Looking ahead, Romney said his campaign is focused squarely on middle-income Americans—to the exclusion of others at either end of the spectrum. But his comments Wednesday about the poor appeared certain to be fodder for critics.

“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” he said on CNN. “We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich. They’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling.”

(more…)

Tonight, the 4 remaining GOP candidates meet for the final debate ahead of the Florida Primary on Tuesday. Expect fireworks between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Also, expect great analysis and reactions from the Breitbart world after the debate. Get the popcorn ready, sparks start flying at 8pm EST on CNN (!).

It’s the most important election of our lifetime. Now, more than ever before, it is important to understand what the Presidential candidates believe, what their policies are, and the differences between themselves and the current administration. The Republican National Committee knows this, yet they have decided to turn over the entire process of informing the populace to the Democrat Media Complex. Rather than answering questions about job creation, executive orders, energy, or Fast & Furious, our candidates are spending precious time on the national airwaves discussing Terri Schiavo, sugar subsidies, and the Everglades Project.

Take a look at the questions from the past debate (just the questions). Is this really helping send the message the RNC must to deliver to win in November?

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Less than a week after ABC released (and Drudge essentially spoiled) the story that we were told could “end [Newt Gingrich's] career,” the former Speaker came from behind to win the South Carolina primary by a startling 13%.  Not only did South Carolina voters ignore the latest unverifiable mainstream media report on the private life of a Republican candidate—a report that was specifically timed to inflict maximum damage—many of them likely voted for Gingrich to spite the MSM.  Exit polling suggests that Newt’s entire margin of victory was comprised of South Carolinians who decided on their candidate near or on primary day, i.e. after ABC’s story had leaked.  Those who decided after the CNN debate in which Gingrich embarrassed CNN’s John King for his liberal bias voted solidly for Newt.

Conventional wisdom is that debates don’t decide nominations, but that notion is as antiquated as the paper route. This is, after all, the media age.  It’s the era of YouTube, Twitter, and the 24-hour news network.  Fear the candidate who can beat the media at their own game, and right now, that candidate is Newt Gingrich.

Their imperfect track-records aside, the former speaker has been able to distinguish himself from Governor Romney in two crucial ways.  The first difference is in who, or what, they are campaigning against.  The foundation of Mitt Romney’s campaign is keeping a narrow focus on Barack Obama.  This isn’t a bad strategy, per se, but it doesn’t comprehensively address the problems we are facing as a society.  After all, Barack Obama is a product of the American left.  He was raised in academia, sold to us by Hollywood, and elected by the mainstream media.  The President is the tip of the iceberg, and the Republican candidate should understand that Obama is a symptom of what ails us, not the cause. (more…)

Newt Gingrich was a tour de force in tonight’s debate. He took a narrative the media hammered at al day, flipped it, and effectively killed it in the span of five minutes. He received another standing O for his rhetorical display thereby insulating himself from further attacks by the other candidates.

No candidate would repeat John King’s remarks after watching the audience’s reaction. He rode the wave for almost the entire debate. Gingrich has repented for his trangressions; as voters we are trying to decide whether he’s genuine. Some will decide that he is; some will decide he’s not.

Santorum bombed on the SOPA question. Internet piracy is a problem but SOPA is akin to shooting goldfish in a bucket with a shotgun. Santorum argues that there should be protections for IP holders on the Internet and says that SOPA goes too far, but I’m not convinced of his resolve. As my friend Derek Hunter notes, tell that to Napster.

(more…)

Big Government has learned that Corporal Jesse Thorsen, 28, who promoted presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) while in uniform during yesterday’s Iowa caucuses, is being probed by his Army Reserve unit for violation of Department of Defense Regulations.

Members of the U.S. armed forces are prohibited by Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 from campaigning or participating in public political activities while in uniform. The purpose of the directive is to preserve the political independence of the military.

Big Government has confirmed through defense sources that Cpl. Thorsen is a combat engineer in the 402nd Engineer Company of the 372nd Engineer Brigade, which is a U.S. Army Reserve brigade.

CNN has reported that Cpl. Thorsen is “active duty,” but defense sources indicated that he apparently is not.

Pentagon spokesperson George Wright spoke to Big Government:

I can share with you the Army uniform is not in keeping with the letter or spirit of the DOD instruction on political activities. It’s a policy violation. Investigation is an extreme word, I believe the unit is looking into it, they’re aware and they’re considering the next step, but it would be speculative to discuss the potential action of where we are right now. We’re aware that he appeared at that rally and spoke on stage–I mean we’ve seen the tape. He’s a member of the 402^nd engineer company of the 372^nd engineer brigade of the U.S. Army Reserve in Des Moines, Iowa. I don’t know what his MOS–military occupational specialty–is. I don’t know if he had a break in service or been an active reservist or what.

