ABS News is calling Ronmey the winner in FL

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Nothing to paste yet

[웃 910]

Nothing to paste yet

Plenty to paste

FL EXIT POLLS - Romney sweeps: He won all age groups, all income groups, all education groups (HS, college, postgrad, etc.)

CNN exit poll: Among evangelicals, Gingrich beats Romney 39% to 36. Among non-evangelicals, Romney "shellacked" Gingrich, says John King.

CNN exit poll: 65% of FL voters said they support tea party. They voted 40% for Romney, 38 for Gingrich.

RT @craigscholz: Just hit 50 percent reporting in FL: Romney 48, Gingrich 31, Santorum 13, Paul 7

#FLprimary results map: Romney 48.1%, Gingrich 30.8%, Santorum 12.8%, Paul 6.8% (w/ 35.3% reporting)

Tonight's real loser after Florida results: The moon

With 49% of precincts counted, it's Romney 49%, Gingrich 31%

Total 4Q $ raised: Romney: $24,278,503.06. Gingrich: $9,822,375.66.

With 45% of precincts counted, Romney ahead of Gingrich 49%-30%

With 32% of votes counted in Florida GOP primary: Romney 50%, Gingrich 29%, Santorum 12%, Paul 7%

Romney 51.1%, Gingrich 28.3%, Santorum 11.9%, Paul 6.7% (w/ 9.6% reporting)

Romney 50%, Gingrich 28%, Santorum 12%, Paul 7% (w/1.4% reporting)

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Plenty to paste

FL EXIT POLLS - Romney sweeps: He won all age groups, all income groups, all education groups (HS, college, postgrad, etc.)

CNN exit poll: Among evangelicals, Gingrich beats Romney 39% to 36. Among non-evangelicals, Romney "shellacked" Gingrich, says John King.

CNN exit poll: 65% of FL voters said they support tea party. They voted 40% for Romney, 38 for Gingrich.

RT @craigscholz: Just hit 50 percent reporting in FL: Romney 48, Gingrich 31, Santorum 13, Paul 7

#FLprimary results map: Romney 48.1%, Gingrich 30.8%, Santorum 12.8%, Paul 6.8% (w/ 35.3% reporting)

Tonight's real loser after Florida results: The moon

With 49% of precincts counted, it's Romney 49%, Gingrich 31%

Total 4Q $ raised: Romney: $24,278,503.06. Gingrich: $9,822,375.66.

With 45% of precincts counted, Romney ahead of Gingrich 49%-30%

With 32% of votes counted in Florida GOP primary: Romney 50%, Gingrich 29%, Santorum 12%, Paul 7%

Romney 51.1%, Gingrich 28.3%, Santorum 11.9%, Paul 6.7% (w/ 9.6% reporting)

Romney 50%, Gingrich 28%, Santorum 12%, Paul 7% (w/1.4% reporting)

That's why we call you the PasteMaster.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

What you all fail to see is the success of Ron Paul. He gets 7%. Gone are the days where he was even noticeable. 21%, 23%, 13%, 7%. If you can't see his clear path to victory then you just aren't looking hard enough. Shame on you! He's the winner among the also ran crowd. The funny uncle pulls in 7% in FL. Wow.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

No surprise. Nevada will be the nail-biter, between Romney and Paul for 5 delegates.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

No surprise. Nevada will be the nail-biter, between Romney and Paul for 5 delegates.

Well, Ron Paul has got the prostitute and John and junkie vote all lined up in NV. That's hard to compete with in that state. In other words, NV shouldn't even be competitive for Paul. He should pull this one in without even showing up.If that state is a nail biter for him, then he's in real trouble.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Mr. Big Dog

[luckytxn 2,264]

Romney crushed Gingrich.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Romney crushed Gingrich.

If 32% is being crushed, what does 7% equate to? Annihilation?

[luckytxn 2,264]

If 32% is being crushed, what does 7% equate to? Annihilation?

I equate it that Obama the Socialist is happy as can be about now. The further destruction of this country is assured.

[웃 910]

I equate it that Obama the Socialist is happy as can be about now. The further destruction of this country is assured.

What has Obama socialized?

[luckytxn 2,264]

What has Obama socialized?

