Morning Bell: Believe it. Obama’s A Big Spender.

Mike Brownfield via heritage.org There are some things that are so apparent that they’re not even worth mentioning. What goes up must come down. The earth is round. President Barack Obama is a big spender. But this week, some in the media and in the White House are denying one of these totally obvious truths. It shouldn’t be a big surprise which one it is. On Tuesday, MarketWatch’s Rex Nutting wrote that claims of Obama’s big spending ways are overblown and that the “Obama spending binge never happened.” In a press gaggle on Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney picked up on the argument and claimed that “this President has been–has demonstrated significant fiscal restraint and acted with great fiscal responsibility.” But sure as the sun rises in the east, not in the west, claims of Obama’s supposed “fiscal restraint” are just plain wrong. Heritage’s J.D. Foster explains: "Federal spending as a share of the economy will average over 24 percent during Obama’s term, and each and every year of that term will see a higher share than during any year since the Second World War. That apparently qualifies as ‘significant fiscal restraint’ Obama-style. Fiscal responsibility? Obama has had by far the largest budget deficits, driven in large part by the eruption in spending." Heritage’s Alison Fraser and Emily Goff thoroughly dismantle of the Nutting-Carney claim and point out that President Obama’s near-trillion-dollar stimulus “drove spending to a record 25.2 percent of the economy in 2009 and deficits topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history.” You can see the proof for yourself in Heritage’s 2012 edition of the Federal Budget in Pictures. Of the last ten presidents, going back to John F. Kennedy, president Obama’s budget deficits as a percentage of GDP have exploded. And if you take a look at where spending is headed under President Obama’s budget, you’ll see that the country’s debt crisis just keeps getting worse. The President’s FY 2013 budget would increase the debt to 76.5 percent of GDP by 2022, despite $2 trillion in tax hikes. That’s not “fiscal restraint,” no matter how you slice it. As bad as spending is today, President Obama wants to spend more, especially on transportation, infrastructure, education and research. He says that more spending, paid for with higher taxes, is the key to getting the U.S. economy back on track — even though that strategy has failed miserably over the past three years. Here’s the president’s problem. The American people don’t want Washington to spend more, they want it to spend less. They don’t want Washington to tax more, they want it to tax less. According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 53 percent of voters believe that tax cuts help the economy, and most say that more government spending has a negative impact. The president wants to have it both ways. He’d like to be viewed as someone who cuts taxes and has demonstrated fiscal restraint, but he also wants to keep on taxing and spending. But sure as apples fall from trees and go down, not up, President Obama is a big spender who has done anything but show fiscal restraint. There are some laws of nature that just can’t be denied.

Rally for Rebecca: An SOS for Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor

by Dana Loesch w/ Breitbart.com Wisconsin's recall elections are but days away, and most of the coverage has surrounded Scott Walker's gubernatorial battle. It's an important battle, one of the most important elections of 2012. There's another battle raging, however--that of his second-in-command, his Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. The state GOP reacted to the challenge on Walker by diverting resources away from all other contested lawmakers and shoring up the Governor. While Walker is running away from Barret in the polls, Kleefisch is only points ahead of her challenger, a candidate chosen by out-of-state union bosses. Democrats are already trying to reposition their narrative; since it looks more and more like Walker will beat Barrett, they're shifting focus to the more vulnerable Kleefisch. If Walker wins but Kleefisch loses, labor and their Democrat allies will still claim victory and Walker won't be viewed as having won absolutely. Kleefisch is dangerously low on funds, too, as Big Labor drops major coin against her this week in an all-out ad war leading up to election day. This is where you come in. Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch's reforms worked. Voters elected them to office by majority in 2010, and angry labor wanted to abuse the recall function by charging taxpayers millions for a "re-do." While they talked about "repealing the reforms," their candidates are careful to avoid such talk in campaign speeches because Wisconsinites voted for those reforms and are happy with the results. The best way to shore up Walker is to ensure that his second-in-command is in office with him. Today Michelle Malkin, Teri Christoph of Smart Girl Politics and ShePAC, and I are launching a #Rally4Rebecca money bomb to help the conservative, grassroots mom defeat big labor on June 5th. Will you help? Every bit counts. I'll be in Racine June 2nd with the Racine Tea Party to help rally voters. If you're within driving distance, come; if you can't come, please consider fortifying Lt. Governor Kleefisch and stand with Wisconsin. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that Wisconsin was a "test run" for November. If the Obama-backed labor machine fails a second time to oust Walker-Kleefisch, this defeat will resonate all the way back to the White House. Send a message. Do your part today.

