I forgot that I'd saved an article written by Charles Krauthammer, who explains this same idea in a very clear and erudite way.  This is not the entire piece, just the paragraphs I thought were the most revealing.

Business and Obama

President Obama has had few real jobs.  He was a professor for a short time, but I know of no other real jobs.  Being a Senator or Representative is supposed to be a public service job, but it is not full time (unless you count all the time spent working to get reelected).  Community Organizing is not a job one sees advertised in the classifieds.  If he has actually worked somewhere else, no one talks about it.

So, admittedly, he knows nothing about the difficulties and rewards of creating and maintaining a business--accounts payable, receivable, capital, tax accounting, personnel, materials, organization, etc.

Even ignorance is no excuse, these same entrepreneurs paid the taxes that made everything possible.  Many of them probably worked on some of these things too.

This last comic really sums it up.  

Thinking about the next two months

I'm glad the Conventions are over, but if you watched you saw there was little doubt about the mainstream media's liberal bias.  I suppose that if you lean far left yourself, you likely thought everything was fair and normal.  The "talking heads" that felt the need to tell us what we just heard picked apart all the speakers at the Republican Convention and waxed poetic about those at the Democratic Convention.  

If the media were trying to be really fair, talking to Al Sharpton after the RNC would be countered by Rush Limbaugh at the DNC.  That would be equal treatment.

I only hope that the next two months will go quickly.  I have read that many people now get a lot of their information from the Internet and/or social media.  Maybe that is partly because they realize that most of the regular media are viewing the election from just one angle, one restrictive prospective.

I hope people will read, study, and investigate before voting.  Those who just believe the sound bites (many of which will be misleading or deceptive) are the people I worry about.

Now that Mitt Romney has chosen his running mate, there is a whole new level of venom coming from the extreme left and the Obama camp.  Senator Ryan is going to do so many awful things that no one could possibly want him as vice president.  With help from the mainstream media, misleading and false information will abound.

Yes, Senator Ryan was bold and brave enough to offer a budget plan for the entitlement budget disaster that is looming.  Has President Obama offered anything?  Harry Reid?  Not really.  President Obama's only plan is to tax the "rich" more and offer possible, pretend savings that not even his own budget office believes will happen and would not stop us from falling off the fiscal cliff we are heading for.

We need to listen, consider facts, figure out ways to solve the problems, not just cross our fingers and assume things will be okay.

There just are not enough taxpayers to keep his ideas of endless money possible.  Repeated borrowing and printing money are like using credit irresponsibly.  It catches up and bankruptcy follows.  A bankrupt government helps no one.

More taxes won't help.

President Obama's economic record is a train wreck.  He is planning to raise taxes on everyone, but especially those making more than $200,000 a year.  Even Nancy Pelosi and some of his serious supporters think that bar is too low--they wanted the cut-off to be a million a year.  The Morning Bell, a publication by the Heritage Foundation lays out what this may mean to those most affected:

Besides the horrendous affect these taxes would have by themselves, add the uncertainty of the Affordable Care Act,  and our economy is in for a hit like it hasn't seen in 70 years.  Why a President would propose such a thing, when there is so little reward, boggles the mind.  Even assuming most of these businesses/people just paid those extra taxes--which is unlikely since many will probably close up shop--the dent made in the deficit would be infinitesimal.  Lots of loss for so tiny a gain.

Obama has no core beliefs

President Obama has again proven that he has no set of core beliefs.  The only idea that he seems to stick with is that he wants to have ultimate power to spend other people's money in whatever way he chooses.

The latest example is his pronouncement about illegal immigration.  Charles Krauthammer sums it up:

In 2010, President Obama asked Congress to pass the DREAM act.  Congress refused.  Hispanic groups suggested that he ignore Congress and use executive order.  His response?


But now that is exactly what he has done and the reason is obvious.  His numbers are slipping and he needs a big Hispanic vote.  Who will call him on it?  The press?  Congressional Democrats?  Hardly.  The immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people.


Mr. Krauthammer continues:

It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness. 


As Obama himself argued in rejecting the executive action he has now undertaken, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that.” 


Except, apparently, when violating that solemn obligation serves his reelection needs. 


Me again.  So, no wrong or right--just expedience and reelection maneuvering.

War on Women?

A short time ago, an old acquaintance wanted my support on a social site against what she called the Republican War on Women.  I respectfully declined, saying that there was no such "war," and it was just another attempt by the left to divide us.  I was supported by comments of others who I didn't even know.  This acquaintance had fallen victim to the media sound bites without doing any fact checking.  I'm afraid that happens to lots of people.


Soon thereafter, I read a piece by Charles Krauthammer that explained this divisive strategy.  It is too well-written to pick apart, so I'm posting almost all of it.  

The entire Obama campaign is a slice-and-dice operation, pandering to one group after another, particularly those that elected Obama in 2008 — blacks, Hispanics, women, young people — and for whom the thrill is now gone.

What to do? Try fear. Create division, stir resentment, by whatever means necessary — bogus court challenges, dead-end Senate bills and a forest of straw men.

Why else would the Justice Department challenge the photo ID law in Texas? To charge Republicans with seeking to disenfranchise Hispanics and blacks, of course. But in 2008 the Supreme Court upheld a similar law from Indiana. And it wasn’t close: 6-3, the majority including that venerated liberal, John Paul Stevens.

Moreover, photo IDs were recommended by the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, cochaired by Jimmy Carter. And you surely can’t get into the attorney general’s building without one. Are Stevens, Carter and Eric Holder anti-Hispanic and anti-black?

The ethnic bases covered, we proceed to the “war on women.”

It sprang to public notice when a 30-year-old student at an elite law school (starting private-sector salary upon graduation: $160,000) was denied the inalienable right to have the rest of the citizenry (as coinsured and/or taxpayers — median household income: $52,000) pay for her contraception.

Despite a temporary setback — Hilary Rosen’s hastily surrendered war on moms — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will resume the battle with a Paycheck Fairness Act that practically encourages frivolous lawsuits and has zero chance of passage.No matter. Its sole purpose is to keep the war-on-women theme going, while the equally just-for-show Buffett Rule, nicely pitting the 99 percent versus the 1 percent, is a clever bit of class warfare designed to let Democrats play tribune of the middle class.

Ethnicity, race, gender, class. One more box to check: the young. Just four years ago, they swooned in the aisles for Obama. No longer. Not when 54 percent of college graduates under 25 are unemployed or underemployed.

How to shake them from their lethargy? Fear again. Tell them, as Obama repeatedly does, that Paul Ryan’s budget would cut Pell Grants by $1,000 each, if his domestic cuts were evenly distributed. (They are not evenly distributed, making the charge a fabrication. But a great applause line.) Then warn that Republicans would double the interest rate on student loans. Well, first, Mitt Romney has said he would keep them right where they are. Second, as The Washington Post points out, this is nothing but a recycled campaign gimmick from 2006 when Democrats advocated (and later passed) a 50 percent rate cut that gratuitously squanders student aid by subsidizing the wealthy as well as the needy. For Obama, what’s not to like?

More beneficiaries, more votes.

What else to run on with 1.7 percent GDP growth (2011), record long-term joblessness and record 8 percent-plus unemployment (38 consecutive months, as of this writing)? Slice and dice, group against group.

There is a problem, however. It makes a mockery of Obama’s pose as the great transcender, uniter, healer of divisions. This is the man who sprang from nowhere with that thrilling 2004 convention speech declaring that there is “not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

That was then. Today, we are just sects with quarrels — to be exploited for political advantage. And Obama is just the man to fulfill Al Gore’s famous mistranslation of our national motto: Out of one, many.