As the polls are turning in Mitt Romney's favor we are gathering together for a BIG win on November 6th...Bye-bye 'bama bye-bye!

Op-ed:

Exposing Obama's foreign policy disasters

By: Diane Sori

 

Next Monday will be the last debate before the election, and it will be on foreign policy and foreign policy alone.  Foreign policy is Obama’s Achilles heel like no other at this point in time.  These past four years of Apology Tours, subterfuge, and cover-ups will take their toll on Obama in the end.

To win this final debate all Mitt Romney has to do is remind everyone of Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s failed foreign and military policies leading up to and ending with the Benghazi cover-up.

Romney can start with Obama’s announcing (against the on the ground general's advice) the pullout date of our troops from the Iraq and Afghan theaters.  Because he broke cardinal rule #1 of NEVER telling your enemy when you plan to leave a war zone, Obama must now answer for the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the added American troop deaths that call has caused.  And while he loves to bloviate while campaigning that he 'ended the war, Osama is dead and al-Qaeda and the Taliban are on the run'...guess what...they’re NOT in fact they’re stronger than ever and all because they just had to sit around and wait until we left. 

Next Romney can add in the fact that America’s stance in the Middle-East has become a laughing stock around the world as the Obama sanctioned and instigated ‘Arab Spring’ has become a total Arab nightmare with country after country falling to the Muslim Brotherhood and NOT to his falsely claimed move towards democracy.  

Remember Obama bloviating last month before the U(seless) N(ations) saying that the ‘sweeping democratic changes’ taking place in the Arab world are supported by the United States and urged governments in the Middle East to begin the ‘painstaking work of reform.’   Saying America was  ”inspired by the Tunisian protests that toppled a dictator, because we recognized our own beliefs in the aspiration of men and women who took to the street,”  he oh so conveniently left out the fact that he had supported the Tunisian regime of Ben Ali, and that a growing Islamist jihadist presence in Syria presents the danger of an extremist dictatorship becoming a base for international terrorism.

The truth is that this administration has continued to support brutal dictatorships in the region and has actually worked to suppress protest movements pushing for true democratic reforms.  Case in point is his total lack of support for the Iranian student protest movement against the Islamic regime a while back.

Then Romney can speak about Obama’s total failure in getting Iran to stop its nuclear program.  And with Iran recently having tested its long-range ballistic missiles, time is NOT something we should be wasting.  But time is exactly what Obama’s wasting as he takes credit for slapping sanction after (useless) sanction on a country that is laughing at the absurdity of it all as they continue to stockpile enriched uranium at an accelerating rate. 

Romney can even mention the fact that while Obama is taking credit for imposing those stronger (but useless) sanctions on Iran, it’s really Congress that has passed sanctions legislation by huge bipartisan majorities, sometimes over Obama’s objections, after all we all know where his true loyalties lie.

Also, Romney can point out that after tip-toeing around the issue of a military option against Iran, after all these are his muslim brethren (and NO sarcasm intended), Obama’s quest to be re-elected is forcing him to become somewhat more hawkish on Iran in the weeks leading up to the election.  

But it’s all an act on Obama’s part...

And why...so he can appear to be Israel’s friend and ally to pander to and hopefully garner the Jewish vote is all.  Barack HUSSEIN Obama could care less if Iran has a bomb and could care even less if they used it against Israel...all he cares about is how he can use and twist the Iran situation to his advantage for votes.

In regards to Israel, thankfully Obama failed in his attempt to strong-arm her into a permanent settlement freeze in the West Bank and Jerusalem.  So he instead continues to push hard for a two-state solution which favors the so-called Palestinians instead of our ally and friend by demanding that Israel return to its pre-’67 borders (which will NEVER be agreed to by Israel as those borders are indefensible).  And let’s NOT forget his malicious and deliberate snub of Benjamin Netanyahu last month so he could go the talk show self-glorifying route instead.

And after speaking the truth about Israel, Romney can remind everyone of Obama’s failed effort, again on the advice of the generals on the ground, to maintain a residual U.S. military force in Iraq...Obama’s failure to cut a deal with the Taliban for the release of America’s only known prisoner of war, Bowe Bergdahl...Obama’s failure to get North Korea to stop its nuclear program...and Obama’s failure to win over China and Russia for even a symbolic U.N. condemnation of Syria’s Bashar Assad. 

