California Debt Soars Even Higher : Decades of Liberals

What we see in California, that has been dominated by progressive socialist Democrats for decades. is what the rest of the country will look like if we keep electing liberal socialists. Just look what has happened in the last four years with Obama's socialist progressive agenda of spending trillions of dollars where unemployment is worse, the deficit higher and the national debt completely out of control. And it's not just California, it nearly every state that is control by progressive Democrats. How about Illinois?  Yikes!

The question that begs answers is why can't the leaders in Washington and California, Illinois, see the mess they are in and then stop the slide into bankruptcy with workable solutions? How does this go on for decades with only more and more increasing debt. Who are these people?

Elections DO have consequences.

California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway
January 3, 2013
Source: "$822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway," Bloomberg, December 10, 2012.

California faces a $26 billion budget deficit, yet it gives government workers more money in wages and benefits than any other state in the United States in almost all job categories, says Bloomberg.

• One state psychiatrist received $822,000, whereas the top earner for the same position in a state like New Jersey is $327,000.
• Similarly, a highway patrol officer received $484,000 in pay and compensation benefits.

Another growing problem is the compensation workers receive for working long hours and accumulated vacation pay when employees leave public sector.

• One doctor was paid for an average of almost 17 hours each day, including on-call time and weekends.
• Furthermore, $964 million was paid in overtime to 110,000 workers -- twice the $415 million New York paid in overtime to 80,000 staff members.
• Seventeen employees got checks of more than $200,000 for unused vacation and leave.
• One psychiatrist who retired last year received $608,821 in unused vacation.

The generous pay and benefits that government workers receive result from several factors. First, starting with Governor Gray Davis in 1999, each successive government has steadily increased wages and benefits for their workers while promising further pension benefits. Second, union workers organized to make political gains in the state to secure their interests and lobby for more wage increases and benefits.

• California's annual payment toward pension obligations ballooned to $3.7 billion from the $300 million when the bill was enacted.
• Unions also pushed for the California Public Employees' Retirement System to support legislation that would increase state and local pensions.
• For example, highway patrol officers were granted the right to retire after 30 years of service with 90 percent of their top salary.

To help curb the unsustainable rise in wages and benefits for government workers, former Governor Schwarzenegger tried to lower wages. He also ended up imposing furloughs, a mandatory unpaid day off each month. However, this resulted in depressed regular wages and increased overtime compensation.

As the budget deficit continues to grow, public employee unions have begun to loosen up and make concessions such as contributing 5 percent more of their earnings toward pensions and forgoing overtime pay for some holidays.

Federal Workers Paid More : Who Knew?

With the incredible growth of government jobs with Obama, some reports indicated that the government grows now at nearly 100 new jobs every day. The IRS hiring 16 thousand  agents to administer ObamaCare and the EPA hiring 100's to enforce new regulations on energy and land use.

It seems hard to understand why anyone would want to give up the government job for less compensation from a private sector job. And if you are employed by the State Department, you can't be fired even if you have a hand in negligent homicide. It can't get any better. Remember Ted Kennedy?

Given the situation that now exist in the private sector, no jobs or any hope for more jobs, there won't be much movement of people leaving the government employment.

For Federal Workers, the Grass Isn't Greener in the Private Sector
January 3, 2013
Source: Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs, "For Federal Workers, the Grass Isn't Greener in the Private Sector," Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2012.

Conventional wisdom says that public employees are often paid less than their private sector counterparts. The Federal Salary Council, for example, claimed that federal employees are paid only 65 cents for each dollar earned by workers, say Jason Richwine, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute.
However, much of the data that has been collected does not control for the individual person who has moved from the public sector to the private sector. There are immeasurable characteristics of an individual that may merit more or less pay even if he or she works the same job.

According to new data from the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), public workers make comparable salaries to private sector workers.