U.S. Army Reserve Major Angel Wallace confirmed that Cpl. Thorsen is not on active duty:

He is not active, he has been confirmed in reserve status as of this afternoon. We got that information, he was not in an active status as of yesterday when he did those interviews. He was in a reserve status all along and the last time he’s been on orders was back in October so he was in his traditional reserve status. There is a potential violation. It depends on your MOS because some MOS’s have a larger ability for upward promotion so on that you’d have to draw your own conclusion. He was with the National Guard prior to joining the national reserve. He works with an engineer unit. We have him in a currently combat engineer position, it would be groundwork level. We’re trying to give the command their time necessary to figure out how they want to manage the issue, giving them the time to have dialogue.

Cpl. Thorsen first attempted to speak in favor of Ron Paul on CNN during live coverage of the Iowa caucus. He was introduced by reporter Dana Bash as “active duty U.S. military” as he tried to explain–while in uniform–why he supported Ron Paul and his foreign policy.

(The interview was cut off halfway through, fueling conspiracy theories among Paul supporters and their allies in the press.)

Later, Ron Paul brought Cpl. Thorsen to the podium at his campaign headquarters to deliver a rousing speech–again in uniform, and again in violation of regulations.

(more…)

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Big Government this week that her mother wants to leave Congress–and that she remains in Washington only at the behest of her campaign donors.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

Pelosi’s revelation is significant, given that her mother pushed to serve as Minority Leader after the Democrats’ historic losses in the 2010 midterm elections, and that many Democrats–including President Barack Obama–are campaigning on the expectation that she will be restored as Speaker if they can retake the House in 2012.

(more…)

Another week, another CEO of a major U.S. company publicly calls out Washington, DC for its onslaught of new regulation.

This time it’s Clarence Otis Jr., the CEO of Darden Restaurants, through which position he oversees Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, and other major chains, along with the tens of thousands of jobs reliant on the success of these national brands. This week, Mr. Otis penned a forceful op-ed on CNN.com telling Washington that its regulatory regime is holding back the economy and preventing private job creation.

Writes Mr. Otis:

“Regulatory mandates flowing from federal health care reform may be the most visible, but the list also includes measures such as new mandatory paid leave provisions that require us to change the way we accommodate employees who need to take time off when they are ill and ever more unrealistic requirements regarding employee meal and rest breaks that, in California for example, force our employees to take breaks in the middle of serving lunch or dinner.”

The interesting thing about Otis is that he was a major donor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and he has been a supporter of some of the administration’s efforts in other areas.

(more…)

Please read Part 1 and Part 2.

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

Oregon OSHA and Federal OSHA had already attacked Brazilian Blowout’s product, steering the media to focus on faulty aspects of their respective studies, and burying the truth  –  that the product does not release formaldehyde in amounts that exceed state or federal short-term or long-term exposure limits.

Enter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D – 3 – OR).  Ontheissues.org labels him a “hard-core Liberal”, and you know what that means when it comes to anything involving chemicals or the environment.   Rep. Blumenauer sponsored nonsensical bills like HR 3311 that taxes drivers based on miles driven; a ludicrous bill to jump-start the funding of streetcars; a bill to establish under-the-radar death panels; a bill providing environmental education grants for outdoor experiences (huh?); and even one quashing free speech by attempting to ban a website promoting the perfectly safe Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

So Rep. Blumenauer reads about OSHA’s nonsense in the media and, because he’s a politician, doesn’t do his research, either.  Nor does he bother contacting the company to get their side of the story.   Instead, he grandstands by penning a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking that they recall the product — a product already proven to meet OSHA standards!

I asked Rep. Blumenauer’s press secretary, Derek Schlickeisen, about this approach to policy.  His assertion was that politicians “can’t have a chemist on staff”, and thus rely on OSHA’s scientists to bring incidents like this to light.  When I mentioned that the company-funded study by Health Science Associates showed formaldehyde levels below OSHA standards, he inferred that the study held little weight because it was company funded.

