If you receive this and you hate it and you don’t want to ever read it no matter what...that is fine; email me back and you will be deleted from my list.

I attempt to post a new issue each Sunday by 5 or 6 pm central standard time (I sometimes fail at this attempt).

I try to include factual material only, along with my opinions (it should be clear which is which). I make an attempt to include as much of this week’s news as I possibly can. The first set of columns are intentionally designed for a quick read.

I do not accept any advertising nor do I charge for this publication. I write this principally to blow off steam in a nation where its people seemed have collectively lost their minds.

George Zimmerman, who admitting to shooting Trayvon Martin, was arrested and charged with 2^nd degree murder, which carries a possible lifetime sentence.

The name of Trayvon Martin was invoked again Wednesday night in Gainesville during an attack by a group that police say stomped on a white man who was scuffling with a black robbery suspect on the Bo Diddley Community Plaza.

I am still hearing people comment about George Zimmerman being larger than Tayvon Martin (the man he killed) and about racial slurs that he made. These things were misreported by the media, even though, apparently, many people are not aware.

President Obama's Department of Agriculture (USDA) committed $5 million today to the construction of a "biogas anaerobic digester" that will use cow manure to heat an ethanol plant and create 15 permanent jobs.

In an unprecedented slap at NASA's endorsement of global warming science, nearly 50 former astronauts and scientists - including the ex-boss of the Johnson Space Center - claim the agency is on the wrong side of science and must change course or ruin the reputation of the world's top space agency.

James O'Keefe as young white man without ID offered Eric Holder's ballot. He slips in the words fast and furious” into the conversation as well.

Just in case you thought Eric Holder did nothing, he has been prosecuting pro-life demonstrators, including one who handed out anti-abortion literature in front of an abortion clinic. A federal judge required the DOJ to pay her $120,000.

Speaking of enforcement, the Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president's healthcare law.

President Obama is following "Celebrity Sideboob" on Twitter? I bet this changes today.

Apparently, 1 or more secret service agents were soliciting call girls in Columbia and one was reported when he got into an altercation over the cost. Agents were sent back to the U.S.

Teachers Union in New York City forces city to reinstate 14 teachers accused of sexual misconduct involving students.

A mole inside FoxNews puts out a column 3:11 on Tuesday; mole is identified less than 24 hours later.

Remember that lady, whose husband was an engineer and could not find a job; and President Obama could not believe it. “Send me your resume,” the President offered. Nope. No job yet, 2 months later.

In August 2011, Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to develop plans for improving workforce diversity. A 2012 photo of Obama's "army" (his Chicago campaign staff), reveals a stunning lack of diversity.

A local Planned Parenthood abortion business in California is setting up its own 40 Days of Prayer for the local abortion center, copying the 40 Days for Life campaign, which recently resulted in saving the lives of more than 700 unborn children from abortion. Pray for more abortions. That’s California.

President Obama's landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation's budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

Despite the full-court press to pass the Buffet Rule, the federal government is currently suing one of Buffet’s companies for past due taxes.

Those who want to operated concessions on federal property will have to be in compliance with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program. Proposal packages require applicants to "Describe how your proposal supports these goals, including measures that will encourage healthy options for food and beverages and active, exercise-oriented recreation."

The GSA (General Services Administration) official tasked with organizing a now-infamous $822,000 Las Vegas conference plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights ahead of a scheduled Monday grilling on the Hill.

Pro-Palestinian group posts more than 200 "Eviction Notices" on dorm rooms of Jewish students in Florida university.

Pakistani Man receives death threats, forced to flee home after cleric deems moustache "Un-Islamic".

There are reeducation/prison camps all over North Korea, housing over 100,000 of their people. Their crimes may include, criticism of the leadership of North Korea, contacting South Koreans, listening to South Korean broadcasts. This is based upon the testimony of many former prisoners. Both Bush and Obama have ignored what is going on there. Video. There appear to be gas chambers.

President Barack Obama: “...part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacation.”

Obama's campaign website: "The Buffett Rule would require everyone to pay their fair share - a key step to reduce the deficit and invest in what we need to grow and strengthen the economy. Mitt Romney's alternative is to give millionaires and billionaires trillions of dollars in tax breaks

paid for by either increasing the deficit or by cutting programs critical to the middle class and economic growth." The Buffet rule might bring in $5 billion/year; that is 1-2 day’s deficit spending.

Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina: "The Buffett Rule would reduce the deficit while helping to pay for investments in education, clean energy, jobs, and other programs that will help our economy grow."

President Obama: "What drags down our entire economy is the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else."

Press secretary Jay Carney: "[N]o one ever suggested that implementing the Buffett Rule would contribute in large measure to reducing the deficit."

President Obama when selling the Buffet rule last year, “We also stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.”

Davie Axelrod on why Obama doesn't offer to pay higher taxes: "That's not the way we operate our tax system, okay? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism." The President’s tax rate was 20.5%, as he took a lot of (normal) deductions.

Sen. Charles Schumer: "There's no class warfare involved. It's a question simply of fairness."

President Obama: "So these investments - in things like education and research and health care - they haven't been made as some grand scheme to redistribute wealth from one group to another. This is not some socialist dream." Heck no! This is Reaganomics 2.0

David Axelrod: "What's changed is, we had these massive tax cuts in the last decade that were skewed to the wealthy and it helped promote huge deficits . . . and the American people know that, and they know that they haven't benefitted nearly to the degree that people at the top did."

President Obama on his Republican opponent: "Instead of moderating their views even slightly, instead of saying, you know what, what we did really didn't work and we almost had a second Great Depression, and maybe we should try something different, they have doubled down." The Great Depression was moderated over by a Democrat who prolonged the Great Depression, so that, while nations all around the world, came out of their recession within a year or so, the U.S. stayed in a depression for over a decade.

Barack Obama: “And once Michelle and I had our girls, she gave it her all to balance raising a family and pursuing a career - and something that could be very difficult on her, because I was gone a lot. Once I was in the state legislature, I was teaching, I was practicing law, I'd be traveling. And we didn't have the luxury for her not to work." Mrs. Obama made $316,000/year then. I guess Barry forgot to mention that part?

Joe Biden, to crying baby at rally: “I don’t blame her for crying—she is going to inherit it [the Romney economic plan]—she’s gonna pay for it. That’s one smart baby.” So, it was not the $16 trillion in debt she would be inheriting?

Joe Biden: "To put it bluntly, we think they're [Republicans] out of step with American values."

Vice President Joe Biden of former Saturday Night Live comedian, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.: "He has been one of the leading legal scholars."

President Obama, on the Buffet Rule: “Now, this is not just about fairness. This is also about growth. It's about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs. And it's about whether we as a country are willing to pay for those investments.“ Because our nation always grows as government confiscates more and more wealth?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: "The overall cost of energy to the consumer has actually come down, not risen"

WH Press Secretary Jay Carney: “We talked a lot about jobs numbers on Friday, the fact that 120,000 jobs created, which made for the best

quarter since 2006 in jobs created, came in under expectations, and there was a lot of discussion about whether or not that was a good number or a bad number. The fact of the matter is under President George W. Bush, the average monthly job creation figure was 67,000 jobs.” Take out the two years of the Democratic Congress, and this is much higher. Note the graph above about net jobs gained or lost; when the Dems captured the House and Senate in 2006, notice what happens to the job growth.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: "She [referring to a law student] wants to devote her career to working on social justice issues, which is why she's going to law school. And she can go ahead and pursue that dream now because she no longer has to worry about getting health coverage.”

Labor secretary Hilda Solis: "We need to understand what the president is fighting for - he is fighting for you and (sic) I. And it's about fairness - it's about fairness in the workplace it's about fairness in education and it's about fairness about what services are provided by government. And if we can't have a say-so in that then this isn't the dream that all of us aspire to be a part of...Because if people aren't paying their taxes - those that can afford it - the billionaires - the millionaires - even the folks as you heard yesterday that were in the White House that agreed to pay more. They want to pay more because they know it's their obligation. Because that's what we stand by - those principles. That's very very important for us to understand what the president is fighting for - for fairness.”

After suggesting that the “Buffet Rule” be renamed the “Reagan Rule” the other side of Obama’s mouth said: "So we've tried this trickle-down experiment before [tax cuts]...It doesn't work.”

Rev. Al Sharpton: "We believe in Jesus, they crucified him and never had a charge. They never charged, there wasn't no crime on his indictment. So we've got to deal with the inequities of the criminal justice system. The fact that we (black people) are overly-incarcerated, the fact that we go to court and are treated differently, and the fact that when we're victimized there is not the same response. That's what Trayvon was about."

A South Jersey man about those who complained of his American flag with the visage of Obama on it: "In Acacia, there are some angry, maybe even evil-minded people about Obama."