• The data analyzes salaries for the same worker, which is an important distinction between this study and other ones.
• If the Federal Salary Council's claims are accurate, if a federal worker moves to the private sector, he or she should see a 54 percent increase in salary.
• However, the average federal worker who moves to the private sector accepts a salary reduction of around 3 percent.
• Private sector workers, on the other hand, get a first year raise averaging 9 percent.

The case of school teachers, who are often branded as the least compensated for their work, shows that they make just as much if not more than comparable positions in the private sector.

• One study says that public school teachers receive 14 percent less on average than private sector workers with similar skills.
• However, according to SIPP data, people moving into the teaching profession received an average raise of around 8 percent.
• Moreover, teachers who leave to work elsewhere receive an average salary cut of 3 percent.

Some argue that the public employees who move to the private sector are among the least-skilled workers, explaining why they don't receive big pay increases. However, it implies that government workers don't leave their jobs in the first place since they have a salary comparable to their private sector counterparts.

Government All Things to Everyone : Voters Say Yes

To think that once a government program is in place it can be reduced or eliminated in the future is unrealistic. It has not happened, or if it has, most people that depended on the program are now dead or mentally incapacitated.

It seems the only way for government now to become smaller, and less intrusive, is for the entire system to collapse. The frustrating element here is we have a front row seat on how the future will look if we don't find a way to stop the expansion of an ever expanding federal government, promising everything to everyone.

As the saying goes, 'a government that is powerful enough to provide all things is powerful enough to take away all things as well.'

History it littered with examples of how this has worked out. Every population that has become dependent on others for their personal survival found themselves ultimately in poverty or in a gulag. The scariest part is it might take decades, even generations, of citizens accepting the growth of dependency and the new life style of less achievement and loss of pride as normal, thereby each generation that follows accepting this life styles becomes more and more dependent.

The critic will say people will not allow this to happen, but the power of dependency and loss of a moral compass will dictate the outcome. Historians are already rewriting history to show how great this new society is and how we all will benefit from having less and believing personal freedom, the reason for our country being in decline, is a thing of the past. The 'collective' is the new way of life.

We're on the way now to this new utopia of everyone being no better than anyone else, no one having anything better then anyone else. We all will feel so much better. A level playing field. hmmmm Elections do have consequences. Why would anyone vote themselves into the nightmare of physical and mental poverty?

Can Big Government Be Rolled Back?
January 3, 2013
Source: Michael Barone, "Can Big Government Be Rolled Back?" American Enterprise Institute, December 7, 2012.

It is a rare proposition on which liberals and conservatives agree: American history over the last hundred years has been a story of the growth of the size and powers of government. This growth has not been steady. Conservatives, with some bitterness, have embraced a theory of ratchets: in every generation, liberals succeed in ratcheting up the size of government and conservatives fail to significantly reduce it, says Michael Barone, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., argued for a similar theory of cycles:

• We have periods when liberals succeed in expanding government and then periods when conservatives resist further expansion but do not roll back previous growth.
• In Schlesinger's view, each cycle of government growth begins with a major electoral victory for the Democratic Party: Woodrow Wilson's election in the three-way contest in 1912, the five consecutive victories of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1932 to 1948, the landslide for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the victories of Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008.

The elections cited by Schlesinger can be taken as endorsements by voters of government expansion, though not unambiguously; note that Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 called for reducing federal budget deficits and Bill Clinton in 1992 called for ending "welfare as we know it."

But other elections can be taken as repudiations of big-government policies. They include Warren G. Harding's record-breaking winning percentage in 1920, the triumph of anti-New Deal Democrats and Republicans in 1938, the Republican congressional majorities elected in 1946, the significant Republican victories in 1966 and 1968, Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and the Republican congressional victories in 1994.

Barone examines the consequences of those elections, considering:

• How successful or unsuccessful were the efforts to reduce the size and scope of government?
• What implications do these episodes have for those who seek to reverse the recent growth in government spending as a percentage of the economy, which rose from the 20 percent to 21 percent level in the years from the 1960s to 2007 to 24 percent to 25 percent today?

