How many lies can Obama pack into one press appearance?

Almost everything that Obama said yesterday in his press conference was misleading or an outright lie.

Obama's claims that most economists support his jobs bill is just not true.

The president claims economists heartily endorse his jobs bill, predicting it will boost growth by 2% and add 1.9 million jobs. That would be news to most economists.

How does he "know" this? Well, he said at Friday's news conference, that's based on a review of his plan by "independent economists." He even challenged Republicans to have their own plan assessed by the same experts to see how theirs would perform.

"I see some smirks in the audience because you know that it's not going to be real robust," he said, commenting on the reaction from reporters.

Rather than smirking, those reporters should take the time to look at what economists have actually said about Obama's plan. Bloomberg surveyed 34 economists last week about Obama's jobs bill and found that the median GDP growth they projected was just 0.6%.

In fact, just two of the 34 claimed the plan would grow the economy by the 2% Obama cited. In contrast, five said it would produce zero growth. Another three predicted that much of the modest gains in 2012 would be canceled out by slower growth it caused in 2013.

Likewise, only three economists predicted job gains anywhere near what Obama claimed. And the median forecast was a piddling 288,000 new jobs. Given the $447 billion price tag, that comes to $1.6 million per job.

The most optimistic appraisal is that Obama's plan could prevent another downturn. But other economists, such as Stephen Stanley of Pierpont Securities, told Bloomberg that "it's not really going to have anything more than a marginal impact."

Keep in mind, too, that this is largely the same crowd that told us Obama's original $830 billion stimulus would spark serious economic growth, only to be endlessly surprised by the "unexpectedly" torpid recovery we've had the past two years. So their tepid predictions about Obama's new stimulus are even more striking.

Of course, one of the reasons economists are thrilled about his bill is that it could cost from $200,000 to $1.6 million for each job "kept or added."

Of course, Obama pushed for the Republicans to pass his bill. What he ignored is that it is his own party is not enthusiastic about his bill. In fact, last night, Harry Reid up-ended the rules of the Senate to keep Mitch McConnell from forcing Democratic Senators from voting on the President's bill. Reid's move was so shocking that analysts termed his move to use a simple majority to change the rules of the Senate the "nuclear option." This sets the stage to use a simple majority to end the rules on filibuster. Even Democrats are wary of this sort of power play because they fear that they may soon be the minority party in the Senate and lose those prerogatives of the minority. But Reid was willing to take that risk all to prevent Democrats from having to take a vote on the bill that Obama is running around the country asking Congress to pass.

The Associated Press, not a bastion of conservative advocacy, fact checks a few of the President's whoppers. He pretended that the Republicans oppose his jobs bill, but won't say why and won't work with him on any ideas where they overlap on support for proposals. Actually, the Republicans have been quite clear on what they support and have explained why they oppose the other ideas. Maybe Obama, like Holder, just doesn't read background memos that have information that he doesn't want to know about.

He is also misleading people to say that the Republicans have traditionally supported the proposals that he has put forward. That's a stretch.

And then he pretends that rolling back Obama regulations wouldn't help employment.

OBAMA: "The answer we're getting right now is: Well, we're going to roll back all these Obama regulations... Does anybody really think that that is going to create jobs right now and meet the challenges of a global economy?"

THE FACTS: Well, yes, some think it will. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month submitted a jobs proposal to Obama that included a call to ease regulations on businesses. It specifically called for streamlining environmental reviews on major construction projects and to delay the issuance of some potentially burdensome regulations until the economy and employment have improved. In the letter, Chamber President Thomas Donohue also called on Congress to pass legislation that would require congressional approval of major regulations. The chamber did not indicate how many jobs such regulatory changes could create, but it said: "Immediate regulatory relief is required in order to begin moving $1 trillion-$2 trillion in accumulated private capital off of the sidelines and into business expansion."

Since the Democrats' ideas on creating jobs have been such a clear failure, isn't it about time to try a different approach?

Obama's claims that there are all these millionaires and billionaires who are using tax loopholes to get lower rates than "plumbers and teachers" is just wrong.

