The Intransigent Conservative: September 2012

Monday, September 3, 2012

Articles for Labor Day Weekend

View the story "Articles for Labor Day Weekend" on Storify Articles for Labor Day Weekend 18 articles for your reading enjoyment Storified by Brian Empric · Mon, Sep 03 2012 12:45:03 The Obama years have been brutal on middle-class incomes. He may say that he cares about them, but the data shows that his Presidency has done enormous harm to these households. In January 2009, median household income was $54,983. By June 2012, it had tumbled to $50,964, adjusted for inflation. That's $4,019 in lost real income, a little less than a month's income every year. Brian Empric Negative $4,019The Presidential race is boiling down to one dominant issue: which party's policies will do more to help the financially stressed America... "Following the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the implicated individuals decided to circle the wagons and, to prevent the disclosure of embarrassing and possibly criminal information, seemingly began a cover-up that persists to this day. The American public and the victims of Operation Fast and Furious deserve better." - John MalcolmBrian Empric Congressional Report on Operation Fast and Furious: The Buck Stops...Well...Somewhere ElseAbstract: Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley recently released Part I of a three-part report titled Fast and Furiou... The vice president is a three-letter word called fun. Or is it four? "The more egregious Biden gaffes are recorded online. Their number is manifold. Everyone will have his favorites, ranging from the time he asked wheelchair-bound Missouri State Sen. Chuck Graham 'to stand up and let 'em see you' to the unconscious racism of his most recent 'They're gonna put y'all back in chains' zinger, Southern accent added at no extra charge. My own favorite happens to be his announcing 'the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.' He's a fun guy, our vice president." - Joseph Epstein Brian Empric Epstein: The Comic Stylings of Joe BidenWith Democrats wondering whether President Obama should keep Joe Biden as his running mate, and some of them even suggesting Hillary Clin... Here are six campaign fault lines: The Insiders vs. The Outsiders, Washington vs. Chicago, Obamaland vs. Joe’s World, Obama vs. other Democrats, Obama ’08 vs. Obama ’12, Family vs. Politics Brian Empric 6 hidden fault lines in President Obama's campaign - Glenn ThrushMost of the hazards that confront President Barack Obama’s campaign are external - a Republican super PAC onslaught and laggard eco... Senator Rick Santorum writes: "We either choose freedom or we choose something less than that, an ObamaNation — a path to decline, a path to dependency. As for me and my house, we choose freedom. We choose Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."Brian Empric Opinion: Americans must choose freedom, not dependency - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.comPresident Obama and I have one thing in common: We are both the sons of immigrants. But the lessons we have learned from this common back... There are many ways to aid the poor. Ending work rules isn't one of them. "We have a choice—government dependency, or a dependable, fiscally sound federal government. We cannot have both." - Rick Santorum Brian Empric Rick Santorum: The Return of Welfare as We Used to Know ItUpon signing the historic 1996 welfare-reform legislation, President Bill Clinton proudly proclaimed that "today, we are ending welfare a... "Obama's left wing has become so extreme that it would have the nation believe that mainstream conservative ideas are now extreme and that the extreme positions it promotes are moderate, reasonable and routine." - David Limbaugh Brian Empric David LimbaughAugust 27, 2012 New Column: Romney's an Extremist, and Obama Isn't? LOL Printer Friendly Tweet President Obama's casting of Mitt Romney a... It is the young, not the old, who will bear the brunt if we don't reform Medicare.Brian Empric Entitlement ReformsThomas Sowell writes on NRO: For those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational, trying to explain what happens in politi... The words and phrases that you cannot use, if you are a conservative: angry, Chicago, Constitution, experienced, Food Stamp President, golf, holding down the fort, kitchen cabinet, Obamacare, privileged, professor, you peopleBrian Empric Malkin: The condensed liberal handbook of racial code words - Conservative NewsThumper the Rabbit's parents always taught him, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." If the left's self-appointed... Gallup reports that Republican favorable rating is up 3% since 2008, while Democratic favorable rating is down 11%. Republican unfavorable rating is down 1%, while Democratic unfavorable rating is up 13%. Brian Empric GOP Favorability Matches 2008 Pre-Convention LevelPRINCETON, NJ -- In the lead-up to this year's presidential convention period, 44% of registered voters held a favorable view of the Repu... Stephen F. Hayes writes about RNC chairman Reince Priebus - thanks to his leadership the RNC is swimming in cash. More importantly, Hayes writes that "Priebus has little patience for those anonymous Republicans who think their party should have again avoided any discussion of serious entitlement reform. 