Progressive Script Writer Kurtz Outraged : Laws? Who Cares!

I just love the hypocrisy of the progressive socialists, in this case script writers David Gregory ands Howard Kurtz, when it comes to breaking the law. That the progressive Democrats do it all the time, including the president and Harry Reid, not passing a budget, required by law, for four years, just means all the progressives Democrats can break the law with impunity, right?

But wait, judges do it all the time when it suits their need to change the law to meet the liberal socialist agenda, i.e. Wisconsin voter ID  and collective beggaring laws found unconstitutional, so not all progressives.  hmmmmmm. 

The point in all this is, the progressive socialist liberal Democrats believe, completely, they are above the law. It's their duty to inform the unwashed where they have been mislead even if it means subverting the law to meet the agenda of getting total power. 

It is their deepest held belief, and it's their destiny, that they have to have power to control others, nothing else matters. Nothing!

David Gregory's Props and Pomposity
Brent Bozell  (Town Hall)

The D.C. police investigation of NBC hotshot David Gregory for waving around an empty ammo magazine on "Meet the Press" easily proves two things. First, D.C.'s "ammunition control" laws are ridiculous. But more importantly, once again, we find the arrogance of the national press knows no boundaries.

Let us stipulate that this kind of law is just plain stupid. Empty ammo magazines are less threatening than mosquitoes. The point is, however, that liberals like David Gregory do subscribe to this kind of idiotic law -- for everyone else.

Was Gregory so ignorant that he didn't know he was breaking a D.C. law? Nope. We learned NBC contacted the D.C. police and asked for permission to wave the props, and the cops said no. Then Gregory did it anyway. So not only did he believe he was above the law, he broke it so he could produce maximum buzz for his Sunday show.

Naturally, other media elites leaped to his defense. Newsweek's Howard Kurtz acknowledged Gregory's opportunism, but chided the police for being sticklers: "Was the moderator of Meet the Press caught on tape, armed and dangerous, liberating a few Slurpees from a 7-Eleven? No ... Was it a stunt? Yep, and an eye-catching one ... But a police probe over what I assume was an empty ammo clip is a total waste of time."

Kurtz even made a little video for his site the Daily Download where he took a stand against reality: "Nobody's saying that he's above the law!" Earth to Howard: when you call even a cursory police investigation a "total waste of time," you're saying Gregory's above the law.
Somehow, Kurtz was "stunned at the vitriol" against Gregory for feeling he could violate the law because he waved a liberal talking point in the face of the NRA's Wayne LaPierre.
This kind of arrogant confrontation with conservatives was Gregory's chosen path to media power.

He threw epic fits of egotism at the Bush White House at the late, great Tony Snow. In 2006, after Gregory demanded that Bush's "failure" in Iraq should be "put before the voters," Snow outraged him by saying "I think you've admirably expressed the Democratic point of view."
Gregory mounted his high horse and struck a Napoleonic pose: "Don't try to dismiss me as making a

Democratic argument, Tony, when I'm speaking fact! You can do that to the Democrats; don't do it to me!"

Republican Approach on Budget Fix Works

It seems the Conservative approach to fixing the budget deficit will work for everyone, but the problem that has arisen is the progressive Democrats will not go along with it as it might actually work which will make the Democrats look bad as they don't have any solution, and never have, that will fix our economic problems.

The biggest problem for the progressive socialists Democrats is not how to solve problems for the country, it's how to get what little revenue that's left among the working population into their collective hands. That the entire country will collapse isn't important, it about getting that last dollar away from the stupid citizens so the socialists can use it to their personal advantage but buying more votes from those they have already driven into dependency and poverty.

What will happen to the progressive socialists when the country goes down the tube, they have all figured out, they have already purchased their tickets out of the country. It's an important part of their founding, 'take the money and run'.

