What did our Founding Fathers envision for our country, and did they leave us ‘clues’ to follow along our journey? Do you know what the ‘original’ motto at Harvard was, and what it says about the relationship that was expected between our government and our faith? Who was responsible for producing the first English-version Bible in the Unites States, and why would some people prefer you did not know the answer?

This Tuesday, March 27 (2012), an important documentary about our Founding Father’s vision for our country will play in over 500 theaters across America. Patriot Kirk Cameron traces the roots of our country, detailing the path our Founding Families took to get to our shores and their hopes and dreams for our future.

Join Jeff Chidester every Sunday at Noon for the New Hampshire Perspective Radio Show.

Segment One: Corey Lewandowski, NH State Director – Americans for Prosperity

During this segment we will talk to Corey about:

1. Conservative of the Year Award
2. NH Legislative Updates: HB 1667, HB 1487, and HB 1490
3. Memories of Andrew Breitbart

 

Segment Two:  HB 1440 – Online Drivers Education

NH has a unique opportunity to enact a stronger Drivers Education program by approving HB 1440 (currently in the Senate). During this segment we will chat with teen that initiated this piece of legislation, Jacqueline Roland , and the bill’s sponsor Rep. Laura Jones.

Find out more: Driver Ed Bill Website (www.driveredbill.com)

Contact Rep. Jones: www.jones4staterep.com

Contact your Senator to support this legislation: NH General Court Website – Senators (http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/Senate/members/wml.aspx)

 

Segment Three: Rep. Brian Murphy and HB 593 – Gambling

During this segment we will talk to Rep. Brian Murphy about HB 593 – Relative to Gambling.  Rep. Murphy has studied the bill and its impact to New Hampshire, and will share his thoughts.

Contact Rep. Brian Murphy: www.murphyfornh.com

There are millions of Americans that do not trust President Obama., and for good reason, but is the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order  (issued on March 16, 2012) one of those reasons? Are people being paranoid or are there real issues in the executive order that people should be concerned about?

The mistrust is complicated by the fact that once again the Obama Administration chose a Friday to release critical information. The Obama Administration has a history of dumping critical information (usually information that is not flattering to the president and his team) late on a Friday, hoping to reduce criticizing chatter. But the other problem is that too many of the President’s critics immediately suspect everything this President does.

The Internet is ablaze with talk of Marshall Law and mandates that permit Obama to completely take over all aspects of the United States, even in peacetime, while the president’s spokes-person, Jay Carney, dismissed any concerns.

This is more fuel for both sides, and I would caution all to do your homework before you make a final decision. To help you, I found two articles (representing both sides of the story) for your reading pleasure.

 

Obama Executive Order Nothing to Storm the Castle Over

By David Martosko

Executive Editor

Bio | Archive | Email David Martosko
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/18/obama-executive-order-nothing-to-storm-the-castle-over/#ixzz1piEKuRas

 

On March 16, 2012, President Obama signed an executive order titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” and by Saturday the conservative Twitterverse had erupted into righteous indignation, organized under the hashtag #ExecOrder. But the 140-character expressions of outrage and the anti-Obama tea party angst masked the fact that very little in the presidential proclamation is new.

Most of it combines existing executive orders from Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Those earlier orders refined similar statements from Presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon.

And Truman and Nixon, it turns out, were both updating language from President Roosevelt after the passage of the Defense Production Act in 1950.

While Obama’s executive order is written in sophisticated legislative verbiage, its aim should be clear to anyone who reads it from front to back as I did. (You’re welcome.)

And Microsoft Word has a nifty “compare” feature that combines two documents into a single version with every single difference, no matter how small, spelled out in red. It’s a huge time-saver.

So what’s new since 1994?