Career

*Tragedy of the Warren Court: No redistributive change (

)

*Voted for TARP (Link )

*$787 billion stimulus redistribution bill

*Healthcare bill admittedly about ‘redistributing the wealth’

*Single Payer Healthcare proponent (Link )

*President Obama now also President of GM & Chrysler

*President Obama seizes control of insurance giant AIG

*President Obama is leading America to single payer healthcare

*President Obama seized control of Student Loan industry in order to ‘cut out middle man’

*President Obama seizes control in massive land grabs

*Repeatedly vilifies ‘the rich’

*Obama believes race problems can be solved through redistribution of wealth… he said "race is still an enormous factor in our society. But economics can overcome a lot of racial division."

*Trying to regulate the Internet via FCC

*Forces mortgage co’s to cover people who aren’t paying mortgage (Link )

*Extends unemployment benefits to 99 weeks (Link )

*Told Joe the plumber ‘it’s better when you spread things around’ (

)

[luckytxn 2,264]

U.S. President

Barack Obama offered a vision of class warfare, tax hikes, new regulations and more government spending in his fourth State of the Union address on Tuesday – adding policy specifics to the doctrine of rhetorical fluff he unveiled last month in Kansas.

He also took credit for modest – and belated – improvements in the U.S. economy, despite the fact that his failed 2009 stimulus ushered in three years of economic stagnation.

“The state of our union is getting stronger,” Obama said, pointing to recent declines in the nation’s unemployment rate and positive growth forecasts for 2012. Still, Obama apparently believes that he hasn’t sufficiently “spread the wealth around” – which is why he’s pledging to do more to fundamentally uproot the free market in an effort to enforce this Marxist world view.

Obama said that many Americans no longer believed in “the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college and put a little away for retirement.”

“The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive,” he said.

We agree … although after three years it has become painfully clear that Obama’s anti-free market policies are

killing the middle class, not promoting that dream. Nonetheless the mainstream media gushed over his rhetoric, with one CBS analyst referring to Obama’s speech as “optimistic populism.”

We call it socialism. And while Obama kept invoking the mantle of “fairness,” he refuses to acknowledge the fact that the American definition of that term is rooted in equal opportunity – not radical wealth redistribution aimed at perpetuating the dependence economy.

After all, when you remove the incentive for people to make money and pursue their ideas – you remove wealth from the economy and innovation from our lives.

As evidence of his commitment to such a disastrous course, though, Obama proposed a new tax hike on millionaires, $200 billion in new stimulus spending as well as even tighter government regulation of our financial markets. At one point he even proposed hiring new government regulators to file trade lawsuits against China – the nation that is bankrolling most of our deficit spending.

Really, Obama?

Aside from the lunacy of threatening

our national banker, not even the script writers of The West Wing (which once set the bar for “optimistic populism”) ever backed a millionaire’s tax – arguing that it would take money away from the first generation of retiring black millionaires.

Surprisingly, there was one part of Obama’s speech we liked – his promise to sign a bill banning

insider trading by members of Congress. Of course let’s be honest … what does it say about our country that such legislation needs to be passed in the first place?

Obviously, we hope that this is Obama’s final State of the Union address … although as we’ve made clear on numerous occasions we are less than thrilled with the two Republican frontrunners vying to replace him.

While the rhetoric emanating from former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would imply a stark contrast between their visions for this country and the command economic manifesto laid out by Obama on Tuesday night – the truth is both GOP frontrunners have embraced some of Obama’s most radical policies, including the notion that the government can compel individuals to participate in a particular marketplace against their will.

We also remain thoroughly disappointed with the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, which continues to pursue a path of appeasement in dealing with Obama.

Class warfare.

[웃 910]

Career

*Tragedy of the Warren Court: No redistributive change (

)

*Voted for TARP (Link )

*$787 billion stimulus redistribution bill

*Healthcare bill admittedly about 'redistributing the wealth'

*Single Payer Healthcare proponent (Link )

*President Obama now also President of GM & Chrysler

*President Obama seizes control of insurance giant AIG

*President Obama is leading America to single payer healthcare

*President Obama seized control of Student Loan industry in order to 'cut out middle man'

*President Obama seizes control in massive land grabs

*Repeatedly vilifies 'the rich'

*Obama believes race problems can be solved through redistribution of wealth… he said "race is still an enormous factor in our society. But economics can overcome a lot of racial division."

*Trying to regulate the Internet via FCC

*Forces mortgage co's to cover people who aren't paying mortgage (Link )

*Extends unemployment benefits to 99 weeks (Link )

*Told Joe the plumber 'it's better when you spread things around' (

)

He just secured my vote for 2012 with that list!