Liberal radio personality Thom Hartmann: "The so called stand your ground and shoot first laws, brought to you by the NRA and Wal-Mart, peddled to state legislators, Republican state legislators, by the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, funded by the Koch brothers. That's pretty amazing, when you see a fairly direct line from right-wing billionaires funding front groups that are actually writing our nation's laws to a dead kid in Florida."

Van Jones: “I've never apologized or stood down for any of the stuff I did when I was younger, because you should have the right in this country to be young, to think wild thoughts and embrace utopian ideas and all that kind of stuff. I want other people who are young and want to challenge orthodoxies to feel that you can do that and you can also move on with your life. The people who criticize me, I've done more to help this country in the past two months, fighting to cut mortgages for people who are underwater, fighting to get student-loan relief for people, I've done more for my country in the past two months than a lot of these people have done in their whole lives.”

President Obama in Cartagena, Colombia: "We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country. . . and these are laws that potentially would allow someone to be stopped and picked up and asked where their citizenship papers are based on an assumption...I can promise that I will try to do it [emigration reform] in the first year of my second term. I want to try this year."

President Obama: "[Kanye West is] a Chicago guy. Smart. He's very talented...He is a jackass. But he's talented."

Political Punch headline: “Obama Makes Tax Week Push for `Sensible' Buffett Rule” Most of the article could have been written by Obama. Although there was some discussion of the Buffet rule, the negative points were at the end of the article.

Political Punch headline: “Obama Calls for Taxes on Wealthy to Fund Middle Class `Investments'”

Seattle Times headline and sub-headline for an AP story: “Obama says nation needs 'Buffett Rule' President Barack Obama says the nation can't afford to keep giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans "who don't need them and didn't even ask for them."”

Yahoo News: headline “Obama Makes Tax Week Push for 'Sensible' Buffett Rule” Criticism begins in paragraph 7.

Times’ Joe Klein headline regarding Obama’s reelection: “A Choice, Not a Referendum.” As if no one is going to pay attention to Obama’s record of the past 4 years.

First words in a CNN article: “Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen appeared today...”

In this same article, which was a discussion we have a quote by Joe Johns, CNN Senior Correspondent: “On Twitter, Romney's message man Eric Fehrnstrom incorrectly labeling Rosen an Obama adviser accuses her of going on CNN to debut a new kill Ann strategy...” Lots in this discussion about Obama having the best woman policy and about attacks on Michelle Obama; but, as for suggesting there is any connection between Obama and Rosen, clearly there was none.

WH press secretary Jay Carney on Hilary Rosen’s 35 visits to the White House (5 directly with the president): “I don't know that Hilary Rosen - I know three personally, women named Hilary Rosen, so I'm not sure that those represent the person we're talking about necessarily. So I really can't comment on the number of visits, since I'm not sure that's accurate.”

Karen Finney, MSNBC political analyst, who seems to live in this other reality: “Two thoughts. One, the number, I can't wait to see all the fact-checks coming out of the DNC because the number of, I won't call them lies but misinformation that came out of Mr. Romney's mouth was stunning. And, you know, here's the other problem: the picture that he was painting of an America, you know, restoring an America. I kept thinking, ‘Well, it sounds like you want to go back to a time when women couldn't vote, blacks couldn't vote, we don't have.’ I mean, it just didn't sound like this was the America that we all know and love.”

The New York Times: "...those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president's top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times."

The US novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison of the death of Trayvon Martin: "They keep saying, we have to have a conversation about race in this country. Well, this is the conversation. . . The police are ill-trained and they're corrupt, and they're protected, and that's what they do. All over. I don't mean all police, but the system itself is protective. So yeah, they're going to lie."

Louis Farrakhan, The Nation of Islam's leader: "White folks don't produce black children - except [if] it's a white woman with a black man or a black man with a white woman and that's the end of your race. So you're dying a natural death these days. And without an AK47 'cause the brother ain't shooting no blanks."

Members of a crowd in Grainsville, FL, as 3 of them stomped on the hands of a white man who was trying to detain a purse snatcher: "Trayvon!"

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.): "While this chapter in the Trayvon Martin case may be over, we still need to have an honest and open discussion of the hard truths that led to this tragedy. Trayvon's death must not be in vain. Racial profiling still exists in our country...These are difficult conversations to have, but we must have them so that there will be no more tragedies like Trayvon's."

ACLU's Washington Legislative Office director Laura Murphy: "There were so few black men in our neighborhood that I had to send out an email to my neighbors, saying, `Please do not call the police, because if you see a young black man walking around, that's my child.' So Trayvon Martin affects all of us."

“Trayvon Martin” stickers put on mailboxes in Wisconsin: “Revenge” and “Kill Whitey.”

Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright: "I've been preaching the same way since I was licensed to preach in 1959, ordained in 1967. Barack was in elementary school when I was ordained. CBS, ABC, MSNBC and Fox News spent $4,000 each buying 20 years of my sermons so they could hear what Barack Obama heard for 20 years."

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina email: "Romney's positions are the most radically anti-women of any candidate in a generation," citing Romney's pro-life position and desire to pull federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Hilary Rosen: “Can we just get rid of this word, "war on women"? The Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it - this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using, but they're actually the ones spreading it.” Below are two items available for sale at the DNC store.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA

March 8, 2012

"I'm here, once again, to stand against the ongoing War on Women . . ."

Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI

February 28, 2012

"To my Republican colleagues, shame on you for waging your hypocritical war on women . . ."

Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-TX

March 21, 2012

"Despite these accomplishments in women's health, the war on women continues in Texas . . ."

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA

March 10, 2011

"Declaring a war on women by eliminating family planning services and punishing the one in five women across America who visit a Planned Parenthood clinic?"

Rep Barbara Lee, D-CA

May 3, 2011

"Instead of another very cynical attempt to repeal health reform and perpetrate their war on women . . ."

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY

March 21, 2012

"I'm standing here today, equally proud to defend that law from the ongoing war on women . . ."

Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI

March 29, 2012

"Planned Parenthood, in particular, has been unfairly targeted in this war on women . . ."

Rep. Steve Israel, D-NY

March 26, 2012

"I will continue to urge my Republican colleagues to stop their war on women and seniors . . ."

Rep. Laura Richardson, D-CA

March 21, 2012

". . . the GOP's war on women stands in stark contrast to the Administration's goal of ensuring that women have access to the healthcare services they need to remain healthy."

Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-MD

April 14, 2011

"One would restrict funds going to Planned Parenthood - women's health care issues - which I call the war on women . . ."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY

February 17, 2012

"and now they are making a war on the majority of America, women . . ."

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-NJ

March 21, 2012

"But beyond that, over the last year or so, we've seen the Republicans essentially declare war on women . . ."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA

March 03, 2011

"In closing, we have to stop this war against women and against children . . ."

From:

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/295899/rosen-only-republicans-spread-war-women-term

Convicted rapist Mike Tyson on the Zimmerman/Martin case: “I wasn't there, I don't know what happened....It's a disgrace that man [Zimmerman] hasn't been shot yet. Forget about him being arrested." Apparently, Mike was being interviewed to become an NBC anchor?

Full quote: “I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. But it's just so widespread and overt what happened. Even though this is the best country in the world, certain laws in this country are a disgrace to a nation of savages. It's a majority versus a minority. That's the way God planned it. He didn't want to do something about it, He wanted us to do something about it. And if we don't, it's gonna stay this way. We have to continue tweeting, we have to continue marching, we have to continue fighting for Trayvon Martin. If that's not the case, he was killed in vain, and we're just waiting for it to happen to our children. He'll have gotten away with impunity. It's a disgrace that man hasn't been dragged out of his house and tied to a car and taken away. That's the only kind of retribution that people like that understand. It's a disgrace that man hasn't been shot yet. Forget about him being arrested - the fact that he hasn't been shot yet is a disgrace. That's how I feel personally about it."

Dolly Parton: “[I am asked] ‘Would you run for president.’ No, we’ve got enough boobs in the White house.” Really, she said that. To Huckabee.

Barack Obama 08/28/08: ”If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from….You make a big election about small things.”

DNC strategist and CNN analyst Hilary Rosen, in 2008, deriding Republican attacks against

Michelle Obama: "You know essentially, you've taken on sort of the most sympathetic person in the candidate's realm, the wife, who is taking care of the children, supporting the husband, doing everything she can because she loves him."

Former Pro Bowl running back Clinton Portis, commenting on a sexual harassment case involving the New York Jets in 2010: "You put a woman (in a locker room) and you give her a choice of 53 athletes, somebody got to be appealing to her. . . .You know, somebody got to spark her interest or she's gonna want somebody. I don't know what kind of woman won't, if you get to go and look at 53 men's packages." VP Joe Biden will attend a fundraiser headlined by Portis.