When Bill Clinton issued his version of the plan to prepare the country for some unstated national military emergency, most disaster response functions were assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Today, those functions belong to the Department of Homeland Security, whose sub-agencies include FEMA. Most of the significant changes from Clinton’s order to Obama’s involve reassigning FEMA’s old duties to DHS — which didn’t exist when Clinton was president. Obama did this in 10 separate places.

But in large part, the function of this executive order — in all its historical incarnations — is to clearly delineate what each cabinet secretary is responsible for if the country should go kablooey.

Obama also axed the FEMA director’s prior role as a tie-breaking vote whenever two cabinet secretaries might disagree about allocating resources in a time of emergency. From now on that decision will land on the president’s desk.

After the black eye FEMA got — deserved or not — following Hurricane Katrina, this is at minimum a smart PR move.

Obama also red-lined the Export-Import Bank of the United States from Clinton’s order completely. But even that is probably meaningless: The Ex-Im Bank’s charter is set to expire this year, but Obama is strongly in favor of its renewal.

Another curious change involves the Department of Agriculture’s mandate. New language from Obama includes, for the first time, “livestock resources, veterinary resources, [and] plant health resources.”

It also expands the definition of ”food resources” to include “potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers.” On the other hand, Obama has curiously eliminated tobacco form the list of things the government can — and has been able to since before any of us were born — control if an unfriendly power should ever drop the big one on New York City.

All of this seems completely sensible.

Still, breathless statements flooded Twitter over the weekend, by Sunday reaching a pace of about 20 per minute.

“To Obamabots and other asleep #Americans: Wake the hell up! New Executive Order dated March 16th. Prepare yourselves!” read one.

“Obama’s ‘Dictator’ executive order. Read it & tell me if you REALLY believe Hitler comparisons are legit,” said another.

Other tweets warned that Obama aims to “make it easier to push America N2 totalitarianism like China” and had seized “the power to STOP ALL ELECTIONS.” One Twitter user said that in the wake of the executive order, “I’ve decided to buy stock in Guillotine companies.”

The most common tweeted phrase about the executive order, by far, was “peacetime martial law.”

The narrow span of initial reactions from conservative websites ranged from “stunning” and “harassing”  to “totalitarian” and “the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law.” One typical thread simply declared that the president had “gone too far.”

What’s maddening about this, aside from the fact that so few commentators, clearly, had actually read the order, is the knee-jerk assumption that Barack Obama is somehow less trustworthy — at the molecular level — with his constitutional powers than was Bill Clinton.

Yes, the Internet has turned political events into tinder with a ferocity Clinton never faced. And yes, the political right harbors an intense distrust of the Oval Office’s current occupant.

But the idea that he would, in an election year, suddenly declare himself the singular steward and controller of all private property, or put himself in solitary control of the water supply or reinstitute the draft — all accusations I’ve read online in the past day — is ludicrous.

If you want to see what any legislative or regulatory language really means, skip over all the nouns (like food, water, fertilizer and fuel) and look at the verbs.

Columnist Ed Morrissey spotted a few in Obama’s executive order: “identify,” “assess,” “prepare,” “improve,” “foster [cooperation],” “provide.” These aren’t exactly words that suggest lots of action. I don’t see “usurp,” “hijack” or “shanghai.”

I also don’t see anything in the executive order that establishes a new legal authority of any kind. Not only is the language old hat, but it spells out which laws the White House is relying on for its authority.

So this is all pretty thin soup.

If we can’t trust the president — any president — to look at what’s going on and make his cabinet secretaries play nice, we have bigger problems than who’s going to control the next corn crop if Putin starts punching in launch codes instead of his ATM password.

So everyone just chill, okay? It’s time to crumple up those tinfoil hats. At least for a week or so.

Follow David on Twitter
Join the conversation on The Daily Caller

 

Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!

See: Government takeover of the Land of the Free?

This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov  web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness.  In a nutshell, it’s the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law and it gives the president the power to take just about anything deemed necessary for “National Defense”, whatever they decide that is.  It’s peacetime, because as the title of the order says, it’s for “Preparedness”.  A copy of the entire order follows the end of this story.