One of his worst lies was that Solyndra 'pre-dates me." Guy Benson takes this apart.

n other words, Blame Bush. Except...Bush-era Energy officials unanimously rejected the failed company's loan application, and many Obama-era bookkeepers recommended doing the same. Obama again expressed "confidence" that the vetting process for Solyndra was sound, and that taxpayer money was doled out "on the merits." In this case, the government's "bet" (his word) simply "didn't work out." Funny, I don't remember all the warnings of bets and risk when the Stimulus 1.0 was being peddled by this administration. Now, apparently, we're supposed to accept that huge losses and bad federal gambles are necessary facts of life. This all may sound convincing to someone who isn't familiar with this scandal, but to those of us who are paying attention, it sounds vexingly and intentionally misleading. Red flags were deliberately ignored on at least three separate occasions for political reasons, failures were covered up and papered-over, and the bad bet was restructured to help protect a prominent Obama donor. None of this came up in the press corps' questions, nor (obviously) in the president's answers. Instead, he quickly pivoted to defending the overall federal "green energy" subsidy program, which he claimed is working well. There's much evidence to the contrary. The president's main point seemed to be that we can't let China out-subsidize us on exploring and developing future clean technologies, so we must borrow more money from them to outspend them. Wonderful. (See the original for links.

Almost everything, except for "the" and "a" was a lie or just misleading demagoguery. He just tried to blame others for the problems that have occurred on his watch and then repeat his demands to pass his bill, a bill that everyone paying attention has nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with giving his audience the impression that he's doing something about the terrible economic conditions that have prevailed during his presidency.

Obama's unemployed teacher: who is really to blame?

In Obama's style of demagoguery, people today don't have jobs because those evil Republicans are blocking his miraculous jobs plan that would help people get to work. Ignore for a few minutes that there is no real evidence that his proposals would lead to greater employment when he's just repeating the same thing that he did in his first stimulus bill, but just spending about half as much money. If it didn't work before, why would rinsing and repeating with less money be more successful now?

But just listen to the way he talks about a Boston teacher's job woes in his news conference yesterday.

“I had a chance to meet a young man named Robert Baroz. He’s an English teacher in Boston who came to the White House a few weeks ago. He’s got two decades of teaching experience. He’s got a Master’s Degree. He’s got an outstanding track record of helping his students make huge gains in reading and writing,” the president said.

“In the last few years, he’s received three pink slips because of budget cuts. Why wouldn’t we want to pass a bill that puts somebody like Robert back in the classroom teaching our kids?”

Baroz had gotten a job since he talked to the President, but that is beside the point. So is the fact that he didn't really meet with Obama, just his aides.

But consider his story that he is an experienced and successful teacher who keeps losing his job. How much of his problems are due to the strong hold that unions have on Massachusetts schools? If the unions didn't negotiate contracts that the latest hired is the first fired, perhaps his principals would keep this dedicated and gifted teacher and let go some of the deadweight teachers that every school has.

Massachusetts has had some great success with its charter schools and Baroz is an advocate of charter schools. Students are leaving the public schools when they can to flock to these charter schools. But Massachusetts has a cap on such charters. And due to the power of the teachers unions that control the Democrats who run the state, there is resistance to simply lifting that cap. Instead they have had some easing on the cap but only for the areas with the lowest performance of the schools. If the schools are successful, why not end the cap everywhere? Individual charter schools are out-performing neighboring public schools. The Boston Teachers Union, of course, has been fighting tooth and nail against such developments. They especially want to block any changes in employment contracts that would allow administrators to fire low-performing teachers and reward the better teachers.

I have two colleagues who worked in Boston public schools and they both described the pressure that the school union representatives put on individual teachers not to spend additional time beyond the contracted hours helping students. They were told not to come to work early or stay after school tutoring students because that wasn't in the contract and weakened the position of the more malleable teachers who obeyed their union reps.

If Baroz is indeed such a good teacher, there should be a job for him. But rather than the temporary aid that Obama's aid package includes, what would be much better would be for Massachusetts to lift its cap on charters so that dedicated teachers can find a permanent place to teach. It is the teachers unions that are fighting to stop that from happening. And which party have those unions become the bulwark of? And which candidate will they be fighting to reelect next year? You got it.