President Barack Obama: "If it'll help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we can call it the Reagan Rule instead of the Buffett Rule." The “Buffet Rule” would require a 30% minimum tax on income of more than $1 million. Reagan cut taxes, he cut capital gain taxes (which is what Obama wants to raise for millionaires), and he cut out many of the tax loopholes. Obama is essentially doing the exact opposite, so, in Obama-world, that is why it should be called the “Reagan Rule.”

Julian Epstein, FoxNews contributor: “In 2005, Barney Frank was proposing changes in FNMA and FHLMC.” See this (poor quality, but good info about what was really happening).

Bossip [Black gossip] website headline: “Ho Sit Down: Black Republican Allen "Uncle Tom" West Attacks Obama And Says Democrats Are Nothin' But Communists”

New Black Panther leader Michelle Williams: "I just want to say to all the listeners on this phone call, that if you are having any doubt about getting suited, booted, and armed up for this race war that we're in that has never ended, let me tell you somethin'; the thing that's about to happen these honkies, these crackers, these pigs, these people, these motherf___s; it has been long overdue."

New Black Panther leader Chawn Kweli: "Yeah, what she said was right; we got to suit up and boot up and get prepared for the war that we're in. This stuff got to boil over, and.there happened to be bloodshed involved with revolution; true revolution means some bloodshed, so there`s blood being spilled because there's a new life that is beyond this bloodshed. There is a new reality that is built upon your original African principles and spiritualities and values and norms that is beyond this bloodshed. But we gotta go do it."

Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston), the Democrat chair of the Maine legislature's Moderate Caucus: "Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams."

Always classy: Libs attack Ann Romney as `c__t,' `b__h,' `whore' The lightest comment among this group (which I won’t carry here) is: “Ann Romney is a bad bitch.”

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson: "I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria." He’s not a Muslim, but he is equally confused. A Christian church in Nigeria, while conducting an Easter service, was targeted by a car bombing that killed 39. On Christmas Day, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, attacked a Catholic church, killing more than 40 people.

Egyptian TV host Hussam: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a matter of undisputable science. There was a meeting of the Freemasons in France, and a French woman managed to smuggle out some dangerous documents, which circulated in the meeting...We have read The Protocols, and we have detected the despicable, hellish, and Satanic plan to dominate the world and to humiliate the peoples and the nations.”

The Muslim Brotherhood's main presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater: "Everywhere, the Brothers are working to restore Islam in its all-encompassing conception to the lives of people. Thus the mission is clear: restoring Islam in its all-encompassing conception, subjugating people to God, instituting the religion of God, the Islamization of life, empowering of God's religion, establishing the renaissance of the ummah [worldwide Muslim nation] on the basis of Islam. Every aspect of life is to be Islamized."

47-year-old teacher Tarmizi Mohammad: "Women who don't wear headscarves are inviting men to touch their breasts."

President Obama: "I'm a firm believer that whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, that you're a patriot, you care about this country, you love this country. And so I'm not somebody who, when we're in a political contest, suggests somehow that one side or the other has a monopoly on love of country." Except when he called George W. Bush unpatriotic because of the high debt and deficit.

Roger Simon, Politico: “The degree to which the Obama campaign was fearful of Hilary Rosen's comments: they really tied her to the top of the family car.”

Statement signed by 7 Apollo astronauts, a deputy associate administrator, several scientists, and even the deputy director of the space shuttle program: "We feel that NASA's advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA's current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself."

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: "The [Florida stand-your-ground] laws are not the kind of laws a civilized society should have and the [National Rifle Association] should be ashamed of themselves. This has nothing to do with gun-owners' rights. This has nothing to do with the Second Amendment...Plain and simple, this is just trying to give people a license to murder."

Weasel Zippers’ editor comments: “Easy for a guy surrounded by armed bodyguards 24/7 to bash Stand Your Ground laws.”

Israeli pamphlet to be handed to flotilla protestors: "First solve the real problems in the region, [like the situations in Syria, Iran and Gaza], and then come back to Israel to share your experience with us."

Hilary Rosen, a partner at SKDKnickerbocker, the PR firm of former Obama communications director Anita Dunn: “What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, ‘Well, my wife tells me what women really care about are economic issues.’ And, ‘When I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.’ Guess what? His wife has never actually worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing-in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and how do-why we worry about their future.”

Karl Rove: “[Hilary Rosen] went into the war [on women], guns blazing and growing grenades.” [quoted from memory].

Dana Loesch: “Yes, there is something old-fashioned about the belief that a homemaker couldn't understand the complexity of the economics affecting her household. Rosen apparently subscribes to the Linda Hirschman worldview, one that posits women are only as valuable as their contributions outside the home, unrelated to children and family. Rearing up the next generation that will someday run the world is woefully under appreciated. From an overflow of the heart the mouth speaks and Rosen makes it clear that her prejudice against women who stay home stems from a lack of respect and appreciation for what those women do. If the goal of feminism is choice, Rosen betrays the mutual respect amongst members of the female sex by degrading the choices of other women. Considering Ann Romney is a breast cancer survivor who reared five children and played the backbone to her successful husband, I'm not sure this is a battle Democrats want to pick -- especially with an opponent like Ann Romney, a breast cancer survivor living with MS who raised five children.”

Paula Priesse, April 13^th: Husband after dinner: "So what did you do today dear?" Wife: "Let's see . got up, fed & changed baby, made school lunches, made breakfast for you & the kids, did laundry, changed baby, took baby with me to dry cleaners & grocery store, came home, unloaded groceries, fed & changed baby, lunch, folded laundry, paid bills, TV repairman came, fed & changed baby, kids home, took daughter to soccer practice, helped son with school project, picked up daughter, cooked & ate dinner, fed & changed baby, did dishes & gave baby a bath." Husband: "TV repairman?" Wife: "Yep . threw the remote at the TV when that IDIOT Dem Hilary Rosen suggested I never worked a day in my life!"

Michelle Obama tweet: “Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected. -mo.”

DNC Chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz tweet: "Disappointed in @hilaryr's comments. As a mother of 3 there's no doubt that raising children is work."

DNC Chief Wasserman Schultz: “Hilary Rosen does not now nor has she ever worked during my tenure for the Democratic National Committee and does not work for the campaign, does not have a contract with either the campaign or the committee. And as David Axelrod pointed out, she has a contract with CNN as a contributor and they actually released a statement yesterday saying they prohibit their contributors from having formal relationships, contractual relationships with campaigns.”

Joe Pounder, the director at the RNC: ‘[The] DNC has paid $120,000 to Rosen's firm since 2011 for both a "communications consultant" and "media consultant." ’

David Axelrod: “[Hilary Rosen] actually is your employee, not ours. She's a, uh... She works for CNN. I think CNN would not allow her to be an operative for our campaign or the DNC. She's not. She never has been.”

Rush Limbaugh: "Publicly, the White House wants you to think they've gotten rid of Hilary Rosen and thrown her overboard, but just know this: She was paid over $120,000 last year by the Democrat National Committee."

WH Press secretary Jay Carney: "It is certainly the case that Hilary Rosen democratic strategist has visited the White House on a number of occasions for large events, large meetings having to do with communications, things like that." One of the figures I have read is, a Hilary Rosen has been to the White House 35 times.

Jay Carney, on the number of times Rosen visited the White House: “I know three personally name Hilary Rosen, so I’m not sure that those represent the person we’re talking about.”

Beltway Confidential on Controversial Democratic strategist and CNN contributor, Hilary Rosen, was hired by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to coach her on media appearances.

Hot Air on Rosen’s 35 visits to the White House. Doubt that we will ever get to the bottom of that, or find out who the other “two” Hilary Rosen’s are.

Kevin Madden, Mitt Romney Campaign Adviser: Well, if you're looking at how we spur job creation and we spur economic growth that's going to help everybody, and particularly women, you have to look at how the private sector has a role in that. That's the most important way to help get the economic growth that we need to help working women, women who are single parents. That's the most important thing. And I think the big contrast that we're going to see in this -- in this campaign is whether or not you want to -- you believe that you should put all of your faith in the government or whether or not you can put faith into the private sector and provide more certainty so that greater job creation and greater prosperity helps everybody.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Editor the Nation: No one's talking about putting all one's faith in government, but government has an important role to play in shared prosperity. Private-public partnerships are terrific. The administration wanted it with the infrastructure bank, which would have put thousands of people to work. But the Republicans are roadblocks in that process.

Melody Barnes, Former Obama Domestic Policy Adviser: ... to Katrina's point, all through this -- this first term, what I saw, sitting in the White House, is that one policy initiative after another to try and spur job growth, to try and help the states, on jobs often and frequently occupied by women, was pushed back on by Congress. Efforts around equal pay pushed back on by Congress. About seven, nine Republicans voted for that initiative when the president signed it the first piece of legislation he signed when he walked in the door.