Leave the Consumer Price Index and Cost-of-Living Adjustment Out of the Budget Talks
Source: Stephen J. Entin, "Leave the CPI and COLAs Out of the Budget Talks," Tax Foundation, December 6, 2012.

House Republicans have made switching from a regular consumer price index (CPI) to a chained CPI the centerpiece of their deficit reduction proposals, says Stephen J. Entin, a senior fellow at the Tax Foundation.

• The CPI adjusts various federal tax and spending formulas for inflation.
• Republicans advocate this because the chained CPI has risen about half percent less each year than the regular CPI.
• The hope is that the switch would slow adjustment of income tax brackets for inflation and reduce annual cost of living increases (the Cost-of-Living Adjustment, or COLA) for Social Security retirees.

Some people argue that fixing the CPI and COLA will fix the projected deficits that Social Security faces. However, that is not the case as there are many other factors that contribute to Social Security's potential insolvency.

• First, the demographic shift as baby boomers retire, as well as an increase in life expectancy, will mean there is a smaller ratio of people working to receiving benefits.
• Second, the initial benefit formula -- consisting of several factors that determine each person's initial monthly benefit check -- is going to allow benefits to rise for people across the board.
• As a result, retirees are going to receive higher benefits despite being rich.
• Additionally, changes in the COLA won't change the initial benefits that future beneficiaries receive. Switching to a chained CPI would reduce COLA by about half percent a year.
• This amounts to an average of only a 5 percent reduction over the life of a recipient.

Moreover, the switch to a chained CPI would push people more quickly into higher tax brackets. For instance, people in the 15 percent bracket would be pushed into the 25 percent bracket faster. This is, in effect, a tax rate hike in disguise and undermines the progressive tax rate structure that makes people with higher incomes pay more tax.

In addition, the regular CPI prevents the real wage gains of taxpayers from turning into a "real bracket creep." Under a chained CPI, much of the workforce could end up in the top tax bracket, curbing economic growth and threatening jobs around the country.

Instead, amend the benefit formula and/or raise the retirement age in an effort to slow the growth of benefits. One proposal, progressive price indexing, would allow some wage-adjusted growth at the bottom bracket in the benefit formula while adjusting the benefit formula for the top bracket to raise lower income benefits relative to upper income benefits.

Progressive EPA New Regulations : Election Is Over

I wonder why the head of the EPA is stepping down when there is so much more that she could do the destroy the country. The cost to the economy will be in the tens of billions for businesses to comply with all of the new regulations.

The cost of all these new regulation falls on the general public as well as, the EPA moves to eliminate coal power generation, forcing electric rates up and there by forcing up the cost of all commodities, i.e. food and gasoline.

In our fearless leaders own words that the public refused to hear, or never was allowed to hea,r as the media refused to publish his historic words, " under my plan of cap and trade, energy rates will necessarily skyrocket". 

 WOW - and here we are, four years later, and true to his word, energy is skyrocketing!!!  Who Knew!!?? The media knew but if the genreal public actually heard or read our maxium leaders words, they might not vote for him. dah - The media didn't report it, save Fox News.

With Election Over, Administration Unleashes New Rules
Source: "Election Over, Administration Unleashes New Rules," Associated Press, December 13, 2012.

While the debates in Washington center on the fiscal cliff, a lesser known "regulatory cliff" is one that could be just as damaging to the economy, says the Associated Press.

During the first term of the Obama administration, many major regulations were proposed and passed. However, several of the regulations were postponed. This is because the administration wanted to quell criticisms about the regulations during the re-election campaign.

• New Environmental Protection Agency rules could cost manufacturers hundreds of billions of dollars -- up to $111 billion by government estimates and $138 billion by industry estimates -- and cut millions of jobs.
• One of the high profile delays is on stricter limits for lung-damaging smog, which was shunned by the Bush administration, proposed by the Obama administration, but then halted because of the regulatory burdens and uncertainty in a fragile economy.