It's not the evil Republicans whose policy choices mean that a gifted teacher keeps losing his job; it is the policy choices of the Democratic Party's close allies who have created an environment where mediocre, but senior teachers stay employed and the younger, more dedicated teachers scramble to find work.

Cruising the Web

Michelle Malkins notes the juxtaposition of the sad passing of Steve Jobs and all that he did to enrich our lives with his products with the Occupy Wall Street folk bemoaning the evils of capitalism.

Inherent in the American success story of the iPhone/iMac/iPad is a powerful lesson about the fundamentals of capitalism. The Kamp Alinsky Kids scream “People over profit.” They call for “caring” over “corporations.”

But the pursuit of profits empowers people beyond the bounds of imagination.

I am blogging on an iMac. When I travel, I use my MacBook Pro. I Tweet news links from my iPhone. My kids are learning Photoshop and GarageBand on our Macs. I use metronome, dictation, video, and camera apps. I use Apple products for business, pleasure, social networking, raising awareness of the missing, finding recipes, and even tuning a ukulele.

None of the people involved in conceiving these products and bringing them to market “care” about me. They pursued their own self-interests. Through the spontaneous order of capitalism, they enriched themselves — and the world.

But the protesters in Wall Street complaining about the evils of capitalism just can't understand how capitalism improves the lives of everyone. Would they prefer to have European-style socialism which is now on the brink of total collapse? How much was the common man helped by the communist societies that grew up in the 20th century? It is only capitalistic societies that have led to advances in medicine, technology, food production, kitchen appliances, transportation, you name it. Where do they think the money is going to come from to hire the people holding up signs announcing their student debt?

Meanwhile, Henry Payne wonders how Steve Jobs could help create such a tech revolution without the 70s equivalent of Obama's preference for government investment i favored industries?

Kevin Williamson rejects the complaints that Steve Jobs and Apple didn't give as much in philanthropy as some other businesses.

CNN, being CNN, misses the point. Mr. Jobs’s contribution to the world is Apple and its products, along with Pixar and his other enterprises, his 338 patented inventions — his work — not some Steve Jobs Memorial Foundation for Giving Stuff to Poor People in Exotic Lands and Making Me Feel Good About Myself. Because he already did that: He gave them better computers, better telephones, better music players, etc. In a lot of cases, he gave them better jobs, too. Did he do it because he was a nice guy, or because he was greedy, or because he was a maniacally single-minded competitor who got up every morning possessed by an unspeakable rage to strangle his rivals? The beauty of capitalism — the beauty of the iPhone world as opposed to the world of politics — is that that question does not matter one little bit. Whatever drove Jobs, it drove him to create superior products, better stuff at better prices. Profits are not deductions from the sum of the public good, but the real measure of the social value a firm creates.

But that is a logic that some will never understand.

Along the same vein, George Will dissects Elizabeth Warren's assertions that all economic success in this country is built with the aid of government and thus you owe the government in oreder to "pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America’s premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, a.k.a. the pursuit of happiness. The fact that collective choices facilitate this striving does not compel the conclusion that the collectivity (Warren’s “the rest of us”) is entitled to take as much as it pleases of the results of the striving.

Warren’s statement is a footnote to modern liberalism’s more comprehensive disparagement of individualism and the reality of individual autonomy. A particular liberalism, partly incubated at Harvard, intimates the impossibility, for most people, of self-government — of the ability to govern one’s self. This liberalism postulates that, in the modern social context, only a special few people can literally make up their own minds.

John Feehery picks seven turning points that led to the promise of Obama's presidency turning to dross.

How sadly ironic that the Democrats passed policies that hurt banks' abilities to raise their rates for credit cards. When banks have responded by finding other ways to charge customers money, the Democrats have responded by bashing the banks in a totally irresponsible way.

Mr. Durbin, incensed at the results of his plan to transfer wealth from banks to retailers, has been urging customers to close their accounts at Bank of America. Reasonable people can disagree about which politician is more economically irresponsible—the President who wants bureaucrats to dictate profit margins or the Senator who encourages a run on a bank.