Paul Gigot, Editorial Page Editor Wall Street Journal: We've had the largest expansion of federal government spending since the nineteen, I mean, enormous that I can remember in this administration. The first two years it had open field, Democratic, vast Democratic majorities. You got what you wanted. You got a huge expansion of federal government. How is that working out for the economic security of women?

KMOV-STL's Larry Conners: "The economy is a big issue and concern for folks. I mean, the unemployment, trying to make ends meet, gas prices, food prices going up. Some of our viewers are complaining, they get frustrated, even angered, when they see the first family jetting around, different vacations and so forth, sometimes maybe they think under color of state business and that you're out of touch, that you don't really know what they're experiencing right now." Prices on chart adjusted for inflation.

President Barack Obama: "Well, I don't know how many viewers you're talking about that say that."

Obama: "But the fact of the matter is, I think if you look at my track record, I'm raising a family here. When we travel, we got to travel through Secret Service, and Air Force One, that's not my choice. I think most folks understand how hard I work and how hard this administration is working on behalf of the American people."

Conners: "Well, of course, with all due respect, the President side stepped that question. No one is questioning his need to travel on Air Force One or have security. The questions being raised are the first family taking so many vacations, when and where, at taxpayer expense."

Constituent: "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists?"

Congressman Allen West: "That's a fair question. I believe there's about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party." Taken from The Hill video and text.

The communist Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Islamist Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) Issued the statement: "Calling fellow Members of Congress `communists' is reminiscent of the days when Joe McCarthy divided Americans with name-calling and modern-day witch hunts that don't advance policies to benefit people's lives."

Libero Della Piana, a vice-chairman of the national Communist Part: "I just think it's an absurd way to cast a shadow over his colleagues. It's kind of a sad ploy."

Here is how West actually answered: "That's a fair question. I believe there's about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party." Dramatic pause. "it's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus."

New Jersey governor Chris Christie: "Government's telling them stop dreaming, stop striving, we'll take care of you. We're turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally. We'll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check."

Stephen Forbes, succinctly: “Small government, not big government—less waste.”

Writer, radio personality Dana Loesch: “Democrats fabricated this narrative and they and their surrogates continue to perpetuate it in the media. Women are only as valuable for as long as they can be used to corral votes -- nothing is more evident of this then by claiming the GOP is waging a war on women while simultaneously insulting women who choose to stay home.”

Mitt Romney: “He [Obama] has lost 800,000 jobs during his presidency. And by the way, do you know what percentage of those jobs lost were lost by women? Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women. His policies have been, really, a war on women.”

Jodi Miller: “The Obama campaign has begun airing ads linking Mitt Romney to Big Oil. Obama is paying for the news with campaign cash he has received from BP.”

Jodi Miller: “The Connecticut Senate has voted in favor of abolishing the state’s death penalty. Sources in the legislature said, ‘Now that we have Obamacare, the death penalty really isn’t necessary.’ ”

Jodi Miller: “A photo of President Obama using the Vulcan solute from Star Trek has surfaced on twitter. And today, Democrats accuse Republicans of a war on Klingons.”

Rush Limbaugh: "I don't believe this notion that Romney's behind Obama by big points in women. That's from an ABC poll. ABC was number 17 in accuracy in the 2008 presidential race. They rated all polls throughout the presidential campaign plus the final one: ABC was 17th on the list in accuracy."

Rush Limbaugh: “Warren Buffett owes $1 billion in back taxes. He is fighting it. He doesn't think he should pay it, but publicly he's out there saying, "I'm not paying enough in taxes."”

Rush Limbaugh: "Did you notice Zimmerman actually turned himself in? I have to say, so far at least, Zimmerman seems to be the most cooperative racist, profiling, trigger-happy, Rambo-wannabe hothead I have ever heard about."

Rush Limbaugh: "If you made a liberal sit down and watch Leave It To Beaver today, can you imagine what would happen to them?"

Rush Limbaugh: "You know, the GSA, the General Services Administration, the stuff we're learning about these party animals? This is Animal House. This is Animal House in the regime. The GSA could spend $5 billion on one outing to Las Vegas and then do videos to show us how and to rub our noses in it."

Rush Limbaugh: "For crying out loud, if you believe the news, everybody is one trip to the doctor away from a terminal disease diagnosis. We're all gonna die tomorrow unless we all have health care."

Rush Limbaugh: "The Bush-era tax cuts were followed by 52 consecutive months of job growth. That, by the way, is a record in US history. The Bush tax cuts helped to create more than eight million new jobs. That's close to a record in the period of time. The Bush tax cuts brought the unemployment rate down to 4.5%."

Rush Limbaugh: "The previous 200-plus years have been the most successful in the history of the human race, in terms of organizing a population into a nation. This country, the greatest ever because of its recognition and celebration of liberty and freedom and the nature of our creation and the yearning of our natural spirit. All of this led to the greatest nation in history that Barack Obama sees as essentially a crime, a nation where there was never any social justice, a nation where there was never any economic fairness."

Rush Limbaugh: "Global warming and the race industry have one thing in common, and that is incidents which prove their allegations or lend credence make them happy."

Rush Limbaugh: "If you're an insurance company, this is the greatest day of your life. The federal government, in association with the IRS, is making everybody buy health insurance. Whoa. If you sold Happy Meals, wouldn't you love it if every American had to buy a Happy Meal? Wouldn't you support that if you were McDonald's?"

Rush Limbaugh: "Every policy Obama has in place is an obstacle to job creation."

Rush Limbaugh: "There are no facts to back up this assertion that what drags down the economy is 'the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.' What drags down the economy is Obama."

Rush Limbaugh: "How can you even say that something 2,700 pages is a law? It's impossible for the average American to know how to comply with this law and not be in breach of it."

Rush Limbaugh: "This entire regime has been a lie. It is an ongoing lie. That's what I said back on August 20th, nearly two years ago of 2010 about the CBO and the Democrats and Obama claiming that Obamacare was gonna reduce the deficit by $118 billion. It never had a prayer of reducing the deficit, and common sense is all you need to know that."

Rush Limbaugh: "You need to continually ask yourself what does the IRS have to do with health care? Why is the Obama administration hiring 4,000 new agents for the implementation? What in the world does the IRS, a tax collection agency, have to do with curing diabetes? What does the IRS have to do with treating cancer? What does the IRS have to do with making sure that, if you're in an automobile accident, you get the best coverage in the ER?"

Part of Chris Wallace’s interview of David Axelrod, which was probably the toughest grilling I have seen of Axelrod. I assume the rest will be posted sometime today or tomorrow.

Kirk Cameron spoke of marriage between one man and one woman, which started a firestorm from Hollywood, including a goofy video (vulgarity warming).

Will Cain Schools CNN guest who defended 'substance' of Hilary Rosen's words. Video and transcript.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd used 8 variations on the phrase "manufactured controversy" no fewer than eight times in dismissing the controversy around Rosen's "Ann Romney never worked a day in her life" remarks.

Occupy Wall Street spring training, replete with bunny hops and group hugs. I’m serious. Related vids here.

3 actors, hoping to become a part of the 1%, try to convince us that they are a committed part of the 99%. They’re actors.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz calls Zimmerman Affidavit: "Irresponsible, Unethical...Everything Is Completely Consistent With Self-Defense. Everything." Video and text.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan asserts that Jesus was a black man and a Muslim. Video and story.

1) Millionaires tend to have money to invest, and most do not like to leave this money just laying around For this reason, they invest their money in a number of different investment vehicles, designed, unlike “government investments” to have a return on their investments. This money is used to invest in expanding business and start up businesses often; and this is the reason why some businesses are able to succeed, because there is a rich investor backing them. You see, often people have ideas, but they do not always have the money to turn those ideas into businesses.

2) I can’t emphasize this enough; there is a blank space open on the 2012 presidential election for an unnamed independent candidate.

3) When I discuss politics with a liberal, they will defend nearly everything that Obama says and does. How come? I would never take the same approach with Bush or with Romney. In fact, I would not defend everything the Reagan ever did either.

4) When I saw this photograph, I was quite surprised. It is common to take photos of Obama with a halo and/or with light shining down on him from above (Image google “Obama halo”); but with rabbit ears? This is a photo that would be snapped in a parallel universe.

President Obama has stated, “We didn't have the luxury for her [Michelle Obama] not to work'” In 2005, when Obama began serving in the U.S. Senate (and his daughters turned 4 and 7), he and his wife were earning a combined annual income of $479,062. Barack Obama was paid a salary of $162,100 by the U.S. taxpayers, and Michelle Obama was paid $316,962 to handle community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center. You cannot raise a family on $162K/year? Even back to the year 2000, they were filing an alternative minimum tax form.

