It is unbelievable that any government worker or private employee who is privy to sensitive information regarding national security and defense who has the kind of background and prior associates as President Obama does, could then become the foci around which all information is collected and delivered. I know for a fact that if citizen Barack Obama were to apply for any government agency or private contractor he would be denied any special access. He would fail qualifications needed to posses a Top Secret clearance. He would not get past the questionnaire, let alone a background check, and certainly he would fail a polygraph test.

• Foreign intelligence services;
• Organizations or people who wish to overthrow or undermine the United States government through unconstitutional means, violent acts, or other terrorist group activities;
• Individuals who:
  • May be susceptible to pressure or improper influence.
  • Have been dishonest or demonstrated a lack of integrity that has caused others to doubt their reliability.

Granted, Presidents are automatically granted full approval by virtue of their position and, of course, from the election process where it is believed he has been fully vetted by the American people.

Obviously that was not the case as is evident from the latest skeleton in our President’s closet. While media hired guns were dispatched to Alaska to dig through Gov. Palin’s trash, then surely a dozen could have been sent just to interview Obama’s known relatives living in the US.

Boston Globe: Obama’s uncle is called a fugitive

FRAMINGHAM – The uncle of President Obama arrested here last week on drunken driving and other charges has been a fugitive from deportation since 1992, according to two federal law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case.

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Obama, the current  “problem” all Americans are forced to “live with,” felt it was as good a time as any to hang in a hallway outside the Oval Office Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With” – a canvas that revives hurt rather than cultivates healing.

The President’s taste in artwork indicates that America’s “post-racial president” may be secretly nursing a deep-seated wound.  It’s either that, or he’s uninterested in fostering unity. If that weren’t a distinct possibility, why didn’t he choose Norman Rockwell’s “Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice),” which portrays the deaths of three civil rights workers, two of whom where white, killed for their efforts to register African American voters, or “Negro in the Suburbs,” which depicts black children interacting with the white children in their new neighborhood?

Mr. Obama could have requested any painting, but he chose the one that depicts “U.S. marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as court-ordered integration met with an angry and defiant response from the white community.”

The thrust of the painting is not subtle. America’s vilest racial epithet appears in letters several inches high at the top of the canvas. To the left side, the letters “KKK” are plainly visible. The crowds, mostly women who gathered daily to taunt Bridges as she went to a largely empty school, are not shown in the picture. But the racist graffiti and a splattered tomato convey the hostile atmosphere.

Rather than displaying a reminder of division and hatred, shouldn’t America’s first black president be focusing on the harmony that the historic nature of his presidency promised to deliver?  Instead, his attraction to an artist’s rendition of one of the “ugliest racial episodes in U.S. history” indicates that the President of the United States may harbor a measure of latent acrimony.

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So far, the shuffling of employees–and some might argue, the buying of their silence–has been the only reaction to the Gunwalker scandal, in which various agencies of the federal government conspired to assure the success of straw purchasers and smugglers running guns to a violent Mexican drug cartel.

In the months since the scandal was revealed, the Department of Justice (DOJ) , BATF, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division (IRS-CD), Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State, have conspired to stonewall and House and Senate investigations that have been launched to investigate a scandal that appears to be worse than Iran-Contra and Watergate combined.

The scandal is not complicated, and would be revealed by the answering of five simple questions that the media dare not demand answers to from this Administration.

1. Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?
2. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?
3. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?
4. Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in Texas, Florida, and other states as evidence suggests?
5. What, precisely, did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?

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From The National Journal:

The president’s dismal poll ratings, should they continue into next year, could sink Democratic hopes for reclaiming ground in the House and retaining control of the Senate — especially in battleground states and swing districts.

“If he is where he is now, it’s not going to work for Democrats,” said Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., who opted earlier this year not to seek reelection in his competitive district.

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On September 6th, Senate Democrats will hold a confirmation hearing on Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)– a new regulation producing machine created by the Dodd-Franks bill. The Democrat Leadership in Senate is using the hearing to pressure the Republican Leadership to bow, allowing the liberal’s dream of a single agency that can regulate any financial transaction in America to become reality. Without your input and pressure, it might.

