Final Thoughts on the DNC Carnival in Charlotte

Final Thoughts on the DNC Carnival in Charlotte

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." — John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776.

The northeastern town of Borja, Mexico garnered global press attention after residents decried the well-meaning restoration efforts of Cecilia Gimenez, described as being in her 80s, who made a horribly botched attempt to restore a flaking oil painting of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. Gimenez’s restoration did not work out very well, the "restored" painting looks like a pale monkey's face surrounded by fur, with misshapen eyes and nose, and a crooked smudge for a mouth. Some media have called it the worst restoration in history.

Just as she attempted to refurbish the cracked and peeling fresco, however, Democrats at their North Carolina convention tried — and failed just as miserably — to improve the image of their own tarnished and faded messiah.

In a video produced for the opening of the convention, Democrats succinctly summed up their entire philosophy: "Government is the only thing we all belong to. We have different churches, different clubs, but we're together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state, and our nation." Everything separates us but government. Indeed, the rest of the convention paid homage to government as the be all and end all, the Alpha and Omega, the solution to every problem. Because, let's face it, as someone once said, "You didn't build that."

The Obama campaign quickly denied having anything to do with the video, but no one doubts it's Obama's vision. And nothing could be further from what our Founding Fathers established — a republic with limited and enumerated powers in which "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were the rights and values to be cherished, not the bureaucratic labyrinth at the Department of Health and Human Services.

It was also no small irony that the gavel came down on the convention just as our national debt passed $16,000,000,000,000. Democrats have done more than their "fair share" to help us reach that horrendous number.

With all that in mind, we chose a few of the more egregious quotes from the DNC floor — and believe us, the choosing was hard — with concise rebuttals to the various attacks, distortions and outright lies.

On Thursday, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) made some bold claims about the GOP’s handling of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the nation’s largest, most intensely valued — and most controversial — entitlement programs. The congressman said that “Republicans stood on the sidelines” when these programs were created, a notion that PolitiFact found to be false.

“When too many of our senior citizens who were living their golden years in the darkness of economic security, Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and a Democratic congress created Social Security, lighting a candle, while the Republicans cursed the darkness,” Clyburn said during his DNC speech.

And he wasn’t done there.

“When too many of our elderly found their lives darkened by unaffordable and inaccessible health care, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress lit the candles of Medicare and Medicaid, while Republicans stood on the sidelines and cursed the darkness,” he then added.

But, here’s what PolitiFact had to say about these claims:

“Although some of the biggest and most vocal opponents of the bills were Republicans, it’s wrong to say that “Republicans stood on the sidelines” when the bills were being considered. On the final vote on Social Security, Republicans overwhelmingly supported the bill. On Medicare and Medicaid, a majority of Republicans voted for the bill in the House, as did a significant minority in the Senate. We rate Clyburn’s claim False.”

This statement came from Clyburn just days after he made the bold — and factually inaccurate claim — that Republicans who happen to be Christians think “there‘s something wrong with feeding people when they’re hungry. I refer to what Frederic Bastiat said 150 years ago (Just substitute progressivism for Socialism):

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

Vice President Joe Biden took the stage, too, last night, where he made a statement about Romney and Osama bin Laden that wasn’t factually accurate. Rather than placing the comments in their proper context, Biden claimed that Romney once said “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth” to catch the infamous terrorist.

Under a section called “Biden’s bin Laden Baloney,” FactCheck.org wrote:

“The claim, which Republicans disputed, fails to include the rest of Romney’s quote from an Associated Press story. Romney said the country’s focus should not be on one person, but it should be a “broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.”

President Barack Obama, too, had some verbal blunders. Among his misleading statements was a claim that his tax plan would merely restore rates to what they were under President Bill Clinton’s administration. This, though, doesn’t take into account the tax increases that the wealthy will face as a result of Obama care; these additional taxes kick in next year. FactCheck.org writes:

“Obama refers to his wish to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for families with over $250,000 annual income, or for individuals with over $200,000. The top marginal income tax rate would return to 39.6 percent, where it was set by Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, up from 35 percent, where it has been since 2003.

