy or even a Ted Kennedy to keep the head failure off their 2012 presidential ticket. Instead, the supposed moderate who tried to pass Hillarycare and whose lobbying efforts got Obamacare made law, will try and convince us this week at the Democratic Party Convention in Charlotte that Obama’s more of the same will usher in another 1990s era of prosperity.

Mike DeVine

Before the formation of the patriarchal tropical storm supposedly headed for bays near Tampa, the broadcast network television branch of the Democratic Party made Ann Romney the latest victim of their real war on women. Her speech, originally scheduled for the first night of the Republican National Convention there on Monday, would not be covered due to reduced network coverage of both major party conventions.

No problem. The wife of the man to be nominated to take on President Barack Obama on Election Day will speak tonight. ABC, NBC and CBS collectively laughed and discovered the next possible Katrina II and employed him, despite his Jewish name meaning “laughter”, as the latest device to divert attention from the empty spaces in voters’ wallets and any possible connection to the liberal economic policies of their fellow liberal Democrats.

The first Isaac-related line of defense against the appearance of modern Republican women bemoaning their non-free contraception suffering under Obama was the threat that Ishmael’s younger brother would hit Tampa Bay. When, “all of a sudden”, TS Isaac “changed” course and headed for the Crescent City (seriously, do political appointees populate those that issue press releases for NOAA?, but I digress), Plan B (sex-change) Isaac-as-Katrina kicked in.

The problem for the MSM: Then Governor Mitt Romney protected the Bay State from any 2005 Katrina-related casualties and damage; his name is not Bush and New Orleans is no wheres near Nantucket.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Obama (this conservative favors Rep. Maxine Waters’ demand for natural disasters with African names) continues to wreak havoc on men and women alike, that even a non-Bush and Brownie-led FEMA can’t fix.  In the private quarters of the White House, the havoc being wrecked is called transformational Hope&Change aka Mission Accomplished. The problem is that the “natural” business cycle didn’t cooperate with the Stimulus, Obamacare and War on Coal to produce a favorable economy, stupid.

Hence, the warnings to America of Bain Capital, un-eaten dogs on car tops that live long lives, and Line 47 of unreleased tax returns. Anything to divert attention from what you haven’t been allowed to build for the last 45 months unless you contributed to Hope&Change 2008 or 2012 and named your LLC after Solyndra. Anything to divert your attention form the infamous Obama “You didn’t build that” speech lest you realize that not only didn’t this Democrat President not build that “America system…that allowed you to thrive”, but that his whole goal has been to tear down that private property and profit system that created the Shining City and its middle class.

Plan C to try and convince American voters that President Obama, Democrats, and their liberal policies are not responsible for the worst economic malaise since the 1930s is in the works, but no matter what gets talked about on the MSM or even Fox News (Rep. Akin included) will be able to crack the din of poverty and despair authored by President Obama and his super-majority Democrats. And if the DNC thinks Charlotte is safe from hurricanes, they never met Hugo (pictured).

Mike DeVine

This former Democrat has lived to drive a stake through the place a heart would normally be of the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and blood-sucking vampire that is my former party since my Summer of 2001 conservative epiphany. I know how rotten is the smell of the un-dead inside precinct and county party meetings after dusk. To be a Democrat is to lie in a never-ending appeal to class and race envy. Hence my aversion to the John McCains of the GOP who show that they love the U.S. Senate more than the U.S.A. when they refer to their Democrat colleagues as “honorable” after they launch BushLied Eras while troops are in harm’s way.

So it is with extreme tea partier/Rush is Right-dittohead ecstasy that I have witnessed Mitt Romney take the advice of El Rushbo in:

• Calling out President Barack Obama for indifference to the economic suffering resulting from the Great Recession while he maniacally pursued Obamacare;
• Running a TV ad that called Obama a liar for claiming that Romney shipped jobs overseas while at Bain Capital; and
• Telling the President to take his campaign of division, anger and hate back to Chicago.

Finally, a Republican presidential nominee unafraid to call out the Democrats on moral grounds, rather than merely “disagreeing” with a so-called “honorable” opponent. It is not dirty in politics to tell the truth about one’s opponent, even if the truth is harsh, and the hard truth is that the Democrats are not an honorable party and haven’t been for decades. They are more like a mob in organized crime seeking to satisfy disparate parochial interests using taxpayer money for favors than a political party committed to principles that would promote the general welfare.

National Democrats stand for nothing save their own power. When it suited their hold on power to keep blacks in chains, they did so. When it suited their electoral prospects to favor Jim Crow, they did so. When it suited their hold on Congress to kick the black man out of the house and make Uncle Sam daddy, they did so. They favored the Viet Cong, Reds in Russia and now the Muslim Brotherhood.

They oppose affording the armed forces of the United States a few extra days to vote, but sue to allow felons the franchise. Motor Voter and amnesty for illegal yutes? What else but a scheme to sneak them into the voting booth in swing states. They oppose photo IDs for voting lest the dead miss out on casting votes for Jack Asses in Chicago and elsewhere, even if doing so requires that they slander Blacks as too stupid to accept a free such ID from the government.

Thank you Mitt Romney for calling them out. Keep up the good work.