Yet why is it that OSHA’s results are given any more credibility, especially when OSHA caused a panic based entirely on a faulty sample?  Are we to believe that OSHA scientists are somehow free of ideological bias?  Kermit McCarthy, one of the authors of the Oregon OSHA study, “likes” hard-core Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden according to his Facebook page.  Why isn’t his bias questioned?  If anything, a government worker is likely more biased than a private company to insert bias, because his very job depends on his work generating a result that permits the government to do something.  Otherwise, the agency’s existence, and the employee’s, have no purpose.

(more…)

Tonight’s debate among the Republican presidential contenders, co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and CNN, will feature the candidates’ views on foreign policy.

By now, Republican voters are used to the clash between the hawkish approach favored by the party mainstream and the isolationist posture championed by Rep. Ron Paul–a confrontation that has been a feature of GOP presidential debates since the 2008 election.

Yet the events of the past year–especially the upheaval of the Arab Spring–have generated real debates among conservatives about how the United States should respond to a rapidly changing Middle East, an ambitious China, and a disintegrating European Union. Those new fault lines within the party will likely make their appearance on the stage tonight.

Though it is certain that each of the Republican candidates on stage tonight will criticize President Barack Obama’s record, each will find something different to criticize–not just because of their own divergent views, but also because of Obama’s incoherent policy. (more…)

In 2007, the deficit was $160 billion. In 2008 it was $454 billion. Then Obama took office and for two years under a Democratic-led Senate and Congress, he got everything on his wish-list passed.

The result:

• 2009 deficit: $1.4 trillion — with a “t”
• 2010: deficit: $1.3 trillion
• 2011 deficit: 1.3 trillion

So what was the all-important goal of this fabled and fabulously stupid Super Committee? To lower the deficit by … $1.2 trillion.

Yep, that’s it. A measly $1.2 trillion — to which I say, why even bother? If that’s all you’re going to lower the deficit by, you’ve already accepted the premise that most of what Obama’s done to explode the size of government is acceptable.

To the bigger point.

One of the only hopes this failed president has to win re-election is to convince enough voters his failed economy isn’t his fault. So what better way to pin the blame on a “do nothing” Congress (meaning: Republicans) than with this Super Committee nonsense? What the Democrats effectively did with this committee was to put Republicans in a no-win situation. Either they could betray the message of 2010 and raise taxes, or they would be blamed for the committee’s failure.

And as we are seeing today, the corrupt MSM was in on the scheme.

Ladies and gentleman, Exhibit A: an absolutely giddy Carol Costello…

—–

Everything Costello’s asking and pushing in that segment is based on the immoral and ignorant premise that raising taxes will somehow — and for the first time in history! — help the economy grow. Because, you know, taking money out of the private sector and throwing it into the black hole of that same genius public sector that found green energy so worthwhile and wasted $900 billion on the failed stimulus will create jobs.

Except…

(more…)

The past week was very interesting in Presidential politics.  The darlings of the rank and file Republican Party, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, have concluded it is not time to run for President. Herman Cain (who was recently labeled a racist by a Democrat strategist on CNN) has become the sweetheart of the white-supremacist, right-wing Tea Party.

The popular press is lauding liberal Democrats for having finally found their own voice in the Occupy Wall Street protests. And Missouri’s Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, did not even show up for President Obama’s (who polls below 30% in MO) fundraiser in St. Louis. And a rumor is circulating that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has told Obama he cannot win passage of the jobs bill as proposed and will only take it in pieces to the Senate floor, thus distancing himself from the President.

Does anyone need to know anything else about the 2012 elections?

The problem for decades in Washington has been that lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, have spent their way to political success. Now that there is no more money, nobody knows what to do.  In fact, there is only one Congressman, Darrell Issa (R-CA) who has started (not inherited) a successful company that sold a product and wasn’t just in the service industry, law, accounting, insurance, medicine, banking, you get the idea.  The genesis of American capitalism is an agrarian society taking the risks necessary to make something from nothing and selling it.  He is likely the only one that has made the sacrifices necessary to build something from nothing, and make a profit.  The concept is that without actual profit you can’t spend money.  Everyone else, Democrat and Republican more resembles the Occupy Wall Street group who want to tell everyone where money should be spent, decisions based on personal interests and taxes, not capitalism.  The situation is exacerbated by the contempt and lack of cooperation between the congressional parties, as well as between members of Congress of both parties and the executive.

For some time, the question of when that animosity began has gone unanswered. Certainly there have always been hard-fought ideological battles in the halls of government. But there have also been famous relationships between party leaders, relationships that helped bring these leaders and the country together. When did our modern politics deteriorate so much? Recently a longtime friend and Washington insider suggested that it began with the defeat of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork, the highly respected and superbly qualified candidate, for the Supreme Court. (more…)

Have you ever been told to settle for something you weren’t happy with or to ‘just deal’ with the hand you’d been dealt because … well, it is what it is?

