This just in from the Associated Press:

The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

About 302,000 homes were sold last year. That’s less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making 2011 the worst year on records dating back to 1963.

http://news.yahoo.com/home-purchases-fall-2011-worst-ever-sales-152515874.html

This doesn’t bode well for the current White House occupant, who’s staking his re-election on a two pronged strategy of attacking Republicans and spinning the impression that, thanks to his policies, America’s economy is on the right track and on the road to recovery.

Numbers like these certainly won’t help him implement the second portion of this strategy. If the trend is up, as the White House, their surrogates in the “progressive” Democratic Party and the “progressive” Party Pravda keep telling us, why were there fewer new homes sold in 2011 than in 2010?

This speaks to the bigger reason why occupy Oval Office’s re-election changes are diminishing. People in America are not as stupid as the self appointed, self-imagined “intellectual elite” believe them to be.

Just because a bunch of self interested, self seeking snobs with highfalutin college degrees thumbtacked to their office walls altered the variables in the equation by which inflation rates are calculated doesn’t mean that people can’t and won’t see the truth. Bureaucrats in government can release all the doctored numbers it’s possible to cipher, desperately trying to convince people to deny their own cognitive abilities and take what they’re being told at face value…that there is no inflation. I guess them there fancy pants geniuses with them there Ivy League deeeegreeeees truly believe that average people, Joe and Josie six pack if you will, don’t see the cost of gasoline and food going up when they fill up their cars and go to the grocery store.

The “intellectual elite” keep trying to convince those dummies populating fly over America that thanks to massive big government spending and increased regulation through the stimulus, Dodd/Frank, and obamacare, unemployment numbers are going down and people are finding jobs. If you just happen to be one of the millions of folks who can’t find a job, haven’t been able to find a job after months or years of searching, live with someone who’s experiencing the same dilemma or hear from someone who just lost the good paying job with benefits they’d had for years, you’re absolutely, positively, definitely the exception to the rule.

The economic crash of 2008 was the direct result of the failed leadership of George W. Bush and failed Republican policies. The Tea Party is Astroturf. Tea Partiers are violent, extreme racists. The Tea Party spit on us. Occupy Wall Street is legitimate. Occupy Wall Street is a spontaneous grassroots movement. Newt Gingrich can’t win a general election. Mitt Romney’s a part of the isolated, evil rich 1%. Rick Santorum has no chance.

There’s no doubt about it. We have spoken, you will believe.  The world’s a safer place! The world’s impression of the United States is better now that we’re in charge! America’s more respected now! Believe us…trust us…we’re the smart ones (read: not you).  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ!

Oh brother.

The 2012 State of the Union address has come and gone with little change in the White House’s view of the world. This is unfortunate. America needs viable solutions, not more wishful thinking.

Most disturbing is the continued, steadfast insistence that doubling America’s corporate tax rate will somehow create middle class jobs. After repeated failures by the current Administration to productively invest taxpayer’s money in green energy companies like Solyndra, what track record exists to support the assumption that government can invest the people’s money more wisely than those who earned it? Why should Americans trust a White House that said no to the Keystone pipeline, a privately funded project that would create thousands of jobs while reducing American dependence on oil from the Middle East? Especially when the White House is still pushing a multi-billion dollar high speed rail project in California that will never have the projected number of passengers and will become just another taxpayer subsidized failure like Amtrak?

Why insist on ending taxpayer subsides for the oil industry while choosing to “double-down” on clean energy? Why should government subsidize any of the energy industry? Let the energy companies go about their business and may the best, cheapest, most efficient energy be provided to the public.

If the White House truly wants to have “an economy built on American manufacturing”, they should cut taxes on manufacturing so investors have incentive, and reduce regulations that are inflating the cost and reducing the efficiency of starting and growing a manufacturing business. Without the return of manufacturing, any economic recovery in America will be sluggish at best. Why continue to practice policies that discourage growth in this vital economic sector?