These can't possibly be the answers to a struggling economy in the U.S. and a debt crisis in Europe. As for the problems of 2008, bankers created plenty of them, though not as many as government did. In 2011, banker baiting won't help the economy, and we doubt it will do much for Democratic election chances either.

What Dick Durbin won't acknowledge is how his own reforms led banks like BOA to have to find money elsewhere and hence their charges to debit card customers. If only, as Richard A. Epstein argues, we could repeal the Durbin policy that led to the mess that banks are facing today.

What is doubly ironic is that before Durbin, debit cards were a booming business -- bigger in total dollars and total transactions than credit cards. They were leaving checks, and increasingly, cash in the dust. In hard times, why should Congress kill off one of our few industry successes?

The only cure for this mess is repeal the Durbin Amendment as quickly as possible, before it can do permanent damage to the banking system.

The Obama daughters must be even more precocious than anyone imagined. When Michelle went to Africa this year and took her daughters, she listed them as "senior staff." Not just any staff aides, they are senior staff.

The unreported side of Occupy Wall Street - all the people who have been put out of work because the OWS people have been blocking off their places of employment. Yup, if this trend spreads to other cities, I can't see it winning many fans.

Why isn't Obama campaigning in Nevada?

Obama is running around the country complaining that the Republicans won't vote on his Stimulus II bill. He went to a bridge between Kentucky and Ohio to chastise both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell whose states the bridge links to complain that they won't pass his bill. You know that bill - the one that no other Democrat in either the House or the Senate wishes to co-sponsor. Obama asked for a speech before a joint session of Congress in order to demagogue on his bill. The GOP were so unimpressed that they didn't even counter with their own televised response.

Obama didn't care. He is stuck in his Give-'em-Harry mode trying to campaign against the supposedly do-nothing Republicans. Yesterday he was in Texas complaining that Eric Cantor wasn't taking up his bill.

President Barack Obama, in a speech to supporters in Dallas, Texas, today attacked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), challenging the conservative lawmaker to come to Texas and tell the president what he did not like about the $447-billion American Jobs Act.

“Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now, he won’t even let the jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives,” Obama said in prepared remarks released by the White House.

“I'd like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill he doesn't believe in,” said Obama.

However, Cantor's counterparts, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi aren't co-sponsoring Obama's bill.

His problem is that his own party isn't thrilled with the bill.

And Mitch McConnell is extremely mischievous. In a priceless moment in the supposedly "world's greatest deliberative body," McConnell tried to introduce Obama's jobs bill into the Senate and allow everyone to vote on the bill, just as the leader of the Democratic Party is complaining the Republicans won't do. There is just one problem. The Democrats don't want to vote on the bill either. So Harry Reid blocked the motion, saying that "Right away is a relative term."

So will the President continue with this charade of pretending that it is those eeeeevil Republicans who are blocking his bill, when the Senate Democrat's lone sponsor of the bill blocked it from coming up for a vote?

And one anonymous Democratic aide reveals what the real thinking is among Senate Democrats.

"Nobody is all that excited about the president's jobs bill," a senior Democratic aide said.

Instead of castigating Republicans, perhaps he needs to travel to Nevada and campaign against Reid blocking his bill from a vote.

Reid and Obama must be cursing that devilish Mitch McConnell for exposing Obama's empty complaints about the Republicans.

H/t Guy Benson, who reminds us that yesterday marked 888 days since the Senate, under the Democrats, have passed a budget.

Is this how Obama tries to live up to our values?

Barack Obama campaigned on how he was going to lead a foreign policy that would represent our American values. What he meant is that he would bash Bush policies in the war on terror and then come in and employ most of those same policies.

That sort of hypocrisy is one thing, but now he's gone beyond that by waiving legally-mandated penalties on countries that employ children as soldiers. In many of these countries, children are either kidnapped or forced from their families and into the armies. We passed a law to attempt to discourage this terrible practice. President Obama is ignoring that law.