As we already know, the CFPB was designed to be a regulatory agency “one like we have not seen before,” according to Senator Chris Dodd. Originated by Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB is created to be a “one-stop” shop to regulate all consumer financial products in America – from mom-and-pop store layaway plans to mortgage loans and applications. The Bureau was given unprecedented regulatory powers with no checks and balances while the head of the CFPB is an unelected bureaucrat who can pick and choose what industry to regulate.

Obama’s first pick for this dictatorial position was anti-capitalism crusader Elizabeth Warren who was resoundingly rejected. No matter who the head of this agency becomes, it has too much unmitigated and unaccountable power.

That is why back In May, 44 of the 47 Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a letter to Obama vowing to block any nominee to serve as director of the CFPB absent key changes, including eliminating the director’s position in favor of a board and forcing the agency to be dependent on Congressionally appropriated funds for its operating budget.

Democrats apparently believe that their problem the first time was that they had the wrong nominee to head the agency. So now, President Obama has nominated lesser known but every bit as liberal trial lawyer Richard Cordray to assume the position of dictatorial ruler over US businesses.

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Leave it to Illinois to make sure violent criminals have state sponsored work. Would you believe the state could pay a convicted rapist to baby sit children? The Chicago Tribune reports:

Cornelius Osborne may not seem like baby-sitting material.

He was convicted of raping two women. A succession of felonies, from robbery to failing to register as a sex offender, repeatedly sent him to prison, state records show.

But over more than two years, the state paid Osborne nearly $5,000 to baby-sit two children, before his latest conviction — for dealing drugs — put him back behind bars.

Osborne, of Chicago, wasn’t the only sex offender paid by taxpayers to baby-sit, according to a Tribune investigation that found cases of convicted rapists, molesters and other violent felons given access to children over the past decade. The money comes from a $750 million-a-year program that subsidizes child care for more than 150,000 impoverished Illinois families.

The Tribune states that they found no cases of harm to any children. However State Senator Matt Murphy, who pushed a law to require background checks, finds the outrageous news extremely frustrating. He stated to the Tribune:

“You’re talking about not only the state sanctioning, but the state creating, an economic incentive for someone with a criminal record to be in a room with a kid, that’s frankly not a situation that I find acceptable.”

One instance of the horrifying oversight in part of the state is Cornelius Osborne. When his sister turned in an application for him to receive state funded subsidies to baby-sit her children, he only reported his “drug-trafficking” conviction, a crime that actually did not disqualify him from becoming approved. He failed to mention that he served time in prison for rape, robbery and kidnapping, and due to the lack of complete background checks, Osborne was approved.

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From The Associated Press:

Worker productivity fell this spring more quickly than previously estimated while labor costs were rising at a faster clip. Both developments could pose threats to a fragile economic recovery.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the April-June period, a bigger drop than the 0.3 percent decline reported a month ago. Labor costs rose at an annual rate of 3.3 percent, faster than the 2.4 percent increase originally reported.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Paul Bonicelli to discuss Dick Cheney’s new book, In My Time, how it portrays other members of George W. Bush’s administration and what it means for Cheney’s legacy.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

In My Time on Amazon
Condoleezza Rice: Cheney attacked ‘my integrity’
Powell says Cheney taking ‘cheap shots’ in book
Dick Cheney book reveals George W. Bush administration’s internal battles
Lightning Rod
Dick Cheney’s book is different and it’s because he’s the author
Paul Bonicelli’s work at Foreign Policy Magazine
Paul Bonicelli at Regent University

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The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), the world’s largest manager of bonds, has just released research analysis titled: “Saying No to Keynes and Fiscal Folly”. The report is a dramatic departure for PIMCO; who had fully embraced the Keynesian “pump priming” economics of stimulus spending, bailouts, and corporate interventions. But with the American public now opposed to Keynesian government spending by a stunning two to one margin; PIMCO may just be the first of a coming swarm of powerful elites to abandon Keynesianism for self-preservation.

The PIMCO has made big money on the credit crisis over the last three years. PIMCO’s management stated that their firm’s strategy was to “shake hands with the government” by investing money in areas that would benefit from the government’s rescue efforts. With the stock market in tatters, investors rushed to place huge bets in PIMCO’s bond funds. The U.S. Federal Reserve even hired the company firm to manage $500 billion in distressed mortgages. But a few months ago PIMCO made a disastrous investment decision by selling all of their U.S. Treasury Bond investments, just prior to the United States credit rating was downgraded and value of government bonds rising by up to 20%.