Under this order the heads of these cabinet level positions; Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Defense and Commerce can take food, livestock, fertilizer, farm equipment, all forms of energy, water resources, all forms of civil transporation (meaning any vehicles, boats, planes),  and any other materials, including construction materials from wherever they are available.  This is probably why the government has been visiting farms with GPS devices, so they know exactly where to go when they turn this one on.

Specifically, the government is allowed to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate.  They decide what necessary or appropriate means.

UPDATE:  BIN reader Kent Welton writes:  This allows for the giving away of USA assets and subsidies to private companies:  “(b)  provide for the modification or expansion of privately owned facilities, including the modification or improvement of production processes, when taking actions under sections 301, 302, or 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, 2093; and (c)  sell or otherwise transfer equipment owned by the Federal Government and installed under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to the owners of such plants, factories, or other industrial facilities.”

What happens if the government decides it needs all these things to be prepared, even if there is no war?  You likely won’t be able to walk into a store to purchase virtually anything because it will all be requisitioned, “rationed” and controlled by the government.  Construction materials, food like meat, butter and sugar, anything imported, parts, tires and fuel for vehicles, clothing, etc. will likely become unobtainable, or at least very scarce.  How many things are even made here in the USA any more?

A bit of history…  During WWII, price stabilization didn’t begin until May of 1942, which froze prices on nearly all every day goods and rationing started in 1943.  Why would the government want to control everything before a war?

Here’s what some gas ration cards looked like during WWII.  Will there be rationing under this kind of system?  What better way to control the movement and actions of the populace…

WWII era gas ration cards via Old Chester PA.  You couldn’t go on vacation without a “vacation pass”.

Under this new Executive Order, cabinet heads are authorized to loan money, offer loan guarantees and even subsidize payments at above market rates (no bid contracts?) for whatever they need.  This could make Solyndra or Halliburton look like Junior Achievement.  Nothing like a war will generate these kinds of huge profits for the corporate “partners” and you can bet the bankers and contractors are already lining up for this one—because under this order no war is even required!

In a crisis situation, the government will be able to take whatever they need, print money to get whatever they want and distribute it as they see fit….for the benefit of a “war effort” or the politically connected corporations and individuals.  All other contracts except those for employment are superseded by this executive order, it’s all here in black and white.

Specifically, it orders:

“to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:

1. the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
2. the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
3. the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
4. the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
5. the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
6. the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

About all I can say is “Have a nice day!”

Link HERE

The news media has the story they want – U.S. Solider kills civilians. They will use words like massacre,  shooting spree, rampage, tragedy,   killing spree,  and rogue. The incident in Kandahar province is just another in a series that is moving us closer to absolute failure in Afghanistan.

But there is another part of the narrative that is being largely ignored; the execution of our soldiers by the very people that are suppose to be our allies.  Afghan soldiers are turning the guns our country provided, and using the skills meant to save their lives (thanks to expert U.S. military training) to kill our sons and daughters. In the past six weeks, seven U.S. soldiers have been murdered by cowards who have infiltrated the Afghan military.

As Afghan President Karzai promotes further mistrust  AND publicly insults U.S. Troops, it is time for America to seriously consider its mission in Afghanistan.

Marine killed by Afghan soldier last month, officials say

WASHINGTON –  An Afghan soldier shot to death a 22-year-old Marine at an outpost in southwestern Afghanistan last month in a previously undisclosed case of apparent Afghan treachery that marked at least the seventh killing of an American military member by his supposed ally in the past six weeks, Marine officials said.

Lance Cpl. Edward J. Dycus of Greenville, Miss., was shot in the back of the head on Feb. 1 while standing guard at an Afghan-U.S. base in the Marja district of Helmand province. The exact circumstances have not been disclosed, but the Dycus family has been notified that he was killed by an Afghan soldier. Marine officials discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because it is still under investigation.