But that’s not the whole story. Obama has signed some ”new” taxes to help finance the Affordable Care Act, increasing the burden on those upper-income taxpayers. Starting Jan. 1 next year, they will pay an additional 0.9 percent of wages for Medicare payroll taxes. And they will also be subject to a 3.8 percent tax on investment income from such things as stocks, bonds and sale of real estate. Those are taxes that didn’t exist when Clinton was president. If Obama succeeds in raising the top income tax rates to Clinton-era levels, total taxes on those making over $250,000 family income are thus likely to be higher than they were under Clinton.”

Obama also repeated the same claim that Clinton was called out for on Wednesday — that the current president has a plan that will cut deficits by $4 trillion. During his speech, Obama said, “Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending.”

The Washington Post’s The Fact Checker debunked this claim, once again, writing:

“But, while the numbers seem large, the results are unimpressive. At the end of the 10-year budget window, Obama would have the national debt at a 76.5 percent of gross domestic product. That actually would be an increase over the 74.2 percent of GDP in this year. In contrast, the debt reduction plan envisioned by the Simpson-Bowles commission — cited by the president — would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio close to 60 percent.

Moreover, independent analysts have criticized the administration for claiming some $800 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end. (The Bush administration had started the wars on borrowed funds.) Then, the president proposes to spend a good chunk of the nonexistent money on other spending — as he put it in his speech, “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.”

The $1 trillion in savings negotiated with Republicans, mentioned by the president, actually accounts for the bulk of his proposed reduction in spending. Indeed, much of the president’s debt reduction would come from tax increases on the wealthy, not spending cuts.”

The final lie comes, again, from Biden. During his speech, he contended that “the experts” claim that Romney has a corporate tax plan that would create hundreds of thousands — 800,000 jobs, to be exact — overseas. In reality, only one expert asserted that this is the case and she was careful to say that it depends on the details.

Even if these jobs do grow in other countries, she said it was possible for that to happen without hampering U.S. employment. FactCheck.org explains:

“She notes in her study that “jobs abroad need not displace jobs at home” — that is, provided that the present economy improves, and U.S. unemployment drops to a low level. So depending on the economic circumstances, creating jobs overseas doesn’t necessarily mean losing jobs in the U.S., as Biden’s listeners might have assumed.

Furthermore, a critique of Clausing’s figure by the Tax Foundation (a group supported in part by corporate donations) says that she based it on current corporate tax rates — not on the lower 25 percent rate that Romney proposes. The lower rate, it is argued, would attract foreign investment and lead to importing jobs.”

I could on with more exposé of the lies and half that were uttered at the Dependency National Convention, but I would need 100 pages to tell all.

Now to some other observations on the convention.

A Godless Party Expels the Creator

“The authors of the Democratic platform have inadvertently revealed to the world the sea change that has taken place in that party we once knew. Pat Buchanan writes in Human Events:

“For the first time — and in the longest Democratic platform in history, 26,000 words — there was not a single mention of God, the Creator, whom Thomas Jefferson himself, father of the party, proclaimed to be the author of our right to life and liberty.

The convention had approved the new platform, but when a firestorm erupted, a panicked Barack Obama hastily ordered “God” reinstated.

But when the amendment was offered to the convention by its chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, the idea of restoring the name of God to the platform was hooted, jeered and booed by half the delegates on the floor, who three times howled, “No!”

The omission of God is being called an oversight. But the viral reaction to returning God, even when Obama asked that it be done, testifies that this was no accident. God was deleted deliberately.

This process has been under way for a decade. In the 2004 platform, there were seven references to God. In 2008, one.

Like the European Union, whose Christian heritage is being excised from official documents by its secularist elite, the country led by the Democratic Party of Obama is being de-Christianized.

Still, why would Democrats do something so seemingly stupid, something that will inevitably cause a backlash among believers?

Answer: Millions of Democrats are themselves offended when God is included, because for them, the God of the Old and New testaments is an impediment to the progressive march of mankind.”

What would you expect from a party dedicated to killing the unborn, at any stage of their gestation and embracing every deviant form of behavior on the planet?

Thought Police Patrol Convention’s Radio Row

Conservative talk-show hosts who came to Charlotte to interview political figures are furious. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Radio Row — the designated set of booths available to visiting talk-show hosts — has seen restrictions placed on its use by Team Obama. DNC staffers at Radio Row will book leading Democrats for slots on conservative stations but then cancel the appearances an hour or so before broadcast “because you’re not our audience.”