Obama reports 2011 income of $789,000, paid 20.5% tax rate while in the 35% tax bracket. How many times has Barack Obama spoken about leading by example?

The top 1% makes almost 20% of all U.S. income and pays almost 40% of all income taxes.

According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18% less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000).

According to a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University: CBS had the most positive portrayals of the Republican candidates - 57% positive vs. 43% negative, partly because of its highly favorable (89% positive) evaluations of Ron Paul. FOX had the most balanced overall coverage with 52% positive vs. 48% negative comments. NBC was the most negative overall with 27% positive vs. 73% negative coverage, followed closely by ABC with 32% positive vs. 68% negative coverage. Both NBC and ABC featured 85% negative comments on Romney. I posted this before, but Bret Baird of FoxNews gave Romney one of the toughest interviews that he has had.

Rush Limbaugh: “Eighty-eight million working-age Americans out of work is larger than the total population of Germany, 82 million people.”

President Obama has been saying over and over that we in the United States only have 2% of the world’s oil resources. This is a myth.

More Republicans (42 percent) than Democrats (32 percent) or independents (34 percent) say

A 56 percent majority of voters think the president was trying to intimidate the Supreme Court when he publicly commented on the health care case and referred to the justices as "an unelected group of people." Forty percent disagree.

At AP, only one of five articles on 'Buffett Rule' notes that It would raise Just $5 billion per year. That’s not important?

Here's the rule; if a Republican does something bad, you put the words "GOP" or "Republican" in the headline or in the first paragraph. If you can tie him to any important Republican, then do so in the first 32 paragraphs. However, if a Democrat does something wrong, you either place the word "Democrat" near the end of the story or you omit it entirely.

Atlantic Monthly does an 1800 word report on John Edwards' trial. How many times are we told that Edwards is a Democrat? Oops, forgot to mention that. How many times is the author identified as a Democrat...left out that little factoid as well.

Btw, it is not just this Atlantic story. Others have also forgotten that Edwards was a DEMOCRATIC presidential and vice presidential candidate.

NBC and CBS's evening and morning shows on Thursday and Friday finally discovered the ugly comments made by a Democratic operative against Ann Romney, 24 hours later when they knew they had to cover the story. CBS Evening News reporters did their best to minimize it. Correspondent Nancy Cordes insisted that Hillary Rosen, who knocked Mrs. Romney for "never working," made sure to stress that the woman "is not connected to the Obama campaign, but Republicans called out the campaign anyway."

Anchor Scott Pelley offered a similarly dismissive attitude: "Democrats and Republicans tripped over one another to see who could denounce with the most force what most everyone agrees was a dumb comment from a single pundit." Cordes pointed out an 18 point lead Barack Obama enjoys among women over Romney in one poll. On Friday's Good Morning America, reporter John Berman stressed this theme: "...Mitt Romney trails the President by 19 points among women. 19 points."

“Unbiased” NPR's Scott Horsley sounded like a White House spokesman when he defended the President’s economic record on All Things Considered.

The “War on Women” took a turn this week, in favor of the Republicans. It heated up and was talked about everywhere. SNL does a cold open on Romney, for about the 15^th time, even though he did little or nothing this week (apart from give a couple of good speeches). Did SNL even mention this “War on Women”?

The Reagan Rule = increase taxes on the rich, increase the capital gains tax for some, leave all loopholes in place.

Stabilizing debt and deficits for the next decade = allowing the debt and deficits to explode over the next 20–40 years.

The Reagan Rule = decrease taxes for everyone, decrease capital gains taxes, and reduce the number of loopholes.

This week, the “War on Women” changed in the direction of the Republicans, when Hilary Rosen said that Anne Romney had not worked a day in her life. Although the media is acting as if Rosen has no connection to the White House, it is clear that there is one.

Democrats have to destroy conservative Blacks, Hispanics and Women who put themselves out there on the national stage. We have seen how Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Alberto Gonzales, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Herman Cain were all beat down as far as the press could, without seeming too dramatically partisan. They cannot have a national Republican leader of the wrong gender or race, or the press can no longer pound Republicans for being the party of white males.

Obama has to sell the Buffet rule and the War on Women. He cannot come out and run on his record. He cannot say, “And you know what the last 4 years have been like? I want to give your 4 more years like those.” Contrast, for instance, Republican Governor John Kasich, who, when given half a chance, will tell you what he has been doing as a governor in Ohio. When a person has a good record, they are going to tell you about it over and over again; when they don’t, they simply attack their opponent and bring up phoney issues.

I mentioned 6 months or a year ago how Sarah Palin was “running for” Energy Secretary. She was on a FoxNews special on energy in the U.S. over the weekend, and has been asked by Sean Hannity if she’d like to be Energy Secretary. She was like a dog staring at a fresh bone. She wants that job.

If this was a group of whites beating a black man while yelling "Zimmerman" it would be national front page news. Headline and subhead from Weasel Zippers.

By almost any standard, Zimmerman's legal defense in the Trayvon Martin shooting case has been a sort of ongoing cautionary tale for exactly what not to do if you're facing potentially serious criminal charges.

Almost immediately, within around thirty-seven minutes after the shooting, Zimmerman was already waiving his right to an attorney. He then proceeded to interview with the police for several hours without any legal representation present.

Then the next day, still without any attorney present or legal advice, Zimmerman took the police back to the scene of the shooting at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, and reenacted what happened on the evening of February 26th with them, step-by-step on video.

Had Zimmerman's narrative and recounting of the details of that evening been any less than 100% consistent, that's the moment when everything would have fallen apart for him - sometime right around February 27th. The police had every reason and opportunity to document and doggedly pursue any differences they saw between Zimmerman's initial interview and his video re-enactment the following day.

Rather than finding anything they could follow up with, what happened instead? The Sanford Police Department was unable to obtain any evidence that would allow them to press even involuntary manslaughter charges against Zimmerman. And no new evidence changed that, even as days and weeks passed.

As anyone who follows criminal justice knows, under harsh conditions and during long, station-house interviews, many people will end up confessing to crimes they didn't even commit.

Most people are conditioned from an early age to have a bias towards telling authority figures what they want to hear.

Police have been known to take skillful advantage of this psychological blind spot to extract confessions and other incriminating information from suspects during interrogations.

In one infamous case, four innocent men confessed to committing the same brutal rape and murder after being interrogated without legal counsel.

Even when DNA evidence exonerated them, years later, they were still not immediately released, because of the sheer weight a recorded confession carries.

Zimmerman not only didn't confess to any sort of impropriety in his police interviews, he seems to have been 100% consistent in his statements.

Apparently, Zimmerman has not been in contact with his legal team since Sunday. He unilaterally contacted a member of the media himself, Sean Hannity, and there are reports that Zimmerman contacted the state prosecutor, Angela Corey, himself as well.

It's unclear how much of the web site he set up was vetted by his legal team. In any case, the site initially included a photo of graffiti vandalism in Ohio that has since been removed from the "album" page.

All of this, of course, must have been pretty horrifying for Zimmerman's attorneys, who seem to have been doing their best to rehabilitate Zimmerman's public appearance. They called a press conference to announce that they are withdrawing from the case until such a time when Zimmerman is back in contact with them.

There was initially a pretty strong assumption by most people (mainly due to the incredibly biased media reporting of the incident) that the Sanford Police Department had somehow been complicit in not charging George Zimmerman.

But as time has gone on, it seems the investigation the department carried out was actually extremely by the book. Lately, people have changed tack; they don't like the conclusions the investigation reached and feel state law must be to blame.

While the police spent weeks attempting to gather evidence and press charges against Zimmerman, the facts of the case simply didn't materialize in a way that implicated Zimmerman as having committed manslaughter.

Then the case was blown up by the media, and more and more investigatory branches of the government became involved, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, but evidence against Zimmerman has still remained elusive. If there is any strong evidence against him, it hasn't been released by the prosecutors thus far.

While some have said it was reckless for Zimmerman to leave his truck at all, the law simply does not codify that. Leaving one's vehicle inside one's own neighborhood cannot legally be considered "reckless" behavior, especially when Zimmerman was well-known as being the neighborhood watch captain for the community.

Of course, it makes sense that Zimmerman would leave his truck to investigate something he considered suspicious, especially when he was relaying information to a 911 dispatcher.

Many people have taken issue with the fact that Zimmerman was armed as well, but legally speaking, it is unlikely to matter.

Around 900k Florida residents have have concealed carry licenses. Carrying a weapon in one's own neighborhood is not uncommon, nor does it have any special impact on this case. There is no evidence thus far that Zimmerman was brandishing his firearm or otherwise using it inappropriately.

It may be that Zimmerman simply doesn't need his legal advisers as badly as most people assumed that he did. Presumably no inconsistencies were found in his statements on February 26th or February 27th. Had there been any serious discrepancies, the police would have already had plenty of rope to hang him with.