Then Romney can hit hard with Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s total lack of commitment to deploy the missile defense arsenal needed to protect American interests both at home and abroad.  In this day and age of islamic jihadists this is paramount to keeping us safe at home and Obama refuses to do this.

And all this can culminate in Romney’s exposing the truths about Obama’s cover-up of Benghazi.

Mitt Romney has the ammunition to rule this last debate...hopefully he’ll use it.  Then ‘We the People’ can say, “Stick a fork in Obama ‘cause he’s done.”

America Needs Leadership, Not Empty Rhetoric

By: Donald Lambro / Townhall Columnist

WASHINGTON -- Would you vote for a president seeking re-election with annual economic growth stalled at a feeble 1.3 percent, unemployment and underemployment at 14.7 percent, and no plan to get America moving again?

Would you vote for him if he had presided over a deficit-spending binge that ran up four yearly budget deficits well over $1 trillion and whose party in the Senate has refused to pass a budget in the last three years?

Would you vote for an incumbent who offered the voters no specific legislative agenda indicating what he hoped to achieve by 2017 if given another four-year term?

Would you vote for him, even though his campaign ads said nothing -- and I mean, absolutely nothing -- about the length of the nation's still historically high unemployment rate; declining median income that's 8 percent lower than in 2007; 46 million Americans living in poverty, the highest in two decades; an estimated 3.5 million people who are homeless, including 1.5 million children; and a record 46 million Americans on food stamps?

Home foreclosure starts grew this summer by 16 percent on a yearly basis, and 2.42 million people were delinquent 60 days or more on their mortgage payments.

Yet despite this bleak economic, fiscal and social record, 47 percent of likely voters say they'll vote for him anyway, according to the Gallup Poll. Its head-to-head voter survey shows former governor Mitt Romney leading him by just 2 points at 49 percent.

But how does one explain the closeness of this election when Obama has failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises: Reduce unemployment to 6 percent, raise middle-class incomes, get our manufacturing base really growing again, and cut the budget deficit in half in four years? The stark reality of his presidential record shows he has failed on every one of these and other promises.

After nearly four years of his presidency, this still is the slowest and weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. Economic growth over his term has averaged 2.2 percent.

While the jobless rate fell slightly below 8 percent last month, the decline was mostly due to millions of adults who were forced to take lower-paying, part-time work. Take into account millions of discouraged, long-term unemployed Americans who've stopped looking for work and therefore are not counted in the unemployment column, and presto, unemployment declines. Pretty clever, huh?

Obama doesn't talk about the underemployed, largely middle-class Americans in his stump speeches, nor do the the network news shows, which spend far more time on "infotainment" stories while ignoring the suffering of millions of Americans who are hurting as a result of his anti-growth, anti-job policies.

The White House touts the 7.8 percent unemployment rate, but it is really a statistical mirage at best, economists say. "Factoring in those folks (part-timers and labor force dropouts), the jobless rate is 14.7 percent," writes University of Maryland business economist Peter Morici.

This is a four-year record that cries out for a change in presidents by a landslide, yet the race is not only close, but Obama continues to have an edge in the critical swing states that will decide this election.

One reason for this widening gulf between the voters' perceptions about the candidates is that they're receiving incomplete information about the economy and inaccurate information about what Mitt Romney is proposing to get it functioning again.

One of the nightly news shows this week did a piece to raise questions about Romney's plan to overhaul the tax code by eliminating a raft of corporate loopholes and other tax exemptions, which would broaden the tax base and lower the tax rates to boost investment, economic growth and job creation.

The piece deviously left an impression that it could be achieved only by erasing popular tax breaks such as the mortgage interest deduction (not true), and seemed to suggest this is an idea that's never been done before.

Nowhere did the report note that Obama's presidential deficit reduction commission proposed this same idea, or point out that it has been done before (despite Joe Biden saying it hadn't in last week's debate with Paul Ryan).

President Reagan did it in 1986 without ending any of the popular tax breaks that are often mentioned, and with the support of House and Senate Democrats to boot.

But there's something much more fundamental going on here than the shallow, biased, incomplete reporting on the nightly news programs. Gallup suggests that this may have more to do with plain old partisanship. An average of 90 percent of Democrats so far in October (and 8 percent of Republicans) approve of the job Obama is doing. That's making his ratings one of "the most polarized Gallup has measured for any president."

"President Obama gets near-universal approval from supporters of his own party and near-universal disapproval from supporters of the opposition party as he seeks re-election," Gallup reported last week.