When the Pentagon announced Dycus’ death the day after the shooting, it said he died “while conducting combat operations” in Helmand. It made no mention of treachery, which has become a growing problem for U.S. and allied forces as they work closely with Afghan forces to wind down the war.

The Associated Press inquired about the Dycus case after Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the top Marine commander in Afghanistan at the time, said in an AP interview March 7 that the Afghan government has been embarrassed by recent cases of Afghan soldiers turning their guns on their supposed partners.

“I had one just a month ago where a lance corporal was killed, shot in the back of the head, and the Afghan minister of defense was here the next day” to discuss custody of the shooter, Toolan said, speaking from his Regional Command-Southwest headquarters at Camp Leatherneck.

After a negotiation aimed at ensuring the Afghan suspect is prosecuted, the Americans turned him over to Afghan government custody, another official said.

Toolan did not further identify the victim. He mentioned the case while explaining the importance of stopping Afghan treachery as U.S. forces step back from a direct combat role in Helmand and other areas of Afghanistan to a new mission of advising and assisting Afghan soldiers and police.

That role, which is in full swing in Helmand, puts U.S. and other NATO troops in closer contact with Afghans at a time when tensions between the two sides have been heightened by an American soldier’s alleged killing Sunday of 16 Afghan civilians.

“The Marines and soldiers that are doing the advising work out here understand that if they can’t live side by side and operate day in and day out with the Afghans, then they are not going to be able to achieve what they need to achieve as far as relationship building,” Toolan said.

A central premise of the war strategy is that success cannot be achieved until Afghan forces are capable of providing security largely on their own and that this will not happen unless American and other coalition forces partner with Afghans at every level to train, advise and mentor them.

In the latest setback, an Afghan civilian interpreter at a British base in Helmand province stole a coalition pickup truck, drove it at high speed onto an airfield ramp and crashed it just as a plane carrying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was landing Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparotti, the No. 2 overall commander in Afghanistan, told reporters that the truck was headed toward a group of U.S. Marines assembled on the tarmac for Panetta’s arrival. Neither the Marines nor others in Panetta’s welcoming party were injured; the Afghan died of burns sustained in the crash.

Dycus was assigned to 2nd battalion, 9th Marine regiment, 2nd Marine Division from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Known to friends and family as “Eddie,” he graduated from Riverside High School in Greenville in 2008. According to a Mississippi state Senate resolution honoring his life and service, Dycus deployed to Afghanistan on his 22nd birthday, Dec. 12, 2011.

Dycus’ killing happened nearly three weeks before the burning of Muslim holy books at Bagram air base, an event that American officials said was accidental but that triggered a wave of protests across Afghanistan and is linked to six other killings of American troops by Afghans.

Two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan soldier Feb 23 in Nangahar province; an Air Force lieutenant colonel and an Army major were killed inside the Afghan government office in Kabul and two Army paratroopers were killed by Afghan soldiers in Kandahar province on March 1.

In none of those cases did the Pentagon’s casualty announcement mention that the Americans were killed by their supposed Afghan allies. It said, for example, that the two killed Feb. 23 died of “wounds suffered when their unit came under small arms fire.” It happened amid an anti-American protest outside the Americans’ base. Two protesters were killed by Afghan police there before the Afghan soldier turned his gun on U.S. troops.

As we approach the two-year anniversary of the passage Obamacare (aka: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the pressure continues to repel the act before it takes root. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) say the Supreme Court should throw out either the individual mandate or the law in its entirety (note, without the individual mandate, Obamacare becomes noting more than another expensive boondoggle). This poll comes just before the Supreme Court opens hearings on the law’s constitutionality next week, and as some States like New Hampshire move to push back against what many believe to an overreach by the Federal Government.