The crux of the case comes down to what was happening in the sixty seconds preceding the shooting. And those sixty seconds happen to be the part of the encounter we know the most about.

There is hard evidence of screams for help on 911 tapes. There is evidence showing Zimmerman's injuries, including a broken nose, and there is an eye-witness account of Zimmerman being beaten and yelling for help.

Since that time period is going to be the main focus of any investigation, there may not be much Zimmerman's legal advisers can do here beyond what essentially comes down to public relations.

While Zimmerman's lawyers withdrawing from the case was certainly confusing and unexpected initially, it makes sense when one considers how transparent Zimmerman has been about what happened from day one.

If anything, hiding away and ceasing to make any public statements for the last several weeks seems to have been incredibly unnatural for Zimmerman.

This is, after all, a man who was going around town handing out flyers about the Sanford "homeless sucker punch" case last year, a case that didn't involve him directly whatsoever.

Those flyers began with the same quote currently featured on each page of Zimmerman's web site.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Zimmerman now seems to be downright intent on advocating for himself directly and increasing his public visibility. This has created a near-instant backlash against him from many who are still convinced he should immediately be arrested.

But that's Zimmerman's character in a nutshell; he's nothing if not exceedingly independent and vocal.

Zimmerman went further than most would in volunteering to lead his neighborhood watch. He was, by all accounts, extremely thorough over the years in reporting anything suspicious in his neighborhood. He went against all reasonable legal advice when he allowed himself to be interrogated without an attorney present the night of Trayvon Martin's shooting.

And now he no longer seems to be willing to back down from speaking with the state prosecutor directly, even against his legal team's wishes. He also has expressed the urge to respond directly to those who are rallying for his arrest.

This morning, an empty police cruiser was shot at six times. Not the warmest response for a police department that, thus far, has not been shown to have done anything improper in the investigation.

Zimmerman speaking out will undoubtedly change the public's perception of him, even if it doesn't have much of a legal effect.

While he seems to think it will defuse the situation, he could be lighting the fuse for an even larger explosion when Angela Corey's announcement is made later this week.

Though everyone is talking about Democratic strategist and Obama confidant Hilary Rosen's insolent remarks about Ann Romney, I want to discuss them, too, because they reveal her leftist mindset.

Rosen didn't misspeak; she spoke deliberately and with passion. And when given a chance to retract or soften her remarks, she doubled down - at least initially.

Her comments came in a segment on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Cooper pointed out that in the current economy, "women are seeing jobs come back much more slowly than men are," and he asked Rosen, essentially, whether there was anything wrong with the Romney campaign's highlighting that fact and "reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, on the economy."

"Guess what?" asked Rosen. "His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why we worry about their future."

Though Rosen's next comment hasn't received as much attention, it exposes liberal thinking. She said: "There's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney, because he seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women. And I think that comes across. ... He just doesn't really see us as equal."

Ann Romney responded in her newly launched Twitter account, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work."

Back on CNN the next day, Rosen protested that she loves stay-at-home moms. "This is not about Ann Romney," she said. "This is about the waitress in a diner someplace in Nevada who has two kids whose day care funding is being cut off because of the Romney-Ryan budget and she doesn't know what to do."

Rosen's remarks, taken together, tell us that like many of today's leftists, she sees America not as a melting pot, but as a Balkanized land of categorized groups, warring against one another. She sees people as blacks, women or gays, not as individuals.

From Rosen's leftist perspective, Republicans don't care about these groups but consider them inferior; "he just doesn't really see us as equal."

As usual with leftists, she's projecting. Who's not seeing women as equals, Ms. Rosen? Deny it as you now must, but you are the one dissing stay-at-home moms, diminishing their role and its worth and dignity, and implying they are somehow inferior.

That's not the way conservative women see it; they respect women whether they stay at home or work. As Ann Romney told Martha MacCallum on Fox News Channel: "My career choice was to be a mother. ... We need to respect choices that women make." She said that Mitt had always told her that her job was more important because it would make a permanent difference.

But we must understand that Rosen's comments also transcend her opinion of stay-at-home moms. She's articulating the narrow, intolerant leftist view that if you are a member of a particular group, you must adopt the attitudes of the left, or you won't measure up. If you are black, a woman or gay and don't subscribe to liberalism and embrace its hostile identity politics, you are not an authentic black person, woman or gay person. If you are a pro-life woman, you can't fully identify with real women.

Rosen's view that the "Romney-Ryan" budget victimizes waitresses further displays the left's habit of seeing everything through the prism of identity politics. Like President Obama, she places people in economic classes, too - the haves and the have-nots - and the only solution they offer the "have-nots" is government assistance, not the hope of advancement through greater opportunity.

Ann Romney served up a delicious smack-down on this argument, as well, saying that she's been on the campaign trail for a year and what women are talking about are "jobs and ... the legacy of debt that we're leaving our children." She gave no quarter to Rosen's implication that the Romneys' wealth makes them insensitive to the less fortunate - again mouthing the noxious view that unless you're part of a group, you can't relate to that group. "Mitt and I have compassion for people that are struggling, and that's why we're running."

Sorry to break it to Ms. Rosen, but the question isn't whether a president is poor - none of them is; Obama's not - but whether he would implement pro-growth and anti-debt policies.

Truth be told, conservatives, generally speaking, have more compassion than those leftists who relegate people to dehumanizing groups. Compassion is a very human phenomenon, not sterile political advocacy ostensibly on behalf of categories of people ripe for political exploitation.

The left's manufactured GOP "war on women" is backfiring. Thank you, Hilary Rosen, and thank you, Ann Romney.

I was saddened as I read Carolyn Jones detail her devastating experience of choosing to abort her unborn son because of a serious and irreversible birth defect in the article "'We Have No Choice': One Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law" published in the Texas Observer on March 15th 2012. She argues passionately that a new Texas law which requires a woman to have a sonogram, hear a description of her child's development, and wait 24 hours before having an abortion added a "superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day." On March 23rd Time Magazine picked up the story and published, "Requiring Ultrasounds Before Abortion: One Mother's Personal Tragedy," in which the author clearly agrees with Jones' opinion.

I want to speak here because I feel so many other Americans will never be allowed the platform to answer Jones. I have endured two heart-breaking sonograms in which I heard that two of my children were afflicted with a genetic disorder of the kidneys and liver for which there is no cure. I was told they may not live to term and that their prognosis after that was uncertain, ranging from neonatal death to a childhood filled with sickness, pain, hospitalizations, kidney and liver transplants, and early death. I too was offered termination of pregnancies. I understand, as well as anyone can, the pain that Jones felt that day. Yet I disagree, not only with her choice to terminate the pregnancy, but also with her argument that the sonogram and 24 hour wait period required before the abortion only heaps more agony on grieving parents.

Jones did not want her child to die, yet she did not want him to live a life of suffering, and so she chose, "the one that seemed slightly less cruel." Her own words highlight the dangerously thin line we walk when decide who might and might not be glad to be brought into this world. Can she be certain that her son would have grown up, looked her in the eye one day, and expressed that he wished he'd never been born? Do children who suffer through frequent hospitalizations, painful test and treatments, and have a shortened life expectancy really feel this way? Maybe some do, but I know my daughters don't. They are glad for the life they have.

We frequent the offices of our girls' pediatrician, ear-nose throat specialist, nephrologist, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, ophthalmologist, and neurosurgeon. Blood draws, MRI's, ultrasounds, and ER visits are a way of life. But do you know what? My girls also pick dandelions; they pretend they are horses; they stand in awe of the beauty of a crescent moon on a starry night. My girls hum songs; they make up jokes; they play with friends; and at night they pray and thank God for something good he has given them that day. My girls are more mature, more compassionate, more grateful than so many other children their age because of the suffering they have endured. They are an inspiration to countless others who are weary with the inevitable hardships of life. Why do we believe so strongly that a life that includes suffering is not a life worth living?

Is it possible that parents who choose to abort sick unborn children are also trying to shield themselves from the suffering they will endure while raising these children? Yes, it is a sinking, helpless, agony to watch them suffer and not be able to help them. It is an ever-present cloud to know that they will not have the life that other children will; to know that I will almost certainly see the day that I bury my beautiful daughters. But for me, it seems far worse to have never known them. I've been blessed to hear their newborn cries, to witness their first toddling steps with leg braces on and a physical therapist cheering, to hear the beautiful poetry they write, to remember the pure joy on their faces as they learned to pump their own swing, to hear them express thankfulness for medical treatments that caused pain. If I had spared myself the suffering of raising them I would have robbed myself of the most beautiful moments of my life. To deny a child life on the grounds that their life will cause sorrow is to quite literally throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But even if I did agree with Jones that aborting the pregnancy was the most loving thing she could have done for her son, I would still disagree with her rage against the sonogram and 24 hour wait period required before the abortion. In the fog of shock that Jones endured that day when her whole world shattered, she made a decision and she wanted it to be over with as quickly as possible. She wanted to stop feeling pain, to be able to heal, and to move on with her life. She thought that thinking as little about her son as possible and being on the other side of surgery as quickly as possible would limit her pain and speed her healing. I think she is wrong.