Now that PIMCO is losing money on that handshake with the government, they seem to be turning on their former masters. PIMCO’s recent report offers three key conclusions:

• Taxpayers have been hoodwinked into believing the cost from profligate government spending is low relative to the benefits.
• The Keynesian revolution ignited a decades-long abuse of the core principle of Keynesian economics: for government to increase spending when private sector aggregate demand weakens and stymies job growth.
• The central banker is left to shoulder the burden, seeking all the while to pressure the fiscal authority to amend the abuse of Keynesian economics and decades of fiscal folly.

Most people do not realize that the American Revolution was a revolt against efforts by Great Britain to collect brutally high taxes from the colonists to pay the massive debts Great Britain accumulated in the Seven Years’ War with France.

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People have vivid memories of certain tragic events in our history. It used to be common to hear folks ask, “Where were you when JFK was shot?” Or, “What were you doing when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated?” Tragedies etch themselves into our collective psyche and the things we were doing at the time we first heard the news, or witnessed events first-hand, help us to remember.

Such is the case with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Not since Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbor has the United States had its territorial sovereignty violated by such aggression. Everyone who was alive on 9/11/01 recalls today what they were doing, and how they reacted, felt, grieved, mourned, and prayed. For most Americans, that grief, sadness and prayer will never end.

Faith becomes more important to people when they are faced with the loss of loved ones. Religious ceremonies typically accompany the burial process, and the same holds true for memorial events like the upcoming September 11, 2011 ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Except that in the case of the ceremony to be held at the site of the World Trade Center– Ground Zero – Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the kibosh on having religion be a part of it.

It is a decision that seems to defy all logic and commonsense, and it comes off as cruel, heartless, and suggests Hizzoner is out of touch with the people who elected him to be Mayor (not King) of New York City. It falls on the heels of another take-your-breath-away decision about the same event. In mid-August, Mayor Bloomberg nixed inviting first responders to the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC.

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Yesterday was Speech-apalooza ‘11 with the GOP vs. Obama and Palin vs. Iowa Tea Party as the top bouts. Palin and the Tea Party seem to have gotten things straightened out, while the GOP vs. Obama remains contested for the moment. Wait, hold on!

Chris Cillizza on Obama scheduing his speech before Congress to coincide with the upcoming GOP debate on NBC.

Regardless of where you come down on the rightness of the strategy — and make no mistake that it is a strategy — it’s hard to dispute that it’s “game on” in the 2012 presidential race.

Speaker Boehner stood his ground, asking Obama to re-schedule. Meanwhile, Senator Jim DeMint jumped into the ring to throw a body shot, threatening to use Senate procedure to derail Obama’s speech. In late rounds, Obama caved and will now go head-to-head with the NFL’s opening night. Good luck wit that one, champ!

As regards Sarah Palin and the Iowa Tea Party, logistics and other concerns seemed to put things on hold. That looks to be all worked out, now. Perhaps worth noting, if not directly related, if Palin does run and embraces some form of grassroots, non-professional consultant driven campaign, this could be a harbinger of things to come. Everything in life comes with a trade off, in exchange for energy and enthusiasm, one can get lack of experience and even incompetence in some cases. How the balance of any possibel trade-off might play out remains to be seen, if she runs at this point. Most observers beieve she will and her visit to New Hampshire after Iowa lends support to that conclusion.

In some very bad news for Obama, most think he’s about to argue for more stimulus spending: Solyndra, a San Francisco based solar panel company that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government has declared bankruptcy. Until the private sector is once again allowed to determine to pick winners and losers, as opposed to government, money will continue to be wasted that Washington can’t afford to spend. Lightening up on some over-regulations wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

As bads news like this continues to pile up for Obama, the media have again brushed off Professor Allan Lichtman to reassure their lefty fan base that, yes, don’t worry, Obama will certainly win reelection next year. He has a MODEL to prove it too! But, Nate Silver over at The New York Times throws an Irene-esque amount of cold water on Lichtman’s model. A must read. Its reserved and a bit restrained as is Silver’s style, but its the statistical equivalent of a smackdown.

DOOM: I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the Road is My Home.

When Lefty Worlds Collide: ‘Green Jobs’ Undone by Pro-Union Rules.