Yeah. I’ve been dealing with that a lot lately – especially when the talk turns to politics. So it comes as no surprise that while I was enjoying my manicure earlier this week, CNN’s John King was smugly billowing orders to all Conservatives and Republicans alike to stop complaining and get used to the current Republican Presidential Candidate field.

King, who by his very nature gets on every last nerve in my body, went on to spout his wisdom by indignantly proclaiming ‘this is the hand you’re dealt and these candidates are what you have to work with.’ One could almost see the smile playing on the edge of his lips as he foresaw the future – the future of another four years of Obama-Nation …

Hum. Is this really OK? Are we stuck with what we got out there now? After the last several debates, I’d say the option of having a super-candidate to defeat the current Presidential Disaster is slim … but not hopeless. Never. Ever. Hopeless.

See, this is where we Conservatives – and a lot of Republicans – differ from the gloom and doom of our liberal counterparts. Some might call it always ‘believing the grass is greener on the other side’ or wanting something we see as not possible (i.e., Chris Christie entering the race … But what’s up with this new announcement? Can’t the drama end soon?). But it’s not. It’s simply knowing what is possible and fully understanding what we want in a candidate.

Right now, it may not seem any one candidate fits the bill for our total agenda – i.e., Perry’s lax immigration policy; Ron Paul’s older than a dinosaur; Gary Johnson, being from a state most people don’t even realize is even a state (hey, I am from NM and people still ask me if I am from MEXICO when I say NEW MEXICO) …and Mitt Romney’s joke called RomneyCare … And let’s not forget Bachmann … whose main strike against her is lack of experience and her inability to let a subject just drop (you won’t ever hear me say her biggest issue is she’s a woman … because it’s just not. A Conservative woman in a place of power can perform miracles … I believe it truly.).

So do we settle? Well, that’s not the American way, is it? In fact, we are taught throughout history that settling gets you communism, socialism and slavery.

(more…)

Last night, to its credit, CNN showed what can happen if a news organization sets aside its political bias and lets the candidates actually debate. If journalism schools exist in the future, they should build a course around comparing the MSNBC/Politico partisan hackery with last night’s CNN debate.

Below is a recap of reactions from your BIG editors:

Andrew Breitbart: Whatever Wolf Blitzer took to make it tolerable for him to be around so many flyover-country Tea Party rubes, he should distribute it to his peers in the mainstream media for the coming election year. CNN put on the show that MSNBC was government-subsidized not to. What was conspicuously missing–and thus making it journalistically fair–was the usual framing of Tea Party concerns as inherently racist. So CNN, especially with its exciting intro package that felt like an ESPN playoff game intro, gets high grades. Maybe I was so appalled by MSNBC’s lower-than-low performance that CNN comes out the winner this evening, simply by behaving professionally.

What Democrats and leftists want is that artificial injection of race. But those who will bring it up in desperation after this Tampa tea party debate will have exposed one of the Democratic Party’s greatest weaknesses: concern over the plight of real minority oppression. None of the Tea Party’s critics will recognize that one of tonight’s questioners was a Tea Party member who happened to be a Muslim woman from Afghanistan. To the modern leftist, this woman is invisible. Her question mark spurring cognitive dissonance across the Daily Kos-Huffington Post-MSNBC bizarro world spectrum.

As for the candidates, there was one moment where Chuck Barris should have gonged Jon Huntsman: his humorously prepared, yet clunkily delivered “no apology” reference to Kurt Cobain. He’s providing no value to the debates, and has no constituency. Tonight should be his last debate. If MSNBC tried to bury Bachmann in the previous debate at the Reagan library, she resurrected herself on CNN tonight. The predictable governor-à-governor sparring of Romney and Perry is already becoming tedious.

Mike Flynn: Now we know why CNN has the brand it does. Hopefully, John Harris, Brian Williams, Politico and MSNBC were taking notes. Wolf certainly got his liberal biases in, from time to time, but not at the expense of a free-wheeling and interesting GOP debate. Newt had the best lines in the debate, but he’s Newt and isn’t going anywhere. Everyone else had some good lines. Rick Perry, yet again, was the subject of attacks from all sides. He was much steadier than in the first debate. He stood his ground, so I score him with the win.