The White House is expected to soon announce its decision to issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars. The administration has laid out a range of justifications for waiving penalties on Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which amount to a gutting of the law for the second year in a row.

Last year, the White House didn't even tell Congress or the NGO community when it decided to do away with the Child Soldiers Prevention Act penalties. Most had to read about it first on The Cable. Aid workers, human rights activists, and even congressional offices were shocked that the administration had gutted the law without consulting them.

At the time they argued that 2010 was too soon after the 2008 law and that countries hadn't had time to adjust. Now they have individual arguments for each country. Advocates for children are not impressed.

To the human rights community, today's action by the White House represents both an abandonment of efforts to protect children, and a betrayal of the NGO community, which had been promised that this year would be different from last year.

"The White House said last year that they were putting these countries on notice but now it's a year later and the U.S. is still handing over taxpayer money to countries that use child soldiers with no strings attached," said Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch.

"President Obama's decision today to provide taxpayer funded military assistance to countries that use children as soldiers is an assault on human dignity," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights. "Good citizens of this country who do not want to be complicit in this grave human rights abuse must challenge this administration."

"Our law states that America does not fund the use of child soldiers," he said. "Any exceptions must be temporary and intended to help stop this pernicious practice."

President Obama figures that he can govern without having to obey laws. It's all part of how he is governing by waiver in policies such as health care and education. He and his administration know better and that's just the way it is. Forget about actual laws.

If Obama wants to ignore checks and balances, the people will have to exercise the ultimate check on Barack Obama.

Cruising the Web

Eric Grunden, a colleague at my school and a good friend, has started blogging about education issues and he has some thoughts about Fran Tarkenton's column yesterday in the WSJ wondering what would happen if the NFL were run like education. Eric turns it around to wonder if schools were run like the NFL. Here's a sample:

3. Bad schools in one part of the country would be subsidized by excellent schools in another. This wouldn’t depend on whether or not the bad schools ever improved (Cleveland).

4. Only the best students would take the big tests, so the results would be better. How about being forced to play the practice squad against Tom Brady? And then being evaluated on the basis of their poor performance?

5. A student who chose not to study or skipped school could be fined, or even benched for a big exam.

Timothy Carney peels back Washington-speak by pointing out that what the media likes to portray as "elder statesmen" are really lobbyists. They just don't like to reveal the conflicts of interest behind some of these supposed elder statesmen's positions.

Andrew Ferguson reminds us of how the Washington establishment used to think that Dick Cheney was their kind of Republican.

Another department of Energy loan to Nevada Geothermal Power now looks like it won't be able to stay in business - think of it as "Solyndra Lite."

Karl at Patterico's blog looks at another liberal, Jeffrey Sachs, who is fed up with democracy. That whole Constitution is just such a drag because representative democracy makes it harder for liberals to impose their policies that they're so sure are better for us.

John F. Cogan and John B. Taylor look back at the history of short-term stimulus policies from Carter's time to today. These temporary proposals all have something in common - they don't work.

Bret Stephens catalogs how Obama expresses contempt for Americans. From his comments about bitter gun-and religion-clinging Mid-westerners to his recent characterization of Americans becoming soft, Obama has let us know how we're falling short of his

When a good history of anti-Americanism is someday written, it will note that it's mainly a story of disenchantment—of the obdurate and sometimes vulgar reality of the country falling short of the lover's ideal. Listening to Mr. Obama, especially now as the country turns against him, one senses in him a similar disenchantment: America is lovable exactly in proportion to the love it gives him in return.

Hence his increasingly ill-concealed expressions of contempt. Hence the increasingly widespread counter-contempt.

Things are so bad nowadays that, even in liberal states and congressional districts, conservatism is gaining in its appeal.

The Hill reports on the tense relations between Harry Reid and President Obama.

Jonah Goldberg puts his finger on the essential inconsistency in the administration's approach to fighting terrorists.

Meanwhile, President Obama keeps ordering that the more famous terrorists be killed on sight. That's fine with me. But as far as I can tell, he's never disagreed with Holder's view about the need for civilian trials for terrorists we don't kill, like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Hence my confusion. If you believe that even non-American terrorists should be treated like American criminals, with all of the 5th Amendment rights we grant to our own accused, how can you sanction killing an American without so much as a hearing?

