(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack
Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(AP Photo)
During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone
up 22 percent.
When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded
gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26
per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent
increase from January 2009.
The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s
administration, but it did get close.
By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away
from the July 2008 high.
Ground beef. (AP Photo)
The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak.
(Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)
Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)
Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December)
showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.
Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.
Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1
percent.
One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in
September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.
Bacon. (AP Photo)
Whole milk prices averaged above three dollars 33 out of the 36 months since Obama took office. In January 2009, the price for one gallon of
whole milk was $3.58; but by December 2011, milk prices had slightly declined less than one percent (0.28 percent) to $3.57
per gallon.
The average retail price of Grade A eggs per dozen from January 2009 to December 2011 increased by less than
two percent (1.30 percent) from $1.85 to $1.87.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from
2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.
The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator
published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million
income.
Romney charitable contributions
Tax year Taxable income Charitable donations Donations
as % of income 2010 $21.7 million
$2.98 million 13.73% 2011 (est)
$20.9 million $4 million
19.14%
Item #2
Robert Ariail
Rush Quote of the Day
Rush Limbaugh:
"What is the big difference between Reagan and his recession and Obama and his recession? Very simple: Reagan was trying
to end his."
Last Tuesday, as President Obama got off the Helicopter in front of the White House, he was carrying a
baby piglet under each arm. The squared away Marine guard snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Nice
pigs, Sir."
The President replies: "These are not pigs. These are authentic Arkansas Razorback Hogs. I got one for
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I got one for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi .."
The squared away Marine
again snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Excellent trade, sir.
Item #3
The Question Is Not 'Electability,' but 'Re-electability'
By David Limbaugh
Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability
against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President
Obama's arrogance, what does it say about his electability?
It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency.
But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated
epiphanies are.
Dowd starts off her latest column describing Obama's opening appearance at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem:
"For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected."
Unless you are a liberal utopian, such as my friend Mark Levin describes in his latest masterpiece, "Ameritopia,"
you wouldn't place so much faith in one deliberately mysterious man to usher in a new, unspecified era, and you especially
wouldn't hold on to the painfully unrealistic hope that after three years, this man will finally present himself to be someone
he has never been.
Savor a few of the tardy revelations Dowd has now come to see with pungent clarity:
"The man who became famous with a speech declaring that we were one America, not opposing teams of red and blue
states, presides over an America more riven by blue and red than ever."
"The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had the presidency with all the joy of a root canal."
Dowd quotes Obama's lament to CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he is only seen as "cool and aloof" because he stays
at home with his daughters instead of going "to a lot of Washington parties." Dowd will have none of this, saying that Reagan
didn't socialize with the press, either, "but he knew that to transcend, you can't condescend."
Dowd seems surprised that in Jodi Kantor's new book, "The Obamas," Kantor paints a portrait of "the first couple"
as people who feel aggrieved and misunderstood and who, in Dowd's words, "do believe in American exceptionalism -- their own,
and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated."
Twisting the knife further, Dowd says that the Obamas, in their minds, haven't disappointed Americans. "We disappointed
them."
Dowd quotes Michelle Obama, who apparently spoke too soon when she said she was proud of America for the first
time when her husband was elected. The first lady said: "The question isn't whether Barack Obama is ready to be president.
The question is whether we're ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves." The Obamas, according
to Dowd, are still convinced that presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett is correct that Obama is "just too talented to do what
ordinary people do."
Dowd also seemed incredulous to learn that when Democrats took a shellacking in the 2010 midterm elections,
Obama "did not seem to comprehend the anxiety that had spawned the Tea Party, or feel any regret," and that he told one Democratic
congressman defeated in that anti-Obama wave that his loss was "for the greater good of the country."
No offense, Maureen, but we could have spared you three years of pining, even four if you care to go back to
the campaign. From the beginning, for those not blinded by messianic delusions, Obama revealed himself as singularly divisive,
narcissistic, cool and aloof, and dictatorial and as one who believes he is a gift to America rather than the other way around.