Now that the Obama administration has been granted a second term, several agencies will go forward with the proposed regulations. These regulations will include:

• Stricter regulations on Wall Street.
• Air and water pollution standards.
• Requiring automakers to include event data recorders.
• Many major regulations included in the new health care bill.

Republican lawmakers and many businesses are worried that the combination of all these regulations will reverse economic growth and kill thousands of jobs. Since many of the regulations will target energy and environmental standards, many Americans are likely to see a rise in their electricity bills.
Environmental groups have responded by arguing the regulations are piecemeal and won't have any major ramifications on the overall economy. Furthermore, some argue that the regulations are long overdue and that they are essential to public health and safety.

To lessen the impact of the new regulations, the Obama administration has ordered all federal agencies to remove rules that were excessive, burdensome, redundant or inconsistent. This is supposed to save businesses about $10 billion over five years and create jobs, and offset the impact of proposed regulations.

Progressive Dems/Establishment Repbs : Drivers Out of Control

In light of what went on yesterday and last night, it doesn't seem possible that we could have done such a poor job of electing the right people to do the job of governing. It seems we have no where to go but down.

Is it all lost, maybe not, given the back bone of the workers in this country and the spirit that is the very heart of the American people, we sure have a chance to right the ship of state. 2014? I pray that this is true for all our sakes.

The Fiscal Cliff and the Next Recession
Source: Peter Ferrara, "The Fiscal Cliff and the Next Recession," National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2012.

If nothing is done by January 1, taxes will increase while federal spending is cut. Under current law, increases in the top rate of nearly every major federal tax will go into effect on January 1 because the Bush tax cuts expire and tax increases to pay for ObamaCare go into effect, says Peter Ferrara, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

• Under the deal made last summer, federal spending will be cut $103 billion.
• Of that, $61 billion will be in defense cuts, $26 billion from the expiration of emergency unemployment benefits, and $11 billion from a reduction in Medicare payments to physicians.
• In addition, the top two income tax rates will jump by about 20 percent.
• The capital gains tax rate will also increase by about 60 percent while the tax on dividends will nearly triple.
• Furthermore, the Medicare payroll tax rate will skyrocket by 62 percent while the top rate on the estate tax will rise by 57 percent.

In addition, Americans face many new regulatory costs and burdens that the Obama administration has delayed until now.

If nothing is done about the fiscal cliff, there will be serious economic implications:

• There will be a recession in 2013 with the gross domestic product (GDP) dropping.
• Unemployment will rise to about 9 percent in the same year.
• Moreover, inflation is expected to rise to 2 percent annually over the next few years.
• However, if action is taken to avert the fiscal cliff, real GDP would increase by 1.4 percent and full-time employment would increase by 1.8 million jobs by the end of next year.

President Obama wants higher tax revenue and an increase in federal spending in any sort of negotiation over the fiscal cliff. However, the policies of the past four years have resulted in the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.

Additionally, people are less inclined to save and make investments if they think the government is simply going to collect more from them. Instead, the United States needs to incentivize people to invest and workers to become more productive to earn higher wages by reducing taxes and other regulatory burdens.

Progressives Move Money Off Shore : Just Capitalism

The old saying still stands firm, 'do as I say, not as I do'. Progressive socialist liberal Democrats use the media to project an image of protecting the little guys, all the while advocating higher taxes on them to feed the trough in Washington.

Another axiom that is in play here is 'liberalism can not be defending by rational debate'. The liberal agenda is designed to extract as much revenue from the citizens, all citizens, as possible through higher taxes and social mandates, extracting as much as they can to bolster campaign coffers, but all the while they, the liberal elites, when questioned about their personal activities off shore, they proclaim it's just capitalism. It's all legal.  hmmmm  I wonder why it wasn't just 'capitalism' for Mitt Romney during the election?

