Shared Misery: The Fruit of Socialism

From Investors Business Daily:

The Obama Record: May’s weak jobs report further confirms the president’s policies are failing to help the economy. This is, indeed, the worst recovery since the Depression.

Negative superlatives associated with this presidency keep piling up. The toll so far:

• The share of Americans who’ve been out of work a long time — now at 42% of the unemployed — is the highest since the Great Depression (source: Labor Department).

• The proportion of the civilian working-age population actually working, at 58%, is the smallest since the Carter era (Labor Department).

• Growth in nonfarm payroll jobs since the recovery began in June 2009 is the slowest of any comparable recovery since World War II (Hoover Institution).

• The rate of new business startups — the engine of job growth — has plunged to an all-time low of 7.87% of all businesses (Census Bureau).

• 3 in 10 young adults can’t find jobs and live with their parents, highest since the 1950s (Pew Research).

• 54% of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 are jobless or underemployed, the highest share in decades (Northeastern University).

• Black teen unemployment, now at 37%, is near Depression-era highs (Labor Department).

• Almost 1 in 6 Americans are now poor — the highest ratio in 30 years — and the total number of poor, at 49.1 million, is the largest on record (Census).

• The share of Hispanics in poverty has topped that of blacks for the first time, 28.2% to 25.4% (Census).

• The number of Americans on food stamps — 45 million recipients, or 1 in 7 residents — also is the highest on record (Congressional Budget Office).

• Total government dependency — defined as the share of Americans receiving one or more federal benefit payments — is now at 47%, highest ever (Hoover).

• The share of Americans paying no income tax, at 49.5%, is the highest ever (Heritage Foundation, IRS).

• The national homeownership rate, now at 65.4%, is the lowest in 15 years (Census).

• The 30-point gap between black and white Americans who own their own homes is the widest in two decades and one of the widest on record (Census).

• Federal spending, now at 23.4% of GDP, is the highest since WWII (CBO).

• Excluding defense and interest payments, spending is the highest in American history, at 17.6% of the economy (First Trust Economics).

• The federal debt, at 69% of GDP, is the highest since just after WWII (CBO).

• The U.S. budget deficit, now at 9.5% of the economy, is the highest since WWII (CBO).

• U.S. Treasury debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, meaning the U.S. government no longer ranks among risk-free borrowers (S&P).

This is what Obamanomics has wrought. Fiscal promiscuity. Trickle-up poverty. Shared misery.

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Turkish Immigrant Decapitates Wife in Germany

32 year old Orhan Sircasi reportedly killed his wife in front of their six children by severing her head. Examiner.com reports that neighbors heard Sircasi shouting, “Allahu Akbar” while in their apartment where the murder occurred. When he emerged, he ran to the roof where neighbors and other witnesses saw him standing with wife’s severed head in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Police confronted Sircasi and he attacked them with the knife and “by swinging the head like a club.” He then proceeded to throw the head off the roof into the courtyard below as the police wrestled him to the ground and took him into custody.

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And Now for Something Completely Different

From Brietbart: Artist Turns Dead Cat Into Drone.

I saw this yesterday, but couldn’t bring myself to post on it. I have had dogs and cats my whole life and have buried most of them myself under an oak near my home. So the “Dead Cat as Quad-Rotor” idea struck me as kind of disturbed. But when I saw it, I admit I laughed. Hard.

I denounce myself.

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Tuesday Morning News and Links

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Kimberlin Provokes ‘National Day of Blogger Silence’ Friday

Twitchy reports that National Bloggers Club president targeted by Brett Kimberlin supporters; National Day of Blogger Silence planned for Friday.

Supporters of convicted bomber and online terrorist Brett Kimberlin have gone after another conservative activist and his family with their anti-free speech thuggery.

Ali Akbar is the president of the National Bloggers Club, the group that organized the fund to support Kimberlin’s targets. He reported the attack on Twitter this afternoon.

There is so much I want to say but that’s what Kimberlin’s folks want. Im on the phone with every lawyer and cop I know trying to stop this.—
Ali A. Akbar (@ali) June 04, 2012

I am. RT @soetorosux: @TwitchyTeam @ali call FBI…seriously—
Ali A. Akbar (@ali) June 04, 2012

I’m in touch with @ali. He’s fine.I advised him to stop tweeting for a while until he cools off. So, it will be a bit before he tweets more.—
John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) June 04, 2012

Twitchy has confirmed that a suspected Kimberlin associate used online intimidation tactics to target Ali and at least one member of his family. Attempts have been made to access sensitive information about his family members and to hack his personal Twitter account and multiple National Bloggers Club accounts.

But instead of retreating as these serial harassers intended, he’s reloading:

And for the record Brett and Neal, I’m doubling down my support for Aaron and committing everything I have to getting charges filed.—
Ali A. Akbar (@ali) June 04, 2012

The conservative Twittersphere has his back.

Ace is asking bloggers to join him in a National Day of Blogger Silence this Friday.

On Friday, this site will be absolutely dead-silent, which is what Brett Kimberlin and his stalker crew seeks, and what the media and our supposed Representatives in Congress would permit.

The only post on Friday will be a bold-faced Open Letter to Congress, urging them to act and not attempt to pass the buck to others.

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Walker “Love Child” Accuser Stands By Discredited Story

From the “They Just Made That Up Dept.,” the National Review has an article highlighting how the left is losing it’s cool in Wisconsin:

Bernadette Gillick is a University of Minnesota professor who has stepped forward through left-wing website Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative (WCMC) and shamelessly accused Governor Scott Walker of fathering a child with her first-year roommate “Ruth” at Marquette University in 1988.

Completely ignoring the fact that the election is tomorrow, the story has issues. First, when contacted, “Ruth” told the WCMC specifically, “I can confirm that it was not Scott Walker who is my daughter’s father.” She believes Gillick is mixing up stories. A likely theory given the paternity case involving “