When Obama gave a bizarre shoutout to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow as a preamble to what was supposed to be a somber
memorial to the victims of the Fort Hood shooter, British journalist Toby Harnden observed that he exhibited "curiously bloodless"
behavior and a "strange disconnectedness." After his agenda was repudiated in the election for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat,
Obama said he wanted the American people to take another look at his plan. When Democrats lost the 2010 congressional elections,
he didn't show the slightest recognition that he had anything to do with it. The American people, he said, just wanted the
parties to work together.
We've known that those in Obama's extreme leftist base are discontented with him because, amazingly, they don't
believe he's been liberal enough. But now we have a prominent media liberal in Maureen Dowd acknowledging that he is an empty
shell. With that in mind, how about the vaunted independents?
Think about it, folks. Next time you hear someone telling you how unelectable this or that potential Republican
candidate is, consider how un-reelectable Obama is. His messianic image is gone; he has a disastrous record; and even liberals
are discovering that he is insufferably arrogant and contemptuous of the American people.
A True American Hero
“The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most
admire. He joined our party because the Democrats inJim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans
did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.
“I joined for different reasons. I found a party
that sees me as an individual, not as part of a group. I found a party that puts family first. I found a party that has love
of liberty at its core. And I found a party that believes that peace begins with strength.”
“It’s that expression of the individual
and a willingness to put the educational opportunities before me that led to who I am. Who you are is who you are as an individual.”
"In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended," President Obama
recently said during one of his radio addresses.
Liberals have turned the ‘shuck and jive’ into a fine
art form through the years and this administration has made it a line item on their daily itinerary, but this push towards
socialism has gone further than even many Democrats can continue to stomach.
The President was apparently affirming
what many pundits opposing his policies have been trying to get through the liberal media elitist pro-Obama cacophony since
this administration took control of the reins.
Stimulating the economy is not what’s necessarily first and foremost
on the agenda… transforming America into a socialist society is the predominant motivator, which is why he believes
the Recovery Act is working just as he had planned.
Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Vir.) recently charged
in a Republican radio address response, "Remember the promises? They promised you if you paid for their stimulus, jobs would
be created immediately. In fact, they said that unemployment would stay under eight percent. Yet just months later, they are
telling us to brace for unemployment to climb over ten percent," he said.
Ah, remember when it was so easy for liberals
to assert things that would be simply touted as fact by the liberal media, such as when the President asserted, "This plan
will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90 percent of these jobs will be in the private sector,” he said.
Now
the unemployment rate is over ten percent in at least 15 states and the District of Columbia. No jobs are being saved or created
in those areas of the country, but then for socialism to truly have its effect, the government needs folks who are dependent
on it.
The Recovery Act is working as the President intended, remember?
Then the information starts flowing
about how the process is being directed. The Washington Times recently reported that little of the stimulus money is actually
going to the areas of the country that have been the hardest hit by the recession.
Why?
It could be postulated
that many of those areas are red states. As a Democrat strategist would say, you turn red states blue by forcing those people
to need government intervention, then during the next election campaign either promise money for their financially strapped
area, threaten that the Republican candidate or representative is against that, and/or deny funding to that Republican representative.
The
third thing listed has already started.
As Ben Smith of Politico reported, “ Relentless criticism of the stimulus
package from a House Republican leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, drew a furious barrage from the Democratic National Committee
and a visit from no smaller figure than the Vice President of the United States. Rank and file Republicans who criticize the
stimulus have also suddenly found themselves under a concerted DNC assault that asks if they’d prefer the federal funding
left their districts out. And criticism from Sen Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) drew letters from no fewer than four Cabinet secretaries
to his state’s governor, asking if she would prefer they withheld stimulus money.”
Talk about reaching
across the aisle and working with your opponents! Apparently, that’s only in play if the opposing side AGREES with the
socialist agenda this administration is fast-tracking for the hard working American families who they’ll start claiming
they are trying to help because ‘it’s for their own good’!
Which is something the President did touch
on during the election, “But what we haven’t yet seen is a rescue package for the middle class. So I’ve
proposed four specific things that I think can help. #1, let’s focus on jobs. #2, let’s help families right away
by providing them a middle-class tax cut. #3, Sen. McCain and I agree that we’ve got to help homeowners. #4, We’ve
got some long-term challenges: We’ve got to fix our energy policy; our health care system; and invest in our education
system.”