Pain, suffering, and death had invaded her world. It would not leave that easily. When a baby dies in the womb of natural causes and is stillborn the baby is treated with the utmost respect. In a hushed room the medical staff carefully clean and wrap the baby and hand it to the parents, who are encouraged to hold their baby, to name their baby, and to take pictures of their baby. Why do they do this? Aren't they prolonging the pain of these poor, grief stricken parents? No, they are acknowledging that the fastest road to healing is not to ignore the pain, but to allow one's self to grieve.

While I understand the very human response of Jones to close her eyes and attempt not to think about her son who would die, I cannot understand her argument that it is wrong to bring these sad thoughts to the mind of a mother making this decision. Jones is adamant that she does not regret her choice to abort. Why not then take the chance to look at her son one last time and tell him that she loved him and was doing this for his own good? This is her last chance to see her son, to admire his tiny fingers and his baby profile. This is a time let the tears flow, to feel the pain, to think her decisions through once more, and, if she so chooses, to say goodbye. Even if you believed that Jones made the right decision to abort, the sonogram law only provided her with a last chance to consider her choice and begin the grieving process. The sonogram she received no more harmed her emotionally than a doctor encouraging a mother to hold her stillborn baby.

As for waiting 24 hours, we are talking about ending the life of a child, or at the very least (as some would argue) preventing the potential life of a fetus. Why is it wrong to require a mother to take one day to consider her decision? When I was young my father wisely advised me not to make any major decision in my life without sleeping on it, whether choosing a college, accepting a job, or buying a house. Why? Because overwhelming emotions can skew our judgement, because those quiet hours on our pillow at night allow us to reflect more carefully, because sometimes things look different in the morning. For the mother of a seriously ill child, the emotional pain will not disappear on the other side of surgery. Rushing to have the abortion the same afternoon as the diagnosis will not speed emotional healing, and a law that requires her to wait until the following day to abort does not slow her recovery. If anything, the mother might at least take comfort in the future in knowing she took the time to be absolutely sure of her decision.

Instead of attempting to hide from the emotional pain, some mothers will face it , and use those required 24 hours to reconsider. They will get on the Internet and research their baby's condition. They will find support groups of other parents who have been in their place, or information the doctor wasn't aware of. They will search their hearts in the dark of night and ask if maybe a life with a disabled child might not be worth living. Some children will be thankful that someone asked their mother to wait a day before deciding, even if, at the time, it caused her distress.

Carolyn Jones endured a horrible day. The sonogram law only asked her to look into the face of the life she was choosing to end and to take a night to think it through. I am sorry that she felt it caused her more pain. Someday I hope she has the privilege of meeting a child who was given life because their mother saw them and reconsidered that night. Maybe her extra pain wouldn't seem so great in the face of that smiling child.

Poor Republican fiscal policies got us into "the ditch". Let's see if the facts support that.

When I first started this project, I had a pre-conceived notion that congress was primarily responsible for the ups and downs of the economy and I expected the graphs to point that out graphically. My concept was sound and the graphs do tell the tale but as they say "the devil is in the details" and you must know EXACTLY what you are looking at. Here are some observations on the following Unemployment graph.

1. We are told Unemployment is a "lagging indicator". So the unemployment numbers stay low during the beginning of the bad times and stay low after the numbers improve. We should be able to compare the graphs and see that.

2. The first period is under (R) George Herbert Walker Bush with both a Democrat Senate and House. Unemployment was high.

3. 1993 the presidency went from R to D with Bill Clinton. Still both houses Democrat. Unemployment was high.

4. 1994 Democrats loose both houses. We then begin a period of prosperity with (D) with Bill Clinton. Both houses Republican. Unemployment is dropping. You can credit Bill Clinton for this or you can credit congress. I believe Congress and particularly the House is more directly in control of budgets so I lean that way. What the graph doesn't tell you is the stock market is booming and the country is undergoing a one of a kind boom due to the impact of this new thing called the Internet!! Whoo hoo we will all get rich, times are good. It is important to note here that while both houses were Republican, the Democrats Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd Chaired the committee which oversaw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. President Clinton and this pair pushed through the Community Re-investment Act of 1995 which lowered the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines for home loans. This had a gradual positive effect for several years but set the stage for the housing boom of 2001-20033 when the stock market crashed. The REPUBLICANS DIDN'T HAVE TO VOTE FOR IT AND COULD HAVE STOPPED IT BUT DIDN'T. These were times of compromise and "working together". Some good, like Welfare Reform, came of it but some bad did as well.

5. The year 2000 ( D) with Bill Clinton. House is Republican Senate Democrat, sees the burst of the dot com bubble. This marks the end of the good times and we should see unemployment go up as the technology companies lay off.

6. 2001 (R) George Bush House is Republican Senate Democrat sees us attacked on 911 which further destroys the stock market. Unemployment continues to rise.

7. 2002-2005 (R) George Bush Both houses Republican. The country recovers in spite of the costs of two wars and unemployment drops. Similar to the dot com internet boom there is a housing boom going on. This is created by the lowering of loan qualifications and discounted interest rates. People move from the stock market to real estate. As a personal foot note, some of us saw this coming. I told my wife "we have 2 years to buy 10 houses", the market is TOO GOOD. You can buy a home for nothing down and rent it for the payment. This can't last. everyone is bailing out of the stock market and they have to go somewhere. I expected the houses to go up 200%. We didn't buy 10 but we did buy 5. The market expanded far beyond my predictions due to "crazy" lending practices and the houses went up 400%. We sold them at the peak, did a tax deferred exchange and retired 10 years early. I remember feeling sorry for the buyers but they wanted to buy them..

8. 2006 Republicans lose the House and Gingrich resigns. This is where the details are important. (R) George Bush both houses Democrat George Bush now has a liberal House and Senate. Unemployment is a lagging indicator. Unemployment is at it's lowest point due to good policy and a housing bubble which is set to explode. 2007-8 the Housing Bubble bursts and begins the worst financial collapse since Jimmy Carter and possibly even back to the Great Depression. This crashing Housing Bubble is the underlying cause in loss of value of the "derivatives" you hear so much about from the "evil" Wall St crowd. Actually it works like this: Bank makes loan according to Fannie Mae guidelines, never intending to keep the loan, sells a "bundle" of those loans done exactly as Fannie Mae required. The bank gets their money back and repeats the process. Fannie Mae starts to run out of money so they bundle a bunch of the bundles the bank sold them and sell them to investors. There is a very low foreclosure rate at this time since most of the buying was done before the prices went out of sight. The bundles of loans "derive" their value from the history of good Fannie Mae loans in the bundles. The expected failure rate is very low based on "history". But now the loans are with the looser guidelines and the houses are being sold at inflated values. Wall St isn't "evil", they just aren't any smarter than the banks, Fannie Mae or the government. For the continuation of this saga read my post on tarp bailout pulling us back from the edge of a Great Depression.

I have tried to be as objective as I could in my analysis. There were basically two recessions, one in 2000 which was extraordinary, being the internet bubble and explosion. The second was the Housing Bubble and its explosion. I don't believe anyone caused the internet bubble pro or con and I state that in my Clinton Surplus analysis. But I do believe government causes the Housing Bubble and I tried to show the cause and who was to blame. It was a good intentioned attempt to increase home ownership by well intentioned people. But you know where the road with that for pavement leads. The government should just stay out of it. There are a certain percentage of people who are not responsible enough to own a home. Having reasonable lending qualifications helps maintain a reasonable balance and stable market. The other side of this equation was a higher than normal vacancy factor in rental housing. This too had a detrimental impact on investment and real estate markets.

1. We are told GDP is a "leading indicator". So the GDP numbers drop during the beginning of the bad times and regain swiftly after the numbers improve. We should be able to compare the graphs and see that.

2. The first period is under (R) George Herbert Walker Bush with both a Democrat Senate and House. GDP was low and jumped way up.

3. 1993 the presidency went from R to D with Bill Clinton. Still both houses Democrat. GDP was down but good

4. 1994 Democrats loose both houses. We then begin a period of prosperity with (D) with Bill Clinton. Both houses Republican. GDP is growing steadily. Again, you can credit Bill Clinton for this or you can credit congress. I believe Congress and particularly the House is more directly in control of budgets so I lean that way. What the graph doesn't tell you is the stock market is booming and the country is undergoing a one of a kind boom due to the impact of this new thing called the Internet!! Whoo hoo we will all get rich, times are good. These were times of compromise and "working together". Some good, like Welfare Reform, came of it but some bad did as well.