Yes, Congress appropriating funds for construction projects is a normal part of doing business. But don’t try to convince us that you’ve suddenly become an expert on recognizing “shovel ready projects”. Everyone who’s been paying attention remembers what a dismal failure your last attempt was with the “stimulus” bill.

Iran’s closer than ever to getting the bomb and you’re still trying for dialogue, while civil unrest runs rampant in Iraq thanks to your failure to secure a Status of Forces agreement before withdrawal. The Arab Spring is becoming a Muslim Brotherhood bonanza, and the Taliban is licking their chops in anticipation of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Talking with the Taliban is simply allowing them to gain credibility while they stall and await our departure.

Enough with the divisive class warfare rhetoric. Americans aspire to be rich, not get a handout. Besides, the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes in this country. 47% of Americans pay zero income tax. Exactly how do you define “fair share”?

And while we’re at it, the healthcare law you, Pelosi and Reid jammed down America’s throat without our consent is a mass medical tragedy in the making that increases the already monstrous debt we’ll owe for the unfunded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid mandates.

You’ve had your chance. Your policies have failed. Why don’t you see if Bill Ayers is available to write your memoirs?

The “elite media”? What the heck is the “elite media”? Does that include CNN, who intentionally used subconscious visual and verbal propaganda, consistently and repeatedly trying to tie the GOP to the south? (Read: Forget American history, the GOP is the racist Party) However, I digress.

While its true that there was a very strong element of displeasure within the former Speaker’s replies to Juan Williams of FOX News and especially CNN’s John King, this observation misses the true, underlying reason for Gingrich’s sudden surge in popularity.

Consider South Carolina. They had a big Tea Party victory in 2010 with the election of Nikki Haley as Governor. Then, Governor Haley endorsed Mitt Romney, the GOP establishment’s candidate. Factor in Romney’s inexplicable failure to answer questions he should have seen coming years ago and you begin to get an idea of what happened.

The main reason Newt Gingrich surged in South Carolina, and is now surging in Florida is his ability to articulate the difference between the Conservative and “progressive” visions for America.

The American idea, the shot heard round the world, is that We The People can govern ourselves. By the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God we are entitled, by virtue of our humanity, to the maximum amount of Individual Liberties consistent with law and order, and to the Right of private ownership, not the least of which is the Right to own and decide for ourselves. These Liberties and Rights are to be equally protected by a Constitutionally limited, representative government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. This is a distinctly exceptional American idea.

The “progressive” idea is that an all-powerful centrally planned government, with extreme hostility towards private ownership, forces redistribution of wealth through “progressive” policies in the name of social or economic “justice”. In order to ensure “fairness”, an oligarchy of self-imagined, self appointed “intellectual elite” must be responsible for controlling businesses, industries and “the masses”, who’re incapable of governing themselves. This idea came to America from Britain’s Fabian Socialists and Germany’s Frankfurt School. This is a European idea, not an American one.

There’s a palpable hunger in America for a return to the original intent and First Principles of our Founding Fathers. Why else do you think the Tea Party exists? Or are you one of those unfortunate souls who swallowed the “because they’re racists and can’t stand having a black President” lie hook, line and sinker?

Republicans and Democrats who seek to maintain the status quo better respect the Tea Party. We surround you.

On exactly what basis are you so eminently qualified as to make the determination that Patriotic Americans who want our country to follow the original intent and first principles of the Founding Fathers are dumb? Who appointed you God?

The only reason I’m not canceling my subscription (as I did with TIME Magazine) is because I’ve never been dumb enough to subscribe to your worthless Marxist rag.

Most sincerely,

Michael J. Fell

Never mind that the EPA’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules, aka the CAFE standards, have largely made seeing such noxious fumes spewing forth from the exhaust pipe of an internal combustion engine a thing of the past. Forget reality. Just make sure the most frightening images imaginable are superimposed into the subconscious minds of potential buyers.