#1. So far the administration has only attacked the businesses that create and produce job growth, which
has led to job losses… their answer is government to the rescue.
#2. Have you seen a ‘tax cut’? The
only thing that has happened so far has been an increase in taxation on those who smoke and policies that will lead directly
to tax increases… this is so they can provide that government rescue.
#3. They are proposing to help homeowners…
by allowing the government to become their property keeper, regulator, and landlord.
#4. The administration’s
plan for energy is to turn away from fossil fuels, not utilize nuclear, and regulate business through carbon taxes while promising
’green jobs’ that can’t even begin to materialize for a decade if ever…
But they are moving
towards the government controlling your energy production… Government is moving to take over and control your health
care… and government is going to put more wasted dollars into the government-run education system controlling your families
even more.
The President’s policies are working just as he intended: Socialism is about government control, not
as an economic stimulus.
Columns I've produced that made recent Quill Pen Ten Lists
History Lesson: Why the Republican Party was Formed
Excerpted from the 1998 Encarta Digital Encyclopedia
In addition to adopting a new and harsh fugitive slave law, the Compromise of 1850 brought California into the Union as
a free state, but allowed slavery in the rest of the territories. In 1854 Congress passed the
Kansas-Nebraska
Act. This law partially repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers of the Kansas and Nebraska
territories (which included most of the present day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota) to
decide for themselves if they wanted slavery. This was known as popular sovereignty. Those hostile to this
law and other opponents of slavery responded by forming the Republican Party. Popular sovereignty soon degenerated into a civil
war in Kansas-known as the Border War, or "Bleeding Kansas"-as Southerners
and Northerners battled over the status of slavery.
Dred Scott Case, landmark case of the 1850s in which the
Supreme Court of the
United States declared that African Americans were
not U.S. citizens. The court also determined that the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in U.S. territories north and west of the state of Missouri was unconstitutional. The
Dred Scott case intensified ongoing debates over slavery that further polarized the American North and South and eventually
gave rise to the American Civil War in 1861.
In 1846 Dred Scott, a slave living in
St. Louis, Missouri, sued to
prove that he, his wife Harriet, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom. After being tried in Missouri
state courts and in a federal circuit court, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. The following year, the
court rejected Scott’s claim. Speaking for the court, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney concluded that blacks, even when free, could never become citizens of the United States and thus did not have a right
to sue in federal courts. Taney also declared that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories, a
ruling that invalidated the part of the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the western territories.
The Dissents Justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts issued dissenting opinions. Curtis
attacked Taney’s historical arguments, showing that blacks had voted in five states at the founding of the United States.
Thus, they were citizens of the nation from the beginning and could not now be denied citizenship.
Republicans also opposed the court’s decision. In speeches and throughout his famous debates with
Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln alleged a conspiracy to nationalize slavery that had been hatched
by Taney, Douglas, former U.S. president Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, then the president of the United States (see Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln-Douglas Debates).
On May 26, 1857, shortly after Taney’s decision, Scott gained his freedom when the sons of his first owner, Peter
Blow, purchased and freed Scott and his family. Scott remained a free man until his death a few months later, on February
17, 1858.
His case, however, remained a key issue in American politics and law until the outbreak of the Civil War. Taney’s
controversial decision in the case widened the breach between the North and South and further aggravated debates over slavery.
It also played a decisive role in the emergence of Lincoln as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1860
and his election later that year. Despite the decision in the case, Dred Scott and the Civil War ultimately helped
to usher in the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and what
Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom" for African Americans. In 1865 the nation adopted the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, which ended slavery. In 1868 it adopted the 14th Amendment, which declared that all persons born in the United
States are citizens of the nation and of the state in which they live. These two amendments effectively reversed Taney’s
assertions that the U.S. Constitution protected slavery and that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States.
This is a history lesson that is factually accurate and proves that the Republican Party
is the party of civil rights. This history lesson has been purposely excluded from the class rooms of our children for too
many decades.