Goldberg concludes that Obama would prefer to kill these people outright including the risk of any collateral damage than capture them alive and have the whole controversy of what to do with them and where to put them.

Here's a clip-and-keep infographic of "the Obama Presidency by the Numbers" comparing Obama's own statements and the numbers today.

So Eric Holder's only excuse about how he didn't know about Fast and Furious is that he just didn't read the memos prepared for him. Soon he'll be telling us that he lied in his own diary.

Only in Washington would it be so hard to repeal an obvious fraud

Put this in the only-in-Washington file. The WSJ looks at the crazy logic of the Class Act which everyone, including the Obama administration, realizes is a fiscal abomination. This is the part of Obamacare for long-term coverage. The Democrats cynically gamed the CBO scoring system by collecting the money for five years before the benefits will be dispersed. Since the health care was only scored for ten years, this made it look like it was solvent and they just ignored what would happen after those ten years were up. The chief Medicare actuary warned about this a couple of years ago.

n one 2009 note, chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster—a martyr to fiscal honesty in the health-care debate—wrote that "Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant Federal subsidies to continue." He suggested that Class would end in an "insurance death spiral" because the coverage would only be attractive to sicker people who will need costly services. It could only be solvent if 230 million Americans enrolled, which is more than the current U.S. workforce.

An HHS Office of Health Reform official, Meena Seshamani, rejected Mr. Foster's critique because "per CBO it is actuarially sound." But of course CBO only scores what is presented to it, no matter how unrealistic. Despite this false reassurance, later even one HHS political appointee took up Mr. Foster's alarms, writing that Class "seems like a recipe for disaster to me."

The Obama administration is basically admitting that the whole thing is a disaster and has disbanded the office that is supposed to be working on the thing.

So shouldn't this be easy to repeal?

Well, no. The whole thing is so phony that the Republicans are wary of repealing it because of the way it has been presented with the five years of collecting money before having to pay out benefits make this look, on paper, like it's trimming the deficit. So repealing it would, on paper increase the deficit.

Some Republicans are also nervous about repealing Class because, under CBO's perverse scoring, they'll be adding $86 billion to the deficit. Others would prefer not to repeal any of ObamaCare until they repeal all of it, on grounds that some of it might survive if the worst parts go first.

So an unaffordable entitlement that will be a perpetual drain on taxpayers may continue to exist because of a make-believe budget gimmick that everyone now admits is bogus. Congress can't reduce real future liabilities because it would mean reducing fake current savings.

This is literally insane. It's rare to get a political opening to dismantle any entitlement, much less one as large as Class. House Republicans ought to vote to repeal it as soon as possible as an act of fiscal hygiene, forcing Senate Democrats to vote on it and President Obama to confront (even if he won't acknowledge) the fraud he signed into law.

And you can just bet that, if the Republicans voted to repeal this fakery that will soon become a disastrous financial liability, the Democrats would accuse them of raising the deficit because they know the whole thing is so convoluted that few people will understand what is really going on.

Only in Washington....

Could you do me a favor, please?

I'm moving this to the top today to beg once again that those of you who have Facebook accounts take about 10 seconds to go help out the non-profit that my daughter works for.

Atlas Corps is a great organization which facilitates overseas fellowships for the world's rising nonprofit leaders--like a multilateral, reverse Peace Corps. They have Fellows from around the world come to the U.S. to serve and gain experience at organizations like Habitat for Humanity, the Grameen Foundation, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The fellows then can take their experience back to their home countries to expand non-profit efforts there.

Atlas Corps has been invited to be one of 25 organizations (5 organizations in 5 categories) in the running for up to $1 million in grants in the Chase Community Giving Awards which is sponsored by JP Morgan Chase. It would be great if you could vote for them in this one-week contest that launched at noon today. There are no donations, no voting everyday--just one vote in one week.