The effort to repel Obamacare has also been ongoing by some in Congress, led by people like Congressman Steve King, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and Senator DeMint:

KING & DEMINT: End Obamacare, Don’t Mend It

Americans must ensure Republicans don’t settle for partial repeal

By Rep. Steve King and Sen. Jim DeMint – The Washington Times

Every election, voters are told that this election is the most important of our lifetimes. In most elections, it’s not really true. In 2012, though, it probably is true, for one reason: Obamacare.

Two years after a Democratic Congress and President Obama foisted onto the American people an unpopular trillion-dollar takeover of American health care, we know that Obamacare is, in fact, even more unpopular than before and that it will cost almost $2 trillion.

The American people were told Obamacare would reduce health care costs, but premiums already are jumping. The American people were told they could keep their own coverage, but a new Congressional Budget Office report says millions will lose their current coverage every year.

Indeed, the final hurdle for Obamacare’s passage was Mr. Obama’s and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s scramble to convince religiously minded Democrats that religious liberty and individual conscience rights would be protected under their new law. The recent abortion-pill mandate shows those 11th-hour promises were false.

So, as should be the case about something as important as a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the final decision about Obamacare must be made by the American people at the ballot box. Already, voters voiced their disapproval in the historic 2010 elections, which sent many Obamacare supporters to the unemployment line.

This year, the November elections will either return to Washington a pro-Obamacare president and Congress or a pro-repeal president and Congress. They will have a mandate to enact the public’s will, one way or the other.

Conservatives should affirm these certitudes: First, legislating according to the consent of the governed is what our republic is all about. Second, Obamacare – contrary to Democrats’ expectations – has only grown more unpopular since it was passed, as its ugly details have emerged and offended. Third, Obamacare is not an indirect, gimmicky campaign issue but a direct, concrete, firable offense the president and Democrats in Congress committed against our will and in plain view.

Were the entire 2012 general election debate reduced to “candidates from this party will implement Obamacare and candidates from that party will repeal Obamacare,” that debate would do our nation credit and do great service to the electorate.

Unfortunately, the clarity of that choice may soon be muddied, not by Democrats desperate to hide from their record, but inexplicably, by Republicans pushing a vote on a bill to undo one part of Obamacare: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

IPAB is one of the most obnoxious parts of Obamacare: The unelected, unaccountable board of “experts” who effectively will be able to decide which patients can receive which treatments at what costs and from which doctors. The essence of Obamacare is government rationing of people’s access to medicine: IPAB bureaucrats are the rationers.

So we are as adamantly opposed to IPAB as we are to the rest of Obamacare – from the individual mandate to the abortion-pill requirement to the multitrillion-dollar price tag.

But IPAB is not distinct from Obamacare; it’s an inextricable part of the whole. As such, it should be repealed as part of the whole. The same holds true for attempts to surgically extract out the attack on religious freedom, the individual mandate and the financially unsustainable CLASS Act long-term care entitlement. Repealing little pieces of Obamacare here and there to render the cataclysmic merely disastrous undermines not only the essential causes of liberty and repeal, but the clarity of the choice the American people deserve.

The Democratic Party is the party of Obamacare. If Republicans, through their toying with Obamacare, present themselves to voters as the party of some of Obamacare, we will lose. We will deserve to lose. The blame for the coming decades of debt, dependence and decline will fall to us.

A vote to repeal only IPAB sends the message that we believe Obamacare is the patient and IPAB is the cancer that needs to be removed to save Obamacare. Our true patient is health care freedom, and Obamacare – not part of it, but all 2,000 pages – is the malignancy.

Given a choice between Obamacare as it is or full repeal, a majority of Americans and – if not now, very soon – a majority of Congress will choose full repeal. Therefore, that must be the only choice Republicans offer. Until Obamacare is fully repealed, the only health care votes Republicans should cast should be for full repeal of the unconstitutional takeover.