Democrats have invested a lot of political capital in the inexperienced community organizer from Chicago and, for the most part, they're sticking with him through thick and thin. No matter how weak the economy becomes, or how many people have fallen into poverty, homelessness or despair, or how deeply he plunges our government into unprecedented debt.

Yet, inexplicably, Obama is running almost dead even in a campaign in which he offers no vision of the future for the next four years and proposes no new remedies to nurse America's chronically weakening economy back to health.

He offers only politically soothing words of sympathy for millions who are still suffering from his impotent economic policies, victims who are among the middle class voters for whom he voices so much compassion and concern.

What they really need is leadership in the form of policies that create jobs, a healthy economy and a strong America. But he hasn't a clue how to do that.

All he can offer now is extended unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare checks and homeless shelters. And plenty of comforting words and excuses for the next four years.

Poverty Nonsense 

By: Walter E. Williams  / Townhall Columnist

Here's a recent statement frequently suggested by leftist academics, think tank researchers and policymakers: "People were not just struggling because of their personal deficiencies. There were structural factors at play. People weren't poor because they made bad decisions. They were poor because our society creates poverty." Who made that statement and where it was made is not important at all, but its corrosive effects on the minds of black people, particularly black youths, are devastating.

There's nothing intellectually challenging or unusual about poverty. For most of mankind's existence, his most optimistic scenario was to be able to eke out enough to subsist for another day. Poverty has been mankind's standard fare and remains so for most of mankind. What is unusual and challenging to explain is affluence -- namely, how a tiny percentage of people, mostly in the West, for only a tiny part of mankind's existence, managed to escape the fate that befell their fellow men.

To say that "our society creates poverty" is breathtakingly ignorant. In 1776, the U.S. was among the world's poorest nations. In less than two centuries, we became the world's richest nation by a long shot. Americans who today are deemed poor by Census Bureau definitions have more material goods than middle-class people as recently as 60 years ago. Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield give us insights in "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor" (9/13/2011).

Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have one or more computers. Forty-two percent own their homes. The average poor American has more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France or the U.K. Ninety-six percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry during the year because they couldn't afford food. How do these facts square with the statement that "our society creates poverty"? To the contrary, our society has done the best with poverty.

Maybe the professor who made the statements about poverty -- who, by the way, is black -- was thinking that it's black people who have been made poor by society. One cannot avoid the fact that average black income today is many multiples of what it was at emancipation, in 1900, in 1940 and in 1960, even though average black income is only 65 percent of white income. There is no comparison between black standard of living today and that in earlier periods. Again, the statement that "our society creates poverty" is just plain nonsense.

What about the assertion that "people weren't poor because they made bad decisions"?

The poverty rate among blacks is 36 percent. Most black poverty is found in female-headed households, but the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994 and stands today at 7 percent. Today's black illegitimacy rate is 72 percent, but in the 1940s, it hovered around 14 percent. Less than 50 percent of black students graduate from high school, and most of those who do graduate have a level of academic proficiency far below that of their white counterparts. Black men make up almost 40 percent of the prison population.

Here are my several two-part questions: Is having babies without the benefit of marriage a bad decision, and is doing so likely to affect income? Are dropping out of school and participating in criminal activity bad decisions, and are they likely to have an effect on income? Finally, do people have free will and the capacity to make decisions, or is their behavior a result of instincts over which they have no control? As a black person, I'm glad that the message taught to so many of today's black youths wasn't taught back in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, when the civil rights struggle was getting into gear. The admonishment that I frequently heard from black adults was, "Be a credit to your race.

Second Debate Sets Up Romney Win
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com 
 

Romney emerges from the second debate well positioned to win it all.  The post-debate polling reflects that he solidly won on the key issues: economy, energy prices, and China.  Obama scores well in his overall ratings in these surveys simply because he benefits by comparison with his sleep-walking performance in the first debate.

Fundamentally, Romney's smooth, polished, dignified, articulate, sincere, and compassionate manner in the debate puts to rest eight months of Obama negative attacks on his character.  Barack Obama is about to learn the lesson Jimmy Carter learned in 1980 when he lost to Reagan -- and found his lead collapsing after the debates.  When a president with a failed record tries to win by attacking and demonizing his opponent, he can succeed only if there are no debates.  Since neither Goldwater (1964) nor McGovern (1972) had the chance to show themselves to America in debates, the negative characterization of them by first Johnson and then Nixon stuck.  But Ronald Reagan's debate performance nullified Carter's attacks and showed him not to be the war-mongering madman the president had accused him of being.  Similarly, Obama's portrayal of Romney as insensitive, elitist, incapable of understanding the problems of the average person, a tax cheat, and a cold blooded capitalist all fell before Romney's real persona as it came through on television.