The media will not cover the two faced bigotry of the progressive socialist lift Democrats that is always in play as they, the media, is the face of the progressive left socialists. And sadly, the media is not just biased in favor of the progressives, they now advocate for the socialist left in America. Journalism is truly dead.

Obama's Tax Evaders of The Year
Michelle Malkin  (Town Hall)

President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their "fair share" in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior in chief's richest pals are getting a pass.
It's a Golden Pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.

-- Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley's biggest campaign finance boost to Obama, with individual employee donations supporting the tax-hiking candidate by a ratio of more than 31-to-1. Google rank-and-file workers pitched in some $800,000 to Obama. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Chief Legal Officer and Senior Vice President David Drummond, and Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf are all vocal Obama supporters and top donors.

In December, Google's Netherlands subsidiary disclosed in a tax filing that it had shifted nearly $10 billion in revenues to a Bermuda shell company. That's "almost double the total from three years before," according to Bloomberg News. In response to criticism, Google defended the scheme as a legal response to government incentives. "It's called capitalism," Schmidt snarked defiantly.
Wonder what all of Obama's operatives and media lapdogs who bashed evil, selfish Republican offshore tax havens have to say about that? Cue crickets chirping.

-- The Washington Post. Speaking of media lapdogs, this newspaper sanctimoniously supported Obama for president and singled out his support for "revenue (tax) increases." Its endorsement editorial castigated Mitt Romney for embracing an America "in which an ever-greater share of the nation's wealth resides with the nation's wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing."
The privileged wealthy barons at The Washington Post, however, increased that inequality at the end of the year when they joined a growing number of companies who are giving 2013 dividends in 2012 to protect investors from paying higher Obama taxes on dividend income. It's "proof positive," my friend and guest-blogger Doug Powers noted, "that no matter what happens in the negotiations, the country is definitely going off the irony cliff."

Media Drops Bias Position - Now Advocates Liberal Agenda

I don't believe there is any question now that the media is not just biased in favor of progressive socialist liberals, they are now advocates for that agenda, the Marxist philosophy of income redistribution and an all powerful central government. An agenda that will ensure dependency and poverty for millions.

 

Little wonder then when the question comes up as how did Mr Obama get reelected, given his total failure in the last four years, the answer is easy to verbalize, it's the amount of misinformation that was available to the general public and the general public's inability to process whether that information is true.

 

Was the majority of voters just ignorant, or lazy or unwilling to accept bad news? Was it just easier to vote for a known quantity even though that quantity would bring more bad news rather then having to make a real decision of what's best for you and your country? How can four more years of failure make us more prosperous?  hmmmm  I guess we know the answer to that question, don't we.

Remember, elections have consequences as the voters have decided the fate of our country. When   you see your declining life style, look in the mirror and ask the question, who did I vote for to make this happen. 

 

David Gregory's Slobbering Obama Interview

David Limbaugh (Town Hall)

NBC's David Gregory interviewed President Barack Obama on "Meet the Press" Sunday, and a conversation ensued that would have been more fitting for a show called "The President Meets One of His Many Mainstream Media Enablers."

Let's take a look at just some of the exchanges and fantasize how different the nation's political and electoral climate might be if the liberal press were doing its job as watchdog instead of taking sides.

Obama said, "We're seeing signs of recovery ... in employment numbers improving."

Might Gregory have asked Obama how he can continue to put an unrealistically positive spin on such persistently dismal numbers? If this were a Republican president, do you think Gregory wouldn't have pointed out that the only reason these numbers appear to be slightly improving is that more people have actually given up looking for work altogether?

Obama said, "(Republicans) have had trouble saying 'yes' to a number of repeated offers."

Why didn't Gregory remind Obama that he has been the most intransigent in these negotiations? Why didn't he ask him about the Wall Street Journal report that he told House Speaker John Boehner he would give him nothing in return for the $800 billion in "revenues" Boehner had put on the table? "I get that for free."