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This past Sunday, University of Maryland Professor Peter Morici suggested that the damage from hurricane Irene is akin to a mini-economic stimulus, exposing the perverse “logic” that is Keynesian economics and reminding us all of the crackpot economic policies under which we currently exist.

Among Morici’s claims, he cited the following logic as why we should all be praying for more natural disasters, riots, looting, and other ills that befall society (perhaps some more Fascist presidential administrations?):

“…When government authorities facilitate rebuilding quickly and effectively, the process of economic renewal can leave communities better off than before.”

A community about to undergo an economic boom, according to Morici’s logic

In an open letter directed to the so-called (read: Keynesian) academic Morici, George Mason Economist Don Boudreaux exposes the idiocy that underlies Morici’s reasoning (and, we might add, the same reasoning that progressive Leftists continues to employ)–essentially, as Boudreaux writes, that “people whose assets are destroyed will be made richer – because these destroyed assets are replaced with ones that are newer and more productive.”

To further underscore his point, Boudreaux suggests the following service to Morici:

I hereby offer my services to you, at a modest wage, to destroy your house and your car.  Act now, and I’ll throw in at no extra charge destruction of all of your clothing, furniture, computer hardware and software, and large and small household appliances.

Because, I’m sure, almost all of these things that I’ll destroy for you are more than a few days old (and, hence, are hampered by wear and tear), you’ll be obliged to replace them with newer versions that are “more economically useful and productive.”  You will, by your own logic, be made richer.

Just send me a note with some times that are good for you for me to come by with sledge hammers and blowtorches.  Given the short distance between Fairfax and College Park, I can be at your place pronto.

Oh, as an extra bonus, I promise not to clean up the mess!  That way, there’ll be more jobs created for clean-up crews in your neighborhood.

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We have spent the last three-plus years in the Third Age of Bailout.

During which we have spent trillions of public dollars trying to create (“or save”) private sector jobs.

The results have been simultaneously disastrous and completely ineffectual.  And utterly predictable.

We on the Right were all along explaining that we have historical evidence aplenty that the public sector stealing money from the private sector to

1. Waste a goodly portion thereof (as government always does) and then
2. Slosh the remainder around to political supporters and cronies

is not the way to create jobs.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deepened and deeply prolonged the Great Depression by so doing.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson increased and ensconced permanent, intergenerational poverty – by declaring War on and setting us up to spend trillions of dollars subsidizing it.

For resisting this serial economic and governmental folly, the Left has incessantly accused the Right of not having a plan to create jobs.

This ludicrous charge simultaneously reveals two immutable truths:

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One of the virtues I discuss at length in my new book, Reawakening Virtues: Restoring What Makes America Great is the virtue of saving. It’s interesting these days to see the ongoing debate over the Federal Budget deficit and debt. On the one hand, some are calling for cuts in what many consider to be essential social programs: Social Security and Medicare. On the other hand, some believe that the Government should either go deeper in debt to cover the rising costs of these programs, increase taxes on the wealthy and business, or make cuts to other parts of the budget such as defense. All of these approaches have their supporters and detractors but the fact remains that the underfunding of social security starts and ends with the problem of saving.

Let’s be clear. Social security is not an entitlement program. That is, unlike welfare and food stamps, the people who receive social security have contributed to the program over the course of their working career through payroll taxes specifically designated for the purpose of saving for retirement. They are therefore owed at least the amount of money they contributed.

However, problems started to arise when the Federal government, under both parties, began borrowing from the so-called Social Security trust funds to spend on other items in the budget. The trust funds are not like your traditional private trust funds that are fully funded. In fact these trust funds are empty. The government has borrowed every single dime that comes into the trust funds to spend on current expenditures. We have a problem now because our total national debt is approaching (and may have exceeded) our yearly gross domestic product. Most countries that have this level of debt do not enjoy the high credit rating and low borrowing costs that America currently does.

If we continue to use short term borrowing to fund long term investments we will soon run into trouble. Just look at what happened with the investment banks Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. They borrowed in the overnight markets to fund their investments in highly illiquid long term securities. When some of those securities plummeted in value, so did the value of their collateral. Thus, they were faced with a situation in which they needed to borrow money just to stay afloat – but they did not have the asset values to back them up. Each firm collapsed within a week of this situation becoming public.

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Today, in 1939, World War II began with Germany’s invasion of Poland.