John Fund writes in the National Review Online:

“Roger Hedgecock, a former mayor of San Diego now hosting a nationally syndicated talk show, decided to pack up and leave Charlotte early because “we were blocked from getting any guests that mattered. It was a complete freeze.” Larry O’Connor of Breitbart Radio told me, “It was the most bizarre act of censorship. These shows paid large fees and spent thousands on equipment setup and they couldn’t do their programs because of interference.”

“According to sources at Talk Radio News Service, placing a stringer outside the designated TV area to ask high-level Democrats to stop by radio row has also been banned by the DNC,” Ben Shapiro wrote at Breitbart’s Big Journalism:”

“When I approached liberal activist John Podesta about appearing on KRLA’s “Heidi Harris Show” along with me and my co-hosts Heidi Harris (conservative) and Brian Whitman (liberal), his handler quickly intervened. Later, the handler stopped by to clarify: did the show have two liberals and one conservative, or two conservatives and one liberal? When I stated that it had two conservatives and one liberal, he quickly shook his head and sprinted away.”

So much for the transparency, openness, and tolerance to contrary thought of the Obama era. It should be pointed out that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sandra Fluke were busy traversing the floor and giving interviews to MSNBC, MediaMatters, and other left-wing organs at the Republican National Convention without being harassed or evicted.

Steelworker Featured at DNC Didn't Work for Bain.

The Democratic National Convention on Wednesday featured three speakers billed as "former employees of companies controlled by Bain Capital."

They each told compelling stories about jobs lost, allegedly because of the actions of Bain under Romney's leadership.

According to Yahoo News one of these workers did not work for Bain, but was a union official:

“But it turns out one of those employees never actually worked for a company controlled by Bain Capital. David Foster was supposedly one of those former employees on the convention schedule. He told the story about 750 steelworkers who lost their jobs when the Bain-controlled company GST steel filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

"In 2001, with GST bankrupt and Romney still CEO of Bain, I stood in front of hundreds of steelworkers in their 50s and 60s, and retirees in their 70s and 80s, and told them Romney and Bain had broken their promises. Jobs, vacation pay, severance, health insurance and pension benefits that were promised - they were all gone," he said. Read his full speech here.

But Foster, according to a former spokesman for GST Steel, never actually worked for the company. "David Foster was never an employee of GST Steel's Kansas City plant. He was employed by the United Steelworkers of America as their regional union director to represent GST Steel, but was not employed at our facility," according to BC Huselton, who was head of HR at GST. Instead, Foster was a union organizer, who negotiated for workers that did work for the company. Foster explained in his remarks that he was an organizer during his dealings with GST Steel.”

Lack of Support, Not Rain, Chased Obama from 74,000-Seat Stadium.

Republican strategist Bradley A. Blakeman, who organized a number of presidential campaign events in his career, tells Newsmax that he simply isn’t buying the Democrats’ argument that the threat of inclement weather chased President Obama’s acceptance speech from a 74,000-seat outdoor stadium to an indoor arena that will accommodate considerably fewer supporters.

Paul Scicchitano writes in NEWSMAX:

“It’s not going to rain. It’s going to be crystal clear,” Blakeman confidently predicted in an interview on Thursday some six hours before President Obama was set to formally accept his party’s nomination for a second term at the slightly more than 20,000-seat Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, which has hosted all of the major DNC speeches.

“Back in 2008 the Obama supporters would have stood in a torrent of rain for the anointed one,” he explained. “The president was messianic. Does that mean that nobody plays football, nobody plays baseball? Why do we have open-air events? If there’s even a hint of rain we don’t play baseball? We don’t play football? We don’t play soccer?”

Blakeman, who oversaw the convention schedule for Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush during the ‘88, ‘92 and 2000 campaigns, said it is routine to set up a back-up location along with the main venue for campaign events, but that decisions to make weather-related changes are typically made on the day of an event, not several days before as in the case of Obama’s acceptance speech.

The speech was moved earlier this week from the Bank of America Stadium, which is the home to the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

He said he “never, never” would have moved an outdoor event like Obama’s speech on a weather-related “threat as it existed this week.” Such decisions would have typically been made after consulting the Secret Service, media and campaign earlier in the day.