Obama said that if no deal were reached, people might say, "We haven't seen the kind of deficit reduction that we could have had had the Republicans been willing to take the deal that I gave them."

Gregory should have said that if Republicans had accepted Obama's deal, there would have been barely any deficit reduction but that if Obama had accepted the Republicans' deal, especially Paul Ryan's plan, we would have seen serious progress on the deficits and debt.

Obama said, "Congress has not been able to get this stuff done -- not because Democrats in Congress don't want to ... cooperate but because ... it's been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit as part of an overall deficit reduction package."

Why didn't Gregory pointedly ask Obama whether his plan was actually to go over the cliff and blame Republicans for it? What evidence is there that Democrats want to cooperate? How could he claim to be serious about deficit reduction when he is demanding tax increases that would produce little revenue; is resisting reform of the main debt drivers, entitlements; is demanding authority for new "stimulus" spending and to exceed the budget ceiling unilaterally anytime he desires; and has resisted serious spending cuts of any kind?

Obama said, "I cut spending by over $1 trillion in 2011." Why didn't Gregory laugh out loud?

Progressives Stonewall on Benghazi : Hillary/Obama Neglignet

Puzzling? Liberal Democrats stonewalling murder investigation? Not really. The Obama administration will always have a free pass to do anything it wants without having to take responsibility, and this isn't anything new. Remember Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick? That was negligent homicide but he got a free pass. It didn't matter as he was a prominent Democrat and a Kennedy. And how about the Vincent Foster suicide during the Clinton administration?

But wait there's more, now Hillary is in the hospital with a blood clot as a result from a fall and concussion. A doctor has stated this as a fact. Interesting how we will believe a doctor as a credible source of information just as we do a judge. But the problem is why would a doctor not side with progressives as judges do when the progressive agenda comes under question?

So whether it's fraud, out right lies or negligent homicide, progressive socialist liberal Democrats get a free pass. Here we can use Hillary's comment about the Afghan surge proposed by General Patraeus, she said to accept this proposal as workable, we have to have "a willing suspension of disbelief"

Return of the Credibility Gap
Mona Charen (Town Hall)

Lyndon Johnson, step aside. Barack Obama is far more deserving than you ever were of the term "credibility gap."

The latest Benghazi lie to crumble like a cigar ash was the assurance from White House spokesman Jay Carney that four State department employees had been fired for their mishandling of the situation following an internal report that found security to have been "grossly inadequate." On Dec. 20, Carney told reporters "Accountability has been brought to bear with regard to four individuals, who are very senior." Major news organizations reported that Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of state in charge of security, had resigned along with three others.

Less than a week later, the New York Post revealed that Boswell wasn't actually leaving at all. He had resigned his post as assistant secretary, a spokesman explained, but would continue his other duties at state. As for the other three, they were found to have "performance inadequacies" but not "willful misconduct" and would therefore face no discipline.
So, one official changed desks, and the rest remained in place. That's accountability Obama-style. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other major news outlets have not bothered to report this.

The secretary of state, who on Oct. 15 made the utterly vaporous and content-free claim of "responsibility" for the Benghazi debacle (but chose not to speak for her department on Sept. 16 when the president needed someone to do the rounds of the Sunday talk shows), was at last scheduled to testify before Congress on Dec. 20. Her health problems have sidelined her for now. Whether she will testify in January remains an open question. Republican senators have vowed not to confirm John Kerry until she testifies. But if her health remains fragile, Republicans will be portrayed as brutal for insisting. Bed-side testimony anyone?

Meanwhile, President Obama's great billowing smoke machine chugs on. Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Dec. 30, the president again expressed anger that questions had been asked of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Characterizing reasonable inquiries about the deaths of Americans as "politically motivated attacks," the president insinuated a racial animus. "Why she was targeted individually for this kind of attack was puzzling to me." She, of all members of his administration, he stressed "had the least to do with Benghazi."