Then the commercial starts singing the praises of not filling the air with all that nasty smoke because to charge it, you need simply plug your battery powered car into a home outlet. Never mind that by doing so you’re using electricity that’s primarily generated through the burning of coal, which produces more pollution than internal combustion engines. Obviously, mentioning that truth does not suit the advertising campaign. Why would people buy an electric car if they knew that driving such a car causes more pollution, not less?

Then there’s another commercial from a different manufacturer for a similar type of vehicle. This one sings the praises of how much money consumers will save by not having to pay for all that gasoline at the pump. Never mind that even though gasoline costs nearly twice as much as it did three years ago when our beloved emperor first seized power…err, ah, I mean took office, electricity costs are steadily climbing higher and will “necessarily skyrocket” when new EPA emission controls close multiple electricity generation plants across the country.

In this presidential election year of 2012, this is the same type of subliminal indoctrination you can expect to experience via the “news”, Hollywood productions, school textbooks and especially, political advertising.

Oh, and just in case you’re continuing to cling to the illusion that you’re not being brainwashed, once it’s no longer rechargeable, that battery is just another unmentioned form of pollution.

In order to justify and defend these actions, “progressives” argue that President George W. Bush made far more recess appointments than has the current White House occupant. While that may be true, it’s completely beside the point. The issue isn’t that occupy Oval Office made recess appointments. It’s how and when he made them. occupant acted just one day after the Senate held a session. A recess of at least three days is required before the chief executive has the power to make recess appointments.

As he said Wednesday while speaking before an audience in Shaker Heights, Ohio, “I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer. When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/4/obama-unprecedented-recess-appointment/

Quite understandibly, Senate Republicans were not pleased by this action. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, declared that the move “arrogantly circumvented the American people.” Yes, it’s easy for members of the Senate to express outrage at this arrogant power grab; one in a long series of steps taken by this White House to marginalize Congress.

But where were the high and mighty principles when Congress passed H.R. 1540: the National Defense Authorization Act, which expands the battlefield to include the United States and gives authority to the president to militarily detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge or trial, on the mere suspicion of being a terrorist? Did passage of this bill not also symbolize where someone “arrogantly circumvented the American people”? This law, which “puts our people at risk”, is a violation of the Fifth (“nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) and Sixth (“the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial”) Amendments.

http://billofrights.org/

In the Senate, 46 Democratic Senators and 40 Republican Senators, including Senator McConnell voted in favor of this violation of the Bill of Rights. For the record, let it also state that in the House, 93 Democrats and 190 Republicans also voted aye.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00230

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll932.xml

The NDAA is an open assault by government on the Liberties of U.S. Citizens. The very Liberties secured and protected by the document they swore to defend upon their inauguration, the United States Constitution. At this point, every Citizen of these United States of America is clearly obligated to take the government to task for this flagrant violation of their Rights. Each and every House Representative and Senator who voted in favor of this unconstitutional slip into tyranny should be voted out of office.

By the way, this bill was signed into law on December 31, 2011 while the golfer in chief was in Kailua, Hawaii enjoying his family’s 17 day, $4 million dollar vacation.

Happy New Year.

The 21st century GOP is a chained elephant, held in place by the elephant stick of political correctness.  At a time when “progressives” are fleecing the nation’s Posterity through generational theft, robbing the treasury blind through crony socialism and multiple forms of government scandal, the GOP is strangely, mostly silent.  Why?

With the cultural acceptance and adoption of political correctness, with so much concern about not hurting anyone’s feelings, people are walking on eggshells.  Fear of offending someone else’s sensibilities has shackled free speech while retaining the illusion that First Amendment Rights are still fully in place.