The idea that we can “fix” Obamacare is as fatal as the president’s conceit in contending that Obamacare would “fix” the health care system. We know what real reform looks like – people owning their own health plans; treatment decisions made privately between patients and their doctors; freedom to purchase health plans across state lines; and help for the poor, the elderly and the sick. It looks nothing like the monstrosity the president forced on us, and it looks nothing like the slightly less monstrous version partial repeals would leave us with.

The American people’s message to the Republican Party in 2010 should be the same message we send back to the people in 2012. When it comes to Obamacare, end it, don’t mend it.

Rep. Steve King is an Iowa Republican. Sen. Jim DeMint is a South Carolina Republican. Both have authored legislation to fully repeal Obamacare.

 

Mark Twain once said that there are “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.” When it comes to the unemployment figures, Hannibal’s most famous resident had the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in mind.

As President Obama and his minions (lame-stream media included) run around the country claiming that the unemployment numbers are showing signs of an economic recovery, the devil truly is in the details.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics rules are true if you do not include:

•  The people that have stopped looking for work
• The people trying to enter the job market for the first time
• The people that are under employed

The actually unemployment rate is far worse, over 11%, and closer to 15% (depending on certain factors). A problem cannot be resolved if you are not honest about the true state of affairs.

As the media and the liberals (I know….one in the same) try to create a false crisis (with the ominous title of The War on Women), people are watching everything they worked hard for slip away, while others are not even being given the opportunity to participate in their own prosperity. And some in the Republican Party are willing participants in this charade, or in the words of President B.H. Obama:

 

‘This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.‘

Empty words don’t put people back to work Mr. President, and frankly you obviously  have no clue how to solve this problem.

 

Hidden unemployment numbers stymie Obama’s job growth claims

There’s so much hidden unemployment in the labor force that even Friday’s improved jobs numbers failed to decrease the official unemployment rate of 8.3 percent.

In February, the private sector added 233,000 new jobs, but 476,000 non-working people began looking for a job. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) rules, only by seeking work did those individuals officially become unemployed.

That’s because BLS does not count workers as unemployed unless they have actively searched for work in the last four weeks. As a result, millions of non-working people are not counted as unemployed by BLS officials.

The statistical quirk is the flip side of the administration’s effort to minimize the high level of unemployment for the last three years, and it may hinder progressives’ efforts to claim victory on the jobs front in November.

If more non-working people begin searching for jobs, “the economy is going to have to create an average of 246,000 jobs between now and November, just to keep the unemployment rate at eight percent, and so we are not even at that pace yet,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, an economist and the president of the American Action Forum.

If the BLS rules weren’t in place, the current unemployment rate would be somewhere around 11 percent, analysts say. The unemployment number would be as high as 15 percent if part-time workers seeking full-time employment were recognized in the unemployment rolls.

This quirk today helped Republicans discredit claims by liberals in the White House and the media that President Barack Obama’s policies are reviving the economy.

“I don’t think anyone should be happy with 8.3 percent, and I don’t think anyone should play this as a victory,” said Holtz-Eakin.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest emphasized the numerical accumulation of new hires and downplayed the unemployment rate.

“Today’s jobs numbers are a continuation of a trend that is encouraging. … Over the last six months, we’ve seen 1.3 million private-sector jobs created,” he said.

”We’re digging out of a very deep hole. … There’s a lot more work that remains to be done,” he said, without mentioning the unemployment rate.

Earnest also tried to downplay the entire subject of jobs and unemployment.

“As you know, we don’t get too excited about one month’s jobs numbers beating expectations, and we don’t get too disappointed if there’s one month of jobs numbers that fails to meet expectations,” he said.

“The president and his team are trying to set low expectations so they can clear the hurdle” in November, Holtz-Eakin said. “I don’t think the people [share those] lower expectations.”

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann pushed the same theme.

“Today’s jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may elicit elation from President Obama, but for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed and the millions more who have given up looking for work or are underemployed, today’s unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is another reminder that this President still doesn’t understand that government doesn’t create jobs,” she said in a statement Friday.