'We don’t have any more time to have this conversation. If you think we can wait four or eight years, you’re not living in reality.'"Brian Empric Reince RulesIt's a high-stakes election for the GOP chairman. Green Bay, Wisc.It's a good time to be Reince Priebus. "When Ryan makes the Republican case, he does not limit his argument to economic efficiency, enhanced productivity, cost cutting, or laissez-faire. He has expanded the scope of debate to include foundational principles of government." - Matthew Continetti Brian Empric The GOP's '76ers'America is more than just a place," Paul Ryan told the Norfolk, Virginia, crowd during his first speech as Mitt Romney's running mate. "... Politicians increase the cost of insurance by turning it into something it isn't. With health insurance, they tack on mandates to cover things that would be cheaper if paid for directly. "If automobile insurance covered the cost of oil changes or the purchase of gasoline, then both oil changes and gasoline would have to cost more, to cover the additional bureaucratic work involved." - Thomas Sowell Brian Empric Sowell: Risky BusinessInsurance is all about risk. Yet neither insurance companies nor their policy-holders can do anything about one of the biggest risks -- n... Who really cares if Maureen Dowd disapproves of Paul Ryan's Catholicism? "It has been a notorious fact for many years that Maureen Dowd was irrationally partisan, and that somewhere in her feminism there was a revulsion against traditional Catholicism that was very searing." - Conrad Black Brian Empric Anti-Catholicism on the LeftConrad Black writes on NRO: Following on my prediction of last week that the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican vice-presidential c... The rich don't pay enough? The richest 10% earn 48% of national personal income but paid 71% of personal income taxes. "President Obama and the Democratic Party harp about tax fairness. Here's my fairness question to you: What standard of fairness dictates that the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of the federal income tax burden while 47 percent of Americans pay absolutely nothing?" - Walter Williams Brian Empric Williams: The Rich DonIf you listen to America's political hacks, mainstream media talking heads and their socialist allies, you can't help but reach the concl... George Gilder (co-founder of the Discovery Insitute) writes that "capitalism means benevolent creativity." "If we continue to harass, overtax, and oppressively regulate entrepreneurs, our liberal politicians will be shocked and horrified to discover how swiftly the physical tokens of the means of production dissolve into so much corroded wire, abandoned batteries, scrap metal, and wasteland rot." "In capitalism, the winners do not eat the losers but teach them how to win through the spread of information. Far from being a zero-sum game, where the success of some comes at the expense of others, free economies climb spirals of mutual gain and learning."Brian Empric Unleash the Mindwrites on NRO: America's wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, l... Republican reform governors are the heart of the conservative movement. "Their ideas and economic successes are proof that free-market reforms work in practice. And they indicate the seriousness that a Romney-Ryan ticket could bring to the White House." - Kimberley Strassel Brian Empric Strassel: The Reform Governors Who Led the WayRepublicans meet at the Tampa Bay Times Forum this week to spell out their vision for the country. It needn't be an exercise in imaginati... Martin Feldstein (advisor to the Romney campaign, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, and Harvard professor) shows that Romney's plan to broaden the tax base would offset cutting everyone's tax rates. Brian Empric Feldstein: Romney's Tax Plan Can Raise RevenueMitt Romney's plan to cut taxes and offset the resulting revenue loss by limiting tax breaks has been attacked as "mathematically impossi...