Attend:

The U.S. Attorney General plays the race card while being investigated by Congress for gross negligence and/or criminality for allowing hundreds, if not thousands of automatic weapons to end up in the hands of south american drug cartels.  Excuse me, “mr” holder, with all due respect, aren’t you the one openly and consciously choosing which cases to prosecute at the federal level based on race?  You’re a total hypocrite.  You and your ilk are like the boy who cried wolf.  We don’t need to explain that one, do we?

holder’s boss, the current White House occupant, intentionally chose to defund Social Security with a one year payroll tax holiday that’s now entering it’s second year…oops, thirteenth and fourteenth month.  occupy Oval Office publically said he wanted a second year, but he and his Senate Majority Leader co-conspirator decided it would be to their political advantage if the Senate passed a two month extension and left town, forcing the GOP House to accept the two month extension or get beat up politically by ”progressive” liars and their public relations minions in the “progressive” Party Pravda.

Thats the way it really is.  If you can’t stand to hear the truth or speak it, tough.  That’s your problem, not mine.

When is the GOP going to wise up and realize that the elephant stick is crippling them and their political future?  In the real world, an unchained elephant fears no lion, leopard, cheetah, rino or donkey.

The answer is simple if you know how to read the tea leaves. Submitted for your review are important factors:

The only thing the “stimulus” did was redistribute wealth borrowed from China to broke, fiscally irresponsible States so they could continue to fund unsustainable public employee union contracts, and to the pockets of occupy Oval Office’s “green jobs” political cronies. In these ways, the “stimulus” worked magnificently for those in academia, the “progressive” Party, the “progressive” Party Pravda and Hollywood’s self imagined, self appointed curators of America’s conscience. Therein reside the last vestiges of those remaining sympathetic to the patently un-American Socialist cause.

The reason people in America aren’t outraged by multiple terrorist attacks on America over the past three years is because occupy Oval Office lies through their teeth about the nature of the attacks, and the “progressive” Party Pravda repeats their lies on the nightly “news”.

Ft Hood was “workplace violence”? An Islamofascist shouting “allah akbar” before opening up a two fisted automatic weapon slaughter of America’s military isn’t a terrorist attack? To believe this narrative requires a superhuman ability to suspend disbelief, a quality found in abundance among “progressives”.

When you look at the reasons through an American lens, it’s easy to understand where the problems lie. With “progressives”.

When speaking of Conservative economic policy…and I quote: “But here’s the problem:  It doesn’t work.  It has never worked.  It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.”

Really?

Then why were they called the roaring twenties?  Facts are, detailed IRS data shows that the Mellon tax cuts resulted in greater tax payments and a larger tax share paid by those with high incomes.  Meanwhile they also led to an annual average growth rate of 4.7%.

Conservative economic policies have never worked?  Then why did President Ronald Reagan’s economy esperience a 7.2 % growth rate in 1984?  During the Reagan expansion of 1983-89, the economy grew by an average annual rate of 3.8%.

Facts show that the results of the 20s and the 80s were far better than FDR’s, Jimmy Carter’s…or yours.

So quit borrowing from Karl Marx to play the pro-big government class warfare card, claiming the middle class is “under siege” by rich people.  Getting ahead in America has never been about big government stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  Positive results occur when government doesn’t needlessly interfere in the private sector economy.

What would be enough? The 100% Barrack Obama Sr. wanted to impose on Kenya’s rich? Can you say “dreams from my father”?

This shows how clueless the vacation taking, golf-playing narcissist in thief is about the way America was designed by our Founding Fathers. Getting a fair shake in America has never been about big government stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Getting a fair shake has been about government not interfering with the private sector free market’s ability to afford equal opportunity to everyone, regardless of their starting point in life.

Instead of digging Social Security into an ever bigger hole by extending the payroll tax cut for a year, how about creating some certainty for investors by making permanent changes to America’s ridiculously complicated tax code? How about creating a simplified tax code that gives incentives for investment? How about creating an economic environment where the rich, middle class and poor alike all feel it’s worth the risk to invest in a start up business? Thanks to existing “progressive” taxation and regulations, today this is practically impossible.

This is not the time to be playing politics with tax and entitlement reform. These reforms are a national need, not a political wedge issue. Without these reforms America cannot and will not survive. The time now is for action, not campaign stops filled with empty, partisan rhetoric.