Exclusive - The Vetting - Barack Obama, the First Tea Partier

by John Sexton - Breitbart.com In 2009, President Barack Obama reportedly called members of the Tea Party "teabaggers." It turns out that our fourth greatest president, first in so many things, may have been the first "teabagger" himself, as seen in the 1997 photograph above. Yes, that really is Barack Obama wearing a regimental coat and carrying a tricorn hat in his hand. And that flag behind him really is a Gadsden flag, with its serpent and its "Don't Tread On Me" slogan. You may want to let all of this sink in a bit, especially if you're a Tea Party-bashing progressive. Neither Democrats nor the media have been particularly kind to the Tea Party. There is hardly space to go through all the times the Tea Party has been compared to terrorists (including by the Vice President) or fascists, or the many times it has been accused of racism by progressives in supposedly mainstream news outlets. That's a book-length story of its own. But given the photo above, it is certainly a good time to think back upon some of the ridicule Tea Party members were forced to endure for evoking the Revolutionary War era by their dress and choice of symbols. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was one of many who saw mockery of the "teabaggers" as the first recourse. (The word was used so often by liberals in 2009 that Oxford made it a Word of the Year finalist.) Liberal sites like Talking Points Memo presented attendees who dressed up the way Obama did above as weirdos. The ever-predictable Bill Maher got hoots from his audience when he donned his own tricorn hat (complete with dangling tea bags) to bash the Tea Party on TV. President Obama blamed the "teabaggers" for his failures, according to Jonathan Alter's book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, complaining that his own 2009 stimulus "helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans." (Vice President Joe Biden is blaming them still.) Yet in the dramatic battles over trumped up charges of Tea Party racism and extremism, Obama never mentioned his own "Tea Party" episode--and neither has anyone in the media, even as Obama's allies and friends on the left ridiculed the Tea Party for seeking to make the same symbolic connections to the country's founding. The media's failure is all the more glaring, given that the forgotten photograph has been in plain view for fifteen years. It appeared on the front page of Chicago's Hyde Park Herald on July 9th, 1997, and was taken by legendary photographer Nancy Campbell Hays. (The larger version of the image is below this article. The original, which was donated to the University of Chicago, is not yet available for public view; the image obtained by Breitbart News was very dark, and so it was lightened in Photoshop). The Herald's caption below the photograph read: Hey, look over here! Something catches the attention of Sen. Barack Obama (13th), Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (25th), Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) and Stephanie Franklin as they lead the annual "4th on 53rd" parade. In 1997, Obama was beginning his first term as a state senator in Illinois. He and his fellow politicians were asked to lead the "4th on 53rd" parade, which is Hyde Park's 4th of July celebration--one not too different from many other places in America, it turns out. All the politicians who attended were expected to dress the part. The Herald even published a story the week before, on July 2nd, confirming in advance that Obama would be "wearing colonial attire." With most politicians, wearing colonial dress for a public celebration like the 4th of July would be considered a bit colorful, but not extraordinary. In Obama's case, it's more like proof of hypocrisy. Since 2009, the ridicule of Tea Party signs and costumes has been so constant from Obama, the mainstream media, and the left that Glenn Beck encouraged people to stop dressing up so as not to give them an excuse. It didn't work, though. The NAACP still saw the costumes as part of a disturbing, nationalist impulse: The Revolutionary War-era costumes, the yellow “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flags from the same era, the earnest recitals of the pledge of allegiance, the over-stated veneration of the Constitution, and the defense of “American exceptionalism” in a world turned towards transnational economies and global institutions: all are signs of the over-arching nationalism that helps define the Tea Party movement. So, by the NAACP's logic, it would appear that Barack Obama is an over-arching nationalist, and perhaps a racist, antisemitic nativist as well. That, or the left has been engaged in three years of juvenile character assassination to protect a guy who never got the memo about the worrisome deeper meaning of regimental coats and tricorner hats.