“I would have had a backup venue like they did, and I would have pulled the plug probably this morning,” he said. “But not just drizzle. It would have to be something substantial.”

He believes that the Obama campaign doesn’t want to say publicly that it couldn’t fill the outdoor venue. “He wasn’t going to fill the arena. I’ve been told college students were not taking tickets, that they were trying to give people tickets in bars,” said Blakeman. “Then they demanded that the unions come. . . The unions said ‘we’re not going to come and save the day. We’re not going to come and pour union workers into a place that wasn’t built with union labor.’”

With the smaller venue, thousands of hardcore Obama supporters, who had been given credentials for the outdoor event, were suddenly left with no chance of hearing the president’s acceptance speech, a highlight in every campaign.”

The Anointed One’s Speech

When you are in a tight race with your political opponent, you should not recycle a Jobs Act speech that failed to even persuade Democrats in Congress to pass your signature re-election initiative.

But that’s what Barack Obama did. A day after Bill Clinton brought the house down, Barack Obama took to the stage and reduced, reused, and recycled old states of the union speeches that have failed him for four years.

It was boring. It was unoriginal. And it was filled with promises when he hasn’t kept his past promises. Clint Eastwood’s empty chair could have given a better speech than what Barack Obama offered up. And to think he wanted to give that in a stadium.

This was a safe speech you give when you have a lead. This was not a speech you give in a tight race. Don’t believe me? Here are excerpts from his past States of the Union and Jobs Act speech. Lots of platitude, lots of rhetoric, little in detail, and a lot of worn out lines that have failed him before.

I’m honestly stunned he did this, particularly after Bill Clinton.

Listen to these lines. This speech was unoriginal. He stacked it with straw men and ignored his own two major initiatives from the first term: ObamaCare and the Stimulus.

This was a failure and you know it was because he failed to even bring up his own major initiatives. On ObamaCare, he mentioned parts of it, but never defended it or referenced the “Affordable Care Act.”

Thursday night in his speech to Obama belittled Republican tax cuts. Instead, he proposed more of the same with his tired policies: still more subsidizing “green” energy production, still more special tax treatment for select manufacturing industries, and still more money towards public schools and the teachers’ unions. But rather than letting individual investors determine where they can get the highest return for their money, Obama wants to pick the winners himself by using tax dollars to help them out.

American investors were smart enough not to invest their own money into ethanol, solar, or wind energy. Only government invests in businesses where costs greatly exceed revenue

Despite Republican attempts to cut taxes, the United States still has by far the highest marginal corporate income tax rate in the world. The US also has the most progressive tax structure, with the richest Americans paying a larger share of total tax revenue. The richest 10% of Americans pay 45% of the taxes. The average for the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is only 32%.

The top income earners are not the only ones who face penalties from earning more. President Obama has increased the effective penalty even for low- and moderate-income families earning more money. Not only do people lose federal earned income tax credits as well as pay federal and state taxes as their income increases, but they also lose the ever expanding government handouts including housing subsidies, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and food stamps.

The loss of these welfare programs and taxes is so large that when the average person earning between $10,000 and $40,000 makes an additional dollar they lose 82 cents — 53 cents worth of government welfare programs and another 29 cents is lost through reduced tax credits and higher taxes. Who wants to work more when they lose 82 cents of each additional dollar that they earn?

And finally there are the F**k Cardinal Dolan tweets from the tolerant Democrats.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan surprised people on both sides of the aisle last week when he announced that he would be offering the benediction at the Democratic National Convention — an odd occurrence, considering the Catholic Church’s ongoing debate with the Obama administration over the controversial contraceptive mandate.

The Blaze reports:

Following his prayer, detractors went on an anti-Dolan extravaganza — or, as LifeSiteNews puts it, they “tweeted F-bombs” to the Catholic leader. According to the news site, hundreds of angry liberals took to Twitter to deride Dolan. The outlet collected and posted this sampling of tweets. Click here to view some of the vulgar and obscene tweets. (Warning: graphic language)

So with its lineup of Sandra Fluke, Caroline Kennedy, Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren, Jennifer Granholm (the Canadian born ex-governor of Michigan), and a host of other misfits the Democratic Convention came to an ignominious end — thank the God the Democrats don’t believe in. Now it’s on to the debates and more spin from the mainstream media.