But the White House’s spin is already shaping the coverage by the media. For example, the New York Times’ top-of-the-page headline declared, “U.S. extends its run of solid job growth another month.”

For some people, “it appears that we are looking at a world where expectations are so low that 8.3 percent unemployment is okay,” Holtz-Eakin told The Daily Caller.

“It shouldn’t be [because] there are millions of Americans out there who would like to get jobs and have those jobs cover their monthly bills, and that’s the agenda that should be the focus of his attention,” he said.

“There is more to economic performance than just counting jobs. … [Swing voters] are looking at their budgets and not liking what they see,” he said. “They are hurt by high gasoline prices, they are hurt by high food prices, they continue to see their health insurance premiums go up when the president promised they would be lower, and those aspects of economic performance are ones that the president simply has not delivered on and indeed continues to go the wrong direction,” he added.

This fight over expectations is a key battle as the November elections approach.

Obama and his allies have tried to manage expectations, arguing that the nation’s unemployment rate and debt would be even greater without Obama’s direction of the economy.

By contrast, free-market advocates say the president’s progressive policies are preventing a faster recovery from the impact of the government-inflated property bubble.

In dueling rhetoric and image-making, GOP officials want voters to judge Obama by his failure to achieve the goals he promised in 2008, while Democrats want the voters to compare Obama to the not-yet-nominated successor to former President George W. Bush.

Some left-of-center economists acknowledge the reality of off-books unemployment.

“Finding a job remains very difficult,” said Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The “most comprehensive alternative unemployment rate measure — which includes people who want to work but are discouraged from looking and people working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs — was 14.9 percent in February, down from its all-time high of 17.4 percent in October 2009,” he wrote the center’s blog.

“By that measure, almost 24 million people are unemployed or underemployed,” he said.

In February, the private sector added 233,000 new jobs, but 476,000 optimistic or desperate non-working people began looking for a job and were added to the unemployment rolls.

Follow Neil on Twitter
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/09/hidden-unemployment-numbers-stymie-obamas-job-growth-claims/#ixzz1ok7njBeI

 

 

 

 

The full impact of the first Breitbart tape, and the rest that will roll out over the next few months, may not be in the tapes themselves. The true impact will come in the form of the reactions from the lamestream media. The Breitbart videos are as much an indictment on the failure by the media in vetting Left-leaning candidates, as it is in the content of the videos.

The truth is, most of the fun will be in watching the media try and defend their incompetence.

It’s Happening: CNN Already Freaking Out About New Media Vetting President Obama

Last night, Breitbart.com released a video of President Barack Obama fully embracing radical Marxist Harvard Professor Derrick Bell. Now, predictably, the mainstream media is circling the wagons around the president and trying to distract away from the real issue: Barack Obama is a radical and his political philosophy was built by people like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Derrick Bell.

 

 

Notice how CNN host Soledad O’Brian tries to cut off Amy Holmes, who happens to be black, when she defends the production of the video and the vetting of President Obama.

“This is an indictment of the mainstream media that did not open this conversation back in 2008 with the full video, with the full audio, it did not and we didn’t have this conversation for the American people. We didn’t broach this to then candidate Senator Obama to discuss his background which is all fair,” Holmes said.

To answer O’Brian’s question about where the “bombshell” is, I give you Michelle Malkin.

 

The best part is at the 6:30 mark, when comedian and radio host Jay Thomas asks Pollak, “What are you frightened of? Are you frightened that black people are gonna do something to you?”

I think Thomas might have nailed it. Here’s Pollak’s wife, Julia. (Hat tip: Hot Air)

I have a funny joke for you, Mr. Thomas. Feel free to use it:
“Take my wife. Please. I’m scared of her because she’s black!”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/08/soledad-obrien-is-very-concerned-about-breitbart-coms-reputation/#ixzz1ok6E8yFt