Sanford judge rules in favor of motorist who flashed his headlights

Who hasn't done this? By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel A judge in Sanford ruled Tuesday that a Lake Mary man was lawfully exercising his First Amendment rights when he flashed his headlights to warn neighbors that a deputy had set up a speed trap nearby. That decision is another victory for Ryan Kintner, 25, who sued theSeminole County Sheriff's Officelast year, accusing it of misconstruing a state law and violating his civil rights, principally his right to free speech. He was ticketed Aug. 10 by a Seminole County deputy, but Kintner alleges the officer misapplied a state law designed to ban motorists from flashing after-market emergency lights. Circuit Judge Alan Dickey earlier ruled that that state law does not apply to people who did what Kintner did, use his headlights to communicate. On Tuesday the judge went a step further, saying people who flash their headlights to communicate are engaging in behavior protected by the U.S. Constitution. "He felt the police specificially went out of their way to silence Mr. Kintner and that it was clearly a violation of his First Amendment free speech rights," said his attorney, J. Marcus Jones of Oviedo. Jones has filed a similar but much broader suit in Tallahassee against the Florida Highway Patrol. A hearing in that case is scheduled next month. "This stuff is fun," Jones said after Tuesday's hearing. Each suit asked that police agencies be ordered to halt writing those tickets. The highway patrol stopped voluntarily, awaiting the outcome of the suit. So have theSeminole County Sheriff's Officeand other agencies. In addition to Kintner's civil suit against the sheriff's office, he also is fighting the ticket. It is still pending in county court in Sanford. The officer also ticketed him for running a stop sign, saying Kintner had pulled beyond a stop bar before coming to a complete halt. In an interview in August, shortly after filing suit, Kintner said, "I felt an injustice was being done. … I have nothing against officers … keeping speeding down, but when you cross a line and get into free speech, I feel it's gone too far." According to his suit, Kintner was home Aug. 10 when he saw a deputy park along a street and pull out his radar gun. Kintner then got in his car, drove a couple of blocks away, parked and pointed his vehicle at oncoming traffic and began flashing his lights. He was ticketed a short time later. rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394.

Mark of the Beast: Bilderberg Pushes Mandatory Internet ID for Europe

Aaron Dykes Infowars.com May 23, 2012 While the international ACTA treaty and United States’ CISPA legislation are setting the stage to clamp down on the world wide web, technocrats are working overtime to try to pin down your identity and make sure all your activities are thoroughly monitored and under control. The European Union is now moving to create a mandatory electronic ID system for all EU citizens that would be implemented across Europe to standardize business both online and in person, authenticating users via a common ‘electronic signature.’ A single authenticating ID would guard access to the Internet, online data and most commerce. It is nothing short of an attempt to phase in a Mark of the Beast system, and a prominent Bilderberg attendee is behind the scheme. Neelie Kroes is the EU’s Digital Agenda Commissioner, and is introducing legislation she hopes will force “the adoption of harmonised e-signatures, e-identities and electronic authentication services (eIAS) across EU member states.” The extent of such a system would, of course, expand over time, particularly as many EU nations have resisted the big government encroachment of ID requirements on civil rights grounds, which even now smack of the Nazi regime’s draconian “papers please” policies that empowered their other avenues of tyranny. According to EurActiv.com, Neelie Kroes would later “widen the scope of the current Directive by including also ancillary authentication services that complement e-signatures, like electronic seals, time/date stamps, etc,” as the supra-national body attempts to corral more nations into participation. This big brother system will be implemented in Europe first and later pushed in North America and the remainder of the globe, as the world is nudged step by step towards a total cashless control grid in the name of ‘safe, verifiable commerce,’ and of course, in the name of “security.” Nevermind that the plan would invite the hacking of identities and fast track forgeries. In the case of Europe, special emphasis is placed in part on “establishing a truly functioning single market” — part of the larger EU goal even now floundering. Neelie Kroes has been a long term Bilderberg attendee, showing up annually since 2005. She was on the official list for the 2006 meeting in Ottawa, Canada, then the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, 2008 in Chantilly, Virginia, 2009 in Vouliagmeni, Greece and 2010 in Sitges, Spain as a delegate from the European Commission. But in 2011, Kroes came to the table in St. Moritz, Switzerland with a new title: the EU’s Commissioner for Digital Agenda, so obviously now seeing development on that agenda was not unexpected. Kroes latest effort will surely be bolstered during the 2012 meeting now just days away. It dovetails with the creation of US CYBERCOM in recent years and the appointment of NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander, who also meets annually at Bilderberg, to wage offensive cyberwar across the globe. Further, technocrats from Silicon Valley and other locales have also converged around the secretive meetings to coordinate their developments with emerging regulations, new Internet laws and treaties, and to further the data mining efforts of the clandestine intelligence communities they work with.