My daughter is really excited about this organization, and a million dollar grant would mean a LOT to her organization, so it would mean a lot to us if you could take a few seconds and vote. Here's how you can help:

VOTE for Atlas Corps in the "Heroes and Leaders" category on Wed, Sept 28!

Please help out - it will only take a few seconds and you'd be helping a terrific organization.

Right now they're not doing as well as they'd like in the voting. But if each of my readers could head over there and vote for them, they'd be seriously in the running. So please, please go on over and vote for them today. If you've already done it, thank you so much.

Also, if you bank or have a credit card with Chase Banking, you can vote there for them there.

Blocking our energy potential

Just think if the administration weren't blocking the development of our nation's oil reserves. Stephen Moore interviews Harold Hamm, a CEO of an oil company and an advocate of freeing up our oil and natural gas industry. What is illuminating is the conversation he had with President Obama when he was invited to the White House.

When it was Mr. Hamm's turn to talk briefly with President Obama, "I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this."

The president's reaction? "He turned to me and said, 'Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.'" Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, "Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing."

Washington keeps "sticking a regulatory boot at our necks and then turns around and asks: 'Why aren't you creating more jobs,'" he says. He roils at the Interior Department delays of months and sometimes years to get permits for drilling. "These delays kill projects," he says.

And then there are the environmental regulations.

A few months ago the Obama Justice Department brought charges against Continental and six other oil companies in North Dakota for causing the death of 28 migratory birds, in violation of the Migratory Bird Act. Continental's crime was killing one bird "the size of a sparrow" in its oil pits. The charges carry criminal penalties of up to six months in jail. "It's not even a rare bird. There're jillions of them," he explains. He says that "people in North Dakota are really outraged by these legal actions," which he views as "completely discriminatory" because the feds have rarely if ever prosecuted the Obama administration's beloved wind industry, which kills hundreds of thousands of birds each year.

Continental pleaded not guilty to the charges last week in federal court. For Mr. Hamm the whole incident is tantamount to harassment. "This shouldn't happen in America," he says. To him the case is further proof that Washington "is out to get us."

Mr. Hamm believes that if Mr. Obama truly wants more job creation, he should study North Dakota, the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.5%. He swears that number is overstated: "We can't find any unemployed people up there. The state has 18,000 unfilled jobs," Mr. Hamm insists. "And these are jobs that pay $60,000 to $80,000 a year." The economy is expanding so fast that North Dakota has a housing shortage. Thanks to the oil boom—Continental pays more than $50 million in state taxes a year—the state has a budget surplus and is considering ending income and property taxes.

Just think of how not only our economic situation, but also our foreign policy. What if OPEC no longer had such a stranglehold on the world's economy? What if we finally achieved what presidents for 40 years have been seeking - energy independence? Think of how much the federal government could garner in revenues if we freed up drilling.

Instead Obama pursues his pipe dreams of federally funded green jobs. It allows him to morally preen while destroying our potential for economic growth and energy growth.

If our party leaders can't deal with Iowa and New Hampshire...

The political world is in a tizzy because Florida had the absolute temerity to move their primary up to January 31. That throws everything off schedule that the GOP had been hoping to do in February. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada have been guaranteed to be the first states so they're going to move their dates up to January, and maybe New Hampshire will even go as early as December 2011.

Every four years we go through this whole rigmarole about the schedule. Every four years, the parties try to find some way to get around frontloading the primaries and caucuses too early. This time the GOP had thought they had worked out a nice plan using incentives and penalties to keep states other than the blessed four from going before February. They were going to have a nice, orderly progression. And any state that tried to jump the queue would be punished by losing half their delegates and having to have their delegates allotted on a proportional rather than a winner-take-all basis.

But Florida decided that they'd rather take the penalty. They prefer to have their primary early. They know that they're a big, crucial swing state so candidates will have to pay them attention even if it only means getting half the delegates.

Well, fine. I don't blame them one bit. I don't know why every year, the entire political establishment has to tremble in their boots because Iowa and New Hampshire know that they have a good deal going first. They get attention and money spent in their state that otherwise they wouldn't garner. And people pay obeisance to their oversize influence.