[luckytxn 2,264]

Obama's Socialism in God's Name

By Ed Kaitz<br style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; ">Jeremiah Wright's longtime congregant Barack Obama wants to tell you what God desires for America. At a recent speech in Washington, the president proclaimed that "God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work." Obama's rather tired revelation however is worth considering for several reasons.

First, Obama's White House spokesman Jay Carney seems to have squirmed a bit when trying to unpack the president's somewhat confusing proclamation. When challenged by reporters about the propriety of bringing God into the current political fray Carney responded by saying:

I believe that the phrase from the Bible is 'the Lord helps those who help themselves.

The trouble with Carney's response is that it is simply wrong. The phrase is not biblical in origin, and more importantly, the president said nothing about people who "help themselves." The president in other words wants the federal government to expand in size, scope, and power in order to put certain constituencies back to work.

Carney seemed to realize this philosophical dilemma -- but how could he not? Weeks earlier the president had thundered at a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser that if he were to lose the 2012 election Americans would be cast adrift and unable to help themselves:

The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, "You are on your own."

Stepping back then from his earlier statement that "the Lord helps those who help themselves," Carney played it safe with a conclusion more socialist-friendly:

I think the point the president is making is that, you know, we have it within our capacity to do the things to help the American people.

Simply put, anything smacking of self-reliance doesn't have much of a shelf-life in this administration. The purported constitutional scholar in the Oval Office has no grasp of the underpinnings of that document in a decidedly different concept of God's desires for us.

The philosopher Eric Hoffer once noted that the very identity of America itself was fashioned by those who actually enjoyed being on their own:

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

Hoffer was clearly channeling the exceptional energy created some three hundred years earlier by America's honorary "Founding Grandfather" John Locke. Although an Englishman, Locke's notions of self-reliance, limited and divided government, free trade, prosperity, industry, and justified rebellion inspired intelligent and responsible civic-republicans from our own Founding Fathers as well as to supporters of the contemporary Tea Party.

Locke, in his 1690 publication of the Second Treatise of Government, provided the most compelling modern standard for making an informed judgment about whether a country's elected officials have betrayed their trust. The last thing Obama's handlers should be doing is encouraging voters to revisit Locke's Second Treatise -- a book whose subtitle could have been "God Bless America."

Indeed, Locke's Second Treatise is a small but powerful book that should be within easy reach of all concerned Americans. (Its text can be found here and here , gratis.) In the first part of the Treatise, Locke wants to show that in the "state of nature" prior to any civil government men are usually reasonable enough to get along fairly well. Locke details the plethora of ways for example that small farmers cultivate, trade, and expand their property. Money is invented in order to eliminate spoilage and generate surpluses for exchange.

Locke's objective in describing this fully functioning and government-free "state of nature" is twofold: First, he wants to demonstrate that men can actually rule themselves quite well without government (i.e., they can "help themselves"); and Second, Locke wants to show that self-reliance, industry, talent and free trade constitute the precise qualities that God wants for us to employ in order to solve life's most basic problem: self-preservation.

In other words, if men decide to do the opposite and create governments that promote dependency, class warfare, resentment, and envy then our attempts to solve the problem of economic scarcity will fail, thus violating God's most basic command: preserve thyself.

For example, in section #34 of the Second Treatise Locke tells us what God really wants:

God gave the world ... to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it), not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour; if he did, 'tis plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.

Locke's genius was in realizing that nature uncultivated would promote the kind of zero/sum thinking so precious to generations of economically-dense socialists. In short, in a private property, free-market economy there is always "as good left as that already possessed" since talented, responsible, and hard-working men and women always have room to "increase" nature's bounty and establish new markets in the quest for the kind of prosperity that will benefit the entire community's standard of living.

Covetous, quarrelsome, and contentious complainers who merely desire "the benefit of another's pains" are therefore violating the natural law of self-preservation. This is precisely the point James Madison made about one hundred years later in 1787 when he warned about demagogues who would call for "improper and wicked projects" including inflating the currency, abolishing debts, and redistributing property.

Locke goes on in the Second Treatise to argue that men decide to leave the "state of nature" and establish a government precisely in order to protect their property from "quarrelsome and contentious" individuals who cannot thrive when left to themselves.

Locke warns also that unless government is divided, and unless politicians are circumscribed and issued term-limits they will tend to violate their original trust and begin to corrupt the very small-government, free market system they were established in power to protect.

The final part of Locke's Second Treatise is in many ways the most important. It establishes the proper conditions for overturning an oppressive government. Locke argues however that since the people constitute the "master" in a commonwealth and the politicians represent the "servants" a rebellion is by definition a revolt by the government against the constitution and the hard-working people who want to be left alone to prosper under its guidance.