Little Johnnie's Weekend Assignment

The kids filed into class Monday morning. They were very excited. Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship. Little Sally led off: "I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30" she said proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success." "Very good, Sally" said the teacher. Little Jenny was next, "I sold magazines" she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events." "Very good, Jenny" said the teacher. Eventually, it was Johnny's turn. The teacher held her breath, as Johnny always had a 'different' take on things. Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467" he said. "$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?" “Toothbrushes" said Johnny. "Toothbrushes" echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?" "I found the busiest corner in town" said Johnny, "I set up a Dip & Chip stand, I gave everybody who walked by a free sample." They all said the same thing, "Hey, this tastes like rotten dog food!" Then I would say, "It is rotten dog food. Wanna buy a toothbrush? I used the President Obama method of giving you something bad, dressing it up so it looks good, telling you it's free, and then making you pay to get the bad taste out of your mouth." Johnny got five stars for his efforts, bless his little heart...

NC teacher captured on video suggesting student could be arrested for Obama criticism

A North Carolina high school teacher was captured on video shouting at a student who questioned President Obama and suggesting he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president. The Salisbury Post, which first reported on the YouTube video, did not identify the teacher in question, who is reportedly on staff at North Rowan High School. The video does not show faces, but the heated argument in the classroom can clearly be heard. "Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?" the teacher said toward the end of the argument, telling the student, "you are not supposed to slander the president." The student told the teacher that one can't be arrested "unless you threaten the president." The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school. At the time, The Washington Post had recently published a lengthy article alleging that Romney, as a teenager, had cut off another student's hair. "Didn't Obama bully somebody though?" a student in the North Carolina classroom asked when the report was brought up, referring to an incident Obama described in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." In the book, Obama wrote that, as a child, he once pushed a female classmate after other students taunted them -- the only two black students in their grade -- and called Obama her boyfriend. The teacher, in the video, said she didn't know whether Obama bullied anyone -- but the argument quickly escalated, as the teacher yelled at the student, telling him "there is no comparison." "He's running for president," she said of Romney. "Obama is the president." The student argued that both candidates are "just men," but the teacher took issue with the statement. "He's just a man. Obama is no god," the student said. The teacher responded: "Let me tell you something ... you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom." The teacher went on to say the two candidates are "not equal." According to the Salisbury Post, the teacher is still employed and has not been suspended. "The Rowan-Salisbury School System expects all students and employees to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to maintain their professionalism in the classroom. This incident should serve as an education for all teachers to stop and reflect on their interaction with students," the school said in a statement, published by the Post. "Due to personnel and student confidentiality, we cannot discuss the matter publicly." See the video and Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/21/nc-teacher-captured-on-video-suggesting-student-could-be-arrested-for-obama/#ixzz1vWQ1r2QL