5. The year 2000 ( D) with Bill Clinton. House is Republican Senate Democrat, sees the burst of the dot com bubble. This marks the end of the good times and GDP falls off sharply entering 2001. We are in a Recession at this point. The GDP numbers that remain are left over from the beginning of the year. The Bush era is ushered in by a recession and declining economy. This is the 2000 recession of which not much is said.

6. 2001 (R) George Bush House is Republican Senate Democrat sees us attacked on 911 which further destroys the stock market. GDP takes a hit but survives and remains positive.

8. 2006 Republicans lose the House and Gingrich resigns. This is where the details are important. (R) George Bush both houses Democrat George Bush now has a liberal House and Senate. You can see GDP is declining but it is really a continuation of the decline of the year before as the housing market starts to slow. I don't give government a plus or minus here, the dice are cast and the path is already certain.

9. 2007-2008 (R) George Bush Both houses Democrat. GDP drops to Zero. The bubble bursts and has a HUGE impact on the economy. Henry Paulson declares a financial emergency and both parties fall into lock step. For the continuation of this saga read my post on tarp bailout pulling us back from the edge of a Great Depression. Whether or not there was a real catastrophe pending I will leave for you to decide. It is possible it required nothing more than a change back from a government forced accounting method known as "mark to market" back to "book value" to solve the entire problem. This was proposed by many but the whole country was in a panic. This is all discussed in the article.

10. 2009 (D) Barack Obama with both a Democrat Senate and House. GDP tanks and we have the first major period of recession since Jimmy Carter. Tarp Panic and massive "emergency" spending sent the country into a spiral. This is in red italics because it is opinion. The housing bubble was clearly worse than the Internet bubble but of course, it was government made vs. natural. It can be argued that the spending helped but I don't buy it for a minute. The REASON we had a GREAT Depression was the same stupid economic policies. They prolonged the depression was not GREAT in other countries, only here. They failed in Japan when they tried them and they failed again. Please, if your spouse proposed borrowing on your credit cards to maintain your spending levels when you lost your job do you think that would be a winning strategy? A recession which would have been over by now has become the GREAT Recession. There is nothing Great about it. But it is not a coincidence that FDR, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama stand out as the overseers of the 3 worst economies of the last 100 years.

I have tried to be as objective as I could in my analysis. It seems to me both graphs tell the same story. How you interpret that is up to you. I have kept my opinions where they are easily identified. If you find I was inaccurate or biased in my presentation of the facts please let me know so I can make corrections. If you disagree with my conclusions or comments in red let me know that as well and we can begin a discussion.

John Stossel does interview where he says he begged FoxNews to hire him because he was so tired of the liberal bias at ABC news. FoxNews has essentially unbiased reporters of both stripes (Shepherd Smith, Brett Baird, Chris Wallace) as well as a number of hosts who are incorrectly identified as conservatives (Bill O’Reilly is a right-of-center populist, John Stossel and Judge Napolitano are libertarians, and only Sean Hannity could be tagged as a full-on conservative—but not a Republican).

ABC News reports that Obama’s secretary paid a slightly higher tax rate than he did; and that the so-called Buffet rule would not affect the President. However, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire, he would pay a higher tax rate.

Blumer’s article Time's Joe Klein Says the Election Isn't About Obama's Record. Previous elections are of course examined.

Washington Post editorial blames “Dirty Harry” and Charles Bronson in “Death Wish” for Trayvon killing.

Now, one of the stories going around -- and it's been going around awhile -- is all of the disparity in income, the gap between the rich and the poor. And depending on what story you read, the middle class is about to be wiped out. There isn't going to be one much longer. Because the middle-class people are not moving north and upward, out of the middle class. They are moving south, and they're getting closer to poverty and near-poverty. And while that's happening, the rich are getting richer, and it's just not fair. James Pethokoukis, the American Enterprise Institute, writing at the American blog. Headline: "Obama's Inequality Argument Just Utterly Collapsed." Here's the pull-quote from his piece: "[A]ll income levels got richer.

"Yes, the very rich did exceptionally well, mostly due to technology and globalization. Incomes rose 63% for the top 5%, 56% for the top 10% and 52.6% for the top 20%. But everyone else made out pretty well, too. Incomes rose 40.4% for households between the 60th and 80th percentiles, 36.9% for the next quintile, 25.0% for the next, and 26.4% for the bottom 20%. There's the 'shared prosperity' Obama says he wants, right in front of his eyes. ... President Barack Obama has a theory of the case, yes he does. For the past 30 years, the living standards of middle-class Americans have gone nowhere even as the overall US economy has grown markedly. The Obama explanation: Wealthier Americans grabbed all the money. Time to raise their taxes for the sake of 'fairness.'"

That's what Obama's saying. And incumbent in this, by the way, is the liberal belief that there just isn't enough to go around. That is something fundamental for people to understand. If you want to understand liberalism, Democrats and the economy, you have to believe they look at the economy as a finite piece of pie of a certain size that never gets bigger. And what's in there is distributed unfairly because we have a "you're on your own economy," as Obama describes it. So that pie is the same size always, it never gets bigger, and what happens is that the elite rich people inside that pie are taking all the money.

And because they do that, there simply isn't enough left to go around for everybody else.

So what we have to do is take, in the form of tax increases, the money away from those evil rich people and then somehow give it back to the people who really would have it if the rich hadn't stolen it from 'em. They believe in a zero-sum game, and that's best defined as saying liberals believe that if somebody gets a $10,000 raise, then somebody else had their salary cut $10,000. If somebody gets a job, somebody gets fired. Zero-sum game. There's no growth! They don't believe in overall GDP growth, and they don't believe that there's enough to go around. And that is what informs and animates their policies.

"Here's Obama in January 2009: 'Middle class Americans have been working harder, yet not enjoying their fair share of the fruits of a growing economy.' Here's Obama in Osawatomie, Kansas, last December: 'Over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk.' And here's Obama this week: 'What drags our entire economy down is when the benefits of economic growth and productivity go only to the few, which is what's been happening for over a decade now, and gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider and wider.' Underlying Obama's entire thesis is the work of two economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

"According to them, median American incomes rose just 3.2% from 1979 through 2007." Yet over that same period, GDP rose 67%. "So what happened to the rest of the [money]?" Well, according to Obama, "The top 10%, 1% and 0.1% grabbed all the money. Or pretty much most of it." They just took it because we're in a "you're on your own" economy and they're better on their own than other people are. They know how to take it when others don't know how to keep it. So because of that it's, "Time to crank up taxes on the rich and spend more on the middle class. It's not overstating things to say that the findings of [these two economists] Piketty and Saez form the very heart of Obamanomics, giving a powerful economic rationale for Obama policies such as ending the upper-end Bush tax cuts to Obamacare to the Buffett Rule."

And speaking of the Bush tax cuts, Ezra Klein in the Washington Post yesterday: "On Taxes, George W. Bush Has Won -- Democrats have, for the most part, admitted that Bush was right, and the Clinton-era tax rates were too high on most Americans. For all that Democrats talk about returning to the Clinton-era tax rates, they only ever mean for the top two percent of taxpayers -- the folks who are now in the 35% bracket, but whom they would like to see in a 39.6% bracket."

But they don't want anybody else's taxes to go up. The Democrats have conceded, the Clinton tax rates are too high; the Bush tax rates are just right. It's in the Washington Post, did you know that? Did you know the Democrats had agreed with that? This is the first I've heard of it. I know Obama didn't want to repeal the Bush tax cuts 'cause he needed the economy to keep growing, but this is my point. They know that tax cuts grow an economy. They know it. But they don't want it. Too much money in your pocket means less need by you of them. Means too much economic freedom for you.

Anyway, back to Pethokoukis. But all of this that I just described to you, "is not true, according to a new study in National Tax Journal from researchers at Cornell University." Cornell is not a conservative university. "The academics, led by economist Richard Burkhauser, don't say the findings of Piketty and Saez are wrong -- just incredibly, massively incomplete. According to the Cornell study, median household income -- properly measured -- rose 36.7%, not 3.2% like Piketty and Saez argue. That's a big miss." Now, you might think, wait, how can that be such a big... 3.2% versus 36%, median income growth, how can that be? There are anecdotal ways that you can illustrate this, new car purchases.

Look at all the television stuff people buy, gadgets, smart phones and this kind of thing. The money for this is coming from somewhere, credit card debt or somewhere, but still the debts have to be paid, monthly payments have to be made. So the point is this. The bleak picture of this widening income gap that Obama is painting

simply exists as an excuse to punish the achievers when it is not the reality of life on the ground.

Conservative Review
Issue #223	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	April 15, 2012