I'd like to see the parties construct some other system and just give a big kiss-off to Iowa and New Hampshire. I'd prefer some sort of rotating regional primary system, but I'm open to all sorts of ideas.

This shouldn't be an intractable problem. There are solutions out there. And if Iowa and New Hampshire politicians stamped their feet and screamed and yelled and went ahead and scheduled their caucus and primary early, fine. Better to deny them their delegates than big states like Florida and Michigan. Let them see how it feels to be punished for acting so spoiled.

I know that are parties are weak when it comes to the nomination process, but there is no constituency to support the mess we have now except for Iowans and New Hampshirites. And they cozened South Carolina and Nevada to join their little posse of petulance by allowing them to join the officially sanctioned early-state brigade. It's senseless and the whole system is ready for reform.

If the parties can't solve a problem like scheduling a few primaries that they'd both like to solve, how are these politicians going to deal with really tough problems like reforming Medicare, reining in our spending, or reforming our tax code and business climate so our economy can start growing?

If the NFL were run like our public schools

Fran Tarkenton has a great take on education. He imagines if the NFL were run like our nation's public schools are run.

magine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

He is so right that our system of public education that has evolved defies all logic if we were starting from scratch to design the best public schools we could. That is why the charter school system is so crucial to the process of school reform. Each school starts out by deciding what its mission is and how best to achieve that mission. Many of the new charters focused on educating underprivileged children are focused on analyzing outcomes to find the best ways to help student succeed. Think of it as the Moneyball approach to education. Such schools as the KIPP Academies and other schools with a similar approach have been embarrassing public schools in the same neighborhoods with their success rates.

Tarkenton is exactly right that our system isn't working and to describe the system is all we need to expose how stupid the whole thing is.

Obama wasting DNC money

The Democratic National Committee is out with an ad urging Congress to pass his jobs plan.

Think of this. The Democrats themselves aren't willing to bring the bill up in the Senate because they know they don't have the votes. And it's not only Republicans who are skeptical about his weak plan.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia questioned the level and effectiveness of spending. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia opposed raising income taxes on upper-income Americans to pay for it, while Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said taxing oil and gas companies was unfair.

Even lawmakers who usually support the president voiced reservations. Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania said the plan should be dismantled and passed in pieces, while Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware said the best way to create jobs would be to cut the deficit — something Obama is set to address on Monday.

The list grows.

Some are unhappy about the specific types of companies, particularly the oil industry, that would lose tax benefits. “I have said for months that I am not supporting a repeal of tax cuts for the oil industry unless there are other industries that contribute,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana.

A small but vocal group dislikes the payroll tax cuts for employees and small businesses. “I have been very unequivocal,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon. “No more tax cuts.”

His voice rising to a near shriek, he added: “We have the economy that tax cuts give us. And it’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? The president is in a box.”

There are also Democrats, some of them senators up for election in 2012, who oppose the bill simply for its mental connection to the stimulus bill, which laid at least part of the foundation for the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.

“I have serious questions about the level of spending that President Obama proposed,” said Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, in a statement issued right after Mr. Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress last week.

[...]

Senator Kay Hagan declined on Wednesday to say her support for the bill that Mr. Obama spent the day promoting in her state was indubitable. “We’ve got to have legislation that is supported by Democrats and Republicans,” she said. “I’m going to have to look at it. “

Representative Heath Shuler, another North Carolina Democrat, said Congress should tame the deficit before approving new spending for job programs. “The most important thing is to get our fiscal house in order,” said Mr. Shuler, a leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition. “Then we can talk about other aspects of job creation.”

Isn't it about time that these selfish, partisan politicians stop putting their political careers above the needs of the country?

So Obama needs to convince his own party that his plan is a good idea and then he needs to get Harry Reid to actually schedule the thing. Running an ad and running around the country shouting "Pass this bill!" isn't going to turn this piece of dreck into a flower garden?

The Democrats have defend a whole lot of vulnerable Senate and House seats next year. When the races are tight next year, they're going to wish that they had back some of the money they wasted pushing the President's lame jobs bill that they can't even persuade members of their party is a great idea.