"The greatest crime I think a man is capable of" says Locke, is someone who "lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government." To prevent this kind of political corruption Locke advises constant vigilance by courageous individuals who can show troublesome politicians "the danger and injustice" of their behavior.

Being called "terrorists" by the nation's vice president in other words pretty much indicates that Locke's Tea Party progeny are fulfilling their constitutional (and arguably divine) function.

Locke's Second Treatise then can be seen as one brilliant man's attempt to demonstrate that God favors those who create the optimal conditions for personal initiative and self-reliance. In other words, human flourishing is impossible under conditions of big-government, socialist dependency.

A rather famous man of God, Mahatma Gandhi, once said that he looked upon "an increase in the power of the state with the greatest fear" because the state tends to do "the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress."

"Welcome evermore to gods and men" agreed Emerson, "is the self-helping man."

He just secured my vote for 2012 with that list!

Big surprise.

Barack Obama the Socialist

JAMES JOYNER

Barack Obama is a socialist.

We were pretty sure this was the case after he made his remarks about how bitter people in small towns cling to religion. As Bill Kristol points out, this is very similar to Karl Marx’ line about religion being the opiate of the masses, if not as eloquent as the original German “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes.” Senator Joe Lieberman reinforced this, observing, “I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.”

Now, we learn that in 1965, when Obama was 4 years old, his dad, writing as “Barak H. Obama” (the Communist-preferred spelling) wrote an essay on “African Socialism and its Applicability to Planning in Kenya” that wasn’t particularly critical of socialism.

Q.E.D.

Now, it’s true that Obama has been quiet about his plans to nationalize all industry, removing it from the hands of the capitalists and moving it under the control of the proletariat. Also, if elected president, he’ll probably not be too eager to see the state wither away, at least for the next eight years. On the other hand, he does have a cult of personality, just like many famous Communists like Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. And some staffers in one of his Texas offices had Che Guevara flags hanging on their walls. It pretty much balances out.

In all seriousness, I think Lieberman’s on the right track, if rather disingenuous in his soft dismissal of the “Marxism” label. Obama’s a liberal Democrat who wants more government regulation of the economy, more redistribution of wealth, more deference to international institutions, more nationalization of medicine, and so forth and so on. Some of his policies — although probably none of his goals — are indeed “far to the left … of mainstream America.” He’s as close to a socialist as it gets in serious contenders for the presidency; but that’s not very close.

He’s part of a long movement that has adopted some of the tools of socialism in an effort to make society better, with decidedly mixed results. The state hasn’t taken over the means of production, but it has created layers of bureaucracy to oversee them. The tax code has more than a smattering of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” And we’ve instituted speech codes and a thought police in our schools and institutions, ostracizing those who dare to speak other than the orthodox Truth.

Again, this is mostly, if not all, well-intentioned. These were all reactions against real injustices, if often over-reactions, that had negative unintended consequences. But Obama’s not talking about cleaning up these messes but rather moving further in that direction.

Ideally, we’d be discussing the policy preferences of the candidates and their likely consequences rather than bandying about silly labels. But that’s not how the game is played.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Obama’s Socialism

“U.S. Recovery Slowly Gained Speed in Late ’11, Data Show,” said the headline in Friday’sNew York Times. “U.S. Stocks Decline as Economy Grew Less Than Forecast in Fourth Quarter,” said the headline at Bloomberg.com. As the conflicting headlines show, for some, reality is simply a matter of perception. One of two things governs that perception: seeing the world as it should be, or seeing the world as it is.

When the labor department released data showing a one one-hundredth of a percent drop in unemployment, President Obama said, “The economy is moving in the right direction. We’re creating jobs on a consistent basis.”

By “We,” Obama was not referring to American business; he was speaking in the royal tense – that his herculean efforts to transform America were moving the nation in the right direction. In other words, the plan – his plan – was working. But with unemployment hovering above 8 percent, he grudgingly acknowledged the plan’s shortfalls, “There are a lot of people that are still hurting out there … we have a lot more work to do.”

“So, what distinguishes a garden-variety welfare state from a system that well and truly deserves to be identified as socialist?” asks Kevin Williamson in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism. “Economic central planning,” insists Williamson, is “crucial to identifying and understanding what differentiates real socialism from the normal mishmash of welfare-state policies typically found in Western liberal democracies and affiliated forms of government.”