Joel Pollak, EIC Breitbart: The big winner tonight was the Tea Party.

(more…)

Tonight, CNN and Tea Party Express co-host a debate of GOP candidates in Tampa, FL, site of the upcoming GOP convention. I’m not really sure how the ‘tea party’ is going to be represented in this debate, since the moderators are pulled from CNN, but there is no way it can be any worse than the MSNBC/Politico forum last week. In that fiasco, John Harris and Brian Williams drew deeply from lefty activists like ThinkProgress to launch attacks on the GOP candidates. It was as if the DNC had done a mind-meld with Harris and Williams (redundant, I know!), and got 90+ minutes to prospect for material for negative campaign ads.

Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

(more…)

***UPDATE: The DNC just released a video that makes my case perfectly. CNN asks a series of dumb questions that have little to do with the important issues of the day and the DNC exploits this with a viral-video mocking  our candidates for ignoring the most important issues of the day.

If you think this is by accident, you haven’t been paying attention:

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ABC’s Jake Tapper sees through this but unfortunately there’s only one Jake Tapper.  END UPDATE

Laugh at Democrats all you want but their decision during the last election to stay away from Fox News’ debates was brilliant. No one at Fox would’ve been unfair, but they most certainly would’ve asked tougher questions than anyone in the MSM. That’s not a cowardly decision on the Democrats part, it’s a tactically brilliant decision. Why would anyone interested in winning an election willingly put themselves in a less than ideal situation? Unfortunately, the only people who can answer that question are those currently running for the GOP nomination.

Nothing is more important than getting our failed president out of office in 2012 and therefore nothing is more important than nominating someone who can win. This is why the number one quality we should be looking for among our otherwise superb field is someone who understands that when it comes to removing Barack Obama from office, the MSM is the existential threat of 2012 — not the President. In a just world, Obama would have almost no chance of winning re-election, but we don’t live in a just world. We live in a world where Obama’s MSM Palace Guards have set their phasers to kill and intend to take out any threat to Their Precious One without prejudice.

And so last night when I saw our esteemed candidates voluntarily lined up like so many ducks in a MSM shooting gallery, I died a little bit inside.  It’s a trap, GOP!, and you can laugh at moderator John King’s questions all you want but I’m guessing that’s exactly what the MSM wants us to do. That way we don’t see the Matrix of what they were really up to. Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air:

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Anthony Weiner’s media blitz on June 1st did nothing to help his case. If you’re following WeinerGate, as it’s being called, you know everyone is scratching their heads wondering what the Congressman was thinking.

“No it wasn’t deceptive, that’s what everybody’s saying about it. I saw the first version of it, and it told pretty much the whole story, of how that woman had gone through an epiphany of understanding how race works.”

Related:
Nolte: Who Got to Chris Matthews?: ‘Hardball’ Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed (July 30, 2010)
Marlow: WaPo’s Kurtz “dishonestly suggests Matthews had gotten his facts wrong regarding Breitbart including footage of Shirley Sherrod’s redemption” (August 3, 2010)

“If I was giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone stood up and heckled in the back I wouldn’t spend three days talking to him.”

Congressman Anthony Weiner spoke these words to DC journalists including CNN’s Dana Bash yesterday, explaining why he will no longer answer any questions about the social media scandal known as Weinergate. He continued, “I’ve participated in the story a couple of days now. Given comments on it. This is a distraction and I’m not going to let it distract me.”

Representative Weiner’s statements could not be more wrong. A “heckler” on Twitter would be someone in his mentions feed giving him grief, who he can easily block and forget. What happened last Friday was more akin to someone jumping on stage, grabbing his mic and shouting an obscenity to the crowd, if we assume his “prank” story is true. To continue looking at it via his analogy, no one is asking him to prattle at length about the heckler; the press is asking him to tell security to find the guy. That’s all.

The beleaguered Congressman could have avoided this media frenzy with only minutes of activity on his end. He could have even told a staffer to take care of it. Within hours, the technical support of Yfrog, Twitter, or Facebook could have verified Weiner’s “hacked” claim and released a public statement corroborating his story. Alternatively, if he had reported the incident to law enforcement and told the press an investigation was underway, he wouldn’t find Dana Bash confronting him on the House steps. With all this in mind, who is prolonging this “distraction”? The reporters who confronted him yesterday explicitly said, “All you have to do is say is ‘No’ to the question [of whether he sent the photo himself].” (more…)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) spoke to the press today to tell them that he would no longer be speaking to the press about his claim that his Twitter account was hacked.