And once Obama is stripped of his negative messaging, he has nothing to say.  His defense of his economic record and his energy drilling essentially boiled down to asking people what they wanted to believe -- their own eyes or Obama's speeches.

Stylistically, Romney's dignity played very well.  He struck just the right balance between letting Obama walk over him (as Ryan let Biden do) and being obnoxious and petty (as Obama appeared to be).

The Romney campaign has exactly the right ads on the air to exploit their debate edge.  The sixty second ad they now are running in swing states, featuring Romney's first debate narrative on the economy played over faces of Americans suffering from economic distress is just the right move.

Specifically, Romney:

1)  Explained his tax plan very well.  His suggestion that he would allow up to a flat $25,000 in deductions was excellent.

2)  Recited the statistics of economic decline so well and so frequently that they will be repeated again and again by voters as they contemplate their decision.

3)  Clearly pinned the blame for high gas prices on Obama by enumerating the president's anti-oil, anti-coal policies.

4)  Put the China issue in play big time by explaining Chinese currency manipulation.  In the next debate, Romney should drill down and explain how much Chinese chicanery and hacking costs us jobs and how passive Obama has been in the face of their conduct.

5)  Demonstrated his compassion and heart in his personal stories of his ministry.  He should continue just this kind of argumentation.

And then there's Libya.  The intervention of Candy Crowley saved Obama on the ropes.  But as inappropriate as it was, her statement -- that Obama said at the outset that it was a terror attack -- was technically correct, but, ultimately wrong.  We all know that Obama tried to play the attack as a rally gone awry, impelled by passion generated by a film about Islam.  WE heard him say so on The View, on Letterman, at the United Nations and all over the nation for two weeks.

Romney should explain that the president's goal was not to interfere with his narrative that by killing bin Laden, he had ended al Qaeda as a terrorist organization.  He did not want an attack and an assassination on his record in the last two months before the election.  So he pretended that it was all because of an intemperate movie.  He should cite the statements of the State Department that they never considered it a terrorist attack.

Then he should go on to show how Obama's foreign policy based on naïveté has failed and is going up in flames.  The evidence is there: the Libya attack, the increasing likelihood that Egypt will reject the Camp David accords, the turn of the Arab Spring into a jihadist coup, the unrelenting progress of Iran toward a bomb, the failure of any effort to rein in North Korea, the growing power of Chavez in Latin America and....the brazenness of China's trade and currency policies.

Romney has this election in hand.  Obama is left with nothing to stand on.  No record to cite.  No proposals to convey.  Stripped of his negative campaign, he has nothing really left to say.

Romney Won The Second Debate
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com


By scoring big on the economy, gas prices, and Libya, Romney continued his victorious string of debate wins. He looked more presidential than Obama did and showed himself to be an articulate, capable, attractive, compassionate leader with sound ideas.

Obama came over as boorish and Biden-esque. He did not learn from his Vice President's mistakes. When a president gets into a bar room brawl, he loses his dignity and his aura, key assets for an incumbent. Romney was polite but firm. Obama seemed quarrelsome, frustrated, nasty, and cranky.

But the key reason for the Romney win was substantive:

1.  Romney made very clear the case against Obama's economic record and Obama's rebuttal about 5 million jobs was pathetic.

2.  Romney injected the China issue, big time, and tapped into a strong public sentiment on the issue.

3.  Romney made the effective case that Obama is anti-oil, coal, and gas and that this has doubled gas prices.

4.  Romney was very effective in differentiating himself from Bush-43 and in establishing that, unlike the GOP of the past, he was for small businesses not big businesses

5.  Romney rebutted the attacks on him over Chinese investments.

6.  Romney explained his tax plan well and to everyone's satisfaction.

7.  Obama erred in trying to make us believe that he always felt Libya was a terror attack. We all heard him blame the movie.

Obama scored points over the 47% statement by Romney, immigration, and by his response to the accusation that he went to Vegas after the murder of the Ambassador.

But this debate goes to Romney. It seals his momentum and will lead to a big win.

Op-ed:

Round 2 is Romney’s no matter how Ms. Crowley and the msm try to FIX it

By: Diane Sori

Candy Crowley needs to be fired immediately because last night she broke, for all America to see, the cardinal rule for all moderators in a presidential debate...IMPARTIALITY.  Her display of favoritism towards Barack HUSSEIN Obama was both a disgrace and a witch hunt on her part.

Sticking her nose into this debate when she had NO business doing so, Ms. Crowley directly and with malice LIED in favor of the man she supports...Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

Constantly interrupting Romney, constantly NOT allowing him to address Obama’s comments (which by the rules he was entitled to do), and worse of all out and out LYING as she twisted documented facts, she inserted herself directly into the hot point issue in the debate of when Obama finally called the attack in Benghazi terrorism.

By speaking out of line and saying that Obama did indeed tell the American people the day after it occurred that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and then rescinding that statement of hers AFTER the debate was over when it NO longer mattered, Candy Crawley became the poster child for all the liberal lefts lying deceitful agenda.

And by doing what she did Ms. Crowley outwardly aided this administration in the biggest cover-up perpetrated on the American public in recent history (this is actually bigger than Fast and Furious in scope), because Obama’s actions...ranging from his ‘Apology Tours’ to breaking the War’s Powers Clause in our Constitution to announcing to our enemies our timetable for withdrawal...have set the Middle East on fire.

Wearing her lack of impartiality on her sleeve this debate became FIXED on all accounts.  And with Ms. Crowley controlling whose questions would be asked and when, this debate was a farce from the get-go.

And tell me why those asking the questions needed cue cards for their own questions...these weren’t their questions...these were questions supplied to them by team Obama!

Mitt Romney, the undeniable expert on how to run a successful business...the man who came armed with facts and figures...was now left to fend off two persons on that stage...Barack HUSSEIN Obama AND Ms. Crowley.  Two figures ganged up on him as he tried to show America how Obama’s policies just don’t work...two figures working together in unison who tried to bring down the man who WILL be our next president, and guess what...

They failed on ALL accounts!

Saying, “I think you know better.  I think you know that these last four years haven’t been so good as the president just described and that you don’t feel like your confident that the next four years are going to be much better either.  I can tell you that if you were to elect President Obama, you know what you’re going to get.  You’re going to get a repeat of the last four years. We just can’t afford four more years like the last four years," Mitt Romney showed America their dismal future if this usurping lying traitor to America is re-elected.

Continuing on to nail Obama on the economy, Romney hit him hard on the rising price of gas at the pumps pointing out how gas prices were low when he took office NOT because we were on the verge of a recession as Obama claimed, but because the economy was stable at that point.  ROMNEY also hit hard on China NOT playing by the rules, and in regards to job outsourcing. Romney drove this point home and rightly so for the simple fact is that the 35% corporate tax rate, a government initiated and implemented tax, is why businesses have gone overseas.  And Romney said he would slap tariffs and fees on China if they tried monetary manipulation.  

And best of all, driving home one of his main talking points that GOVERNMENT DOES NOT CREATE JOBS, ROMNEY nailed Obama to the floor when he spoke about his cutting licenses and permits for oil and gas drilling, and how drilling on federal lands is down...way down...as Obama favors the ridiculousness of wind power over oil, gas and coal...and the jobs they create.  Romney again pledged that once in office he would build the Keystone Pipeline, drill for oil and gas both on land and offshore, and reinvigorate the coal industry.  In other words...CUT our dependency on foreign oil and CREATE jobs here in America...lots of jobs in fact. 

And while Obama loves to spout off about how he has done more for women and their ‘personal’ issues, Romney answered a question about pay equity for women, an issue that is a hell of a lot more important than a women’s personal contraceptive issues. 

Romney told that when he became governor, few women applied for cabinet jobs so he went out to try to recruit qualified women to serve in his administrations. 

"And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet," he said.  "I went to a number of women's groups and said, can you help us find folks?  And it brought us whole binders full of qualified of women."

Romney cares about women’s all important economic future NOT what should be personal issues, as Obama is just using personal issues to pander for votes and nothing else.

So the bottom line is this... while Obama was aggressive and very in-your-face combative he can’t alter his dismal record, if he even has a record at all.  And with the economy the key deciding factor for the all-important Independents, all ROMNEY has to say to them is, is "People, you now can choose to stop listening to what we say, and simply decide your vote based on our records.”

Case closed.