Whether it’s “stimulus spending” or the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, both policies are expressions of socialism’s central tenant: with the right tools for gathering information and the right people to interpret this data, utopian paradise is attainable with the right plan. Utopian mysticism is the cornerstone of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. It promises price stability and the maintenance of high employment through a combination of interest rate and money supply manipulations. And yet, America has witnessed two economic depressions and wild swings in inflation as well as employment. The Fed, then, is a proven century-old bad joke. And the joke is on us.

When it was clear Obama’s stimulus failed back in June, NBC’s Ann Curry asked the president, “Since the recovery began, businesses have spent just 2% more on hiring people, while at the same time spending 26% more on equipment. So why at a time when corporate America is enjoying record profits have you been unable to convince businesses to hire more people, Mr. President?”

“We are now in a process where the economy is growing again,” insisted Obama, “We created 2 million jobs over the last 15 months. But it’s not as fast as it needs to be … there are some structural issues.”

According to the president, the “structural issues” blocking the president’s central plan were machines. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM,” Obama explained, “you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” Of course, these automated technologies predate the housing collapse and existed at a time when America enjoyed an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent.

With that explanation out of the way, the president talked up another of his nifty central planning innovations – the White House Jobs Council. “… This [Jobs] Counsel is identifying where the jobs of the future are going to be, how do we make sure there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist, how do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity. We are on the right track. The key is figuring out how do we accelerate it.”

The encounter above is reminiscent of the impatient child (played by Ann Curry) asking her father (played by Obama) when they will arrive at Disneyland. Obama, weaving through traffic and dealing with a host of detours along the highway, yells over his shoulder, “Be patient! You may not get there, but with my driving skills and superior sense of direction, your children – maybe your grandchildren – will enjoy all the benefits the Magic Kingdom has to offer.”

Socialism is nothing if not forward looking. To the socialist, the future is the goal, the destination that is just around the corner. And that future, the socialist tells us, more than makes up for central planning’s present failings.

In 1938, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wrote a humdinger of a page-turner, Dialectical and Historical Materialism. You see, Stalin’s brand of socialism was getting a little competition from the German and Italian varieties practiced by national socialists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He needed to explain to anyone who would listen that Soviet socialism was backed by science.

“Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable,” wrote the Russian mass murderer, “that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are as yet not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice.” And with that, “scientific socialism” was born.

Since, as Stalin insisted, there are “no things in the world which are unknowable,” he set his know-it-all state planners to organize the production of everything from the number of overcoats to the output of steel. He broke the scheduling into segments called five-year plans.

But a funny thing happened on the way to utopia. There were never enough consumer products to meet public demand and, on occasion, factories pumped out more steel than was needed. The Russian people either waited in long lines outside state stores or paid the Russian mafia high prices for plentiful black market goods. All-knowing scientific socialism died without a whimper on January 1, 1991. The all-knowing Stalin forgot to mention that scientific inevitability in 1938.

Obama, imbued with all the scientific certainty of Stalin, thought he – and his Czars – possessed all the knowledge necessary to plan America’s economic recovery and produce jobs. His trillion-dollar stimulus, his economic advisors told the press, would keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. And Obama moved on to create the new industries of the future. And that future had a name – solar power. The solar-panel-making Solyndra was part of that future. And like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Solyndra went bust.

In the end, the Achilles heel of socialism is that it tries to plan the future. Most adults know that fortune telling is at best a form of entertainment; at worst, it’s a scam intended to fleece its gullible victims.

Capitalism has never been under attack as it is today. And its modern defenders are less than eloquent. Back in 1949, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who escaped to America when Hitler annexed his homeland, published a defense of human freedom and its creative byproduct – capitalism. In his book Human Action, von Mises wrote:

“The captain is the consumer … the consumers determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities … They are merciless egoistic bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction … In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people…Capitalists…can only preserve and increase their wealth by filling best the orders of the consumers … In the conduct of their business affairs they must be unfeeling and stony-hearted because the consumers, their bosses, are themselves unfeeling and stony-hearted.”

Obama’s obsession with “millionaires and billionaires” is more than an expression of class envy or class warfare. It’s anger at men who have become successful through their understanding that the consumer – the individual – is king. Billionaire Warren Buffett owes his success, as von Mises said, to his “stony-hearted” bosses – the freethinking American consumer. He gives them what they want least his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, ends up on the ash heap of history … next to Obama’s Solyndra.

Obama’s war, his socialism, is not against Republicans or the wealthy. It’s an attack on the sovereignty of every individual American unwilling to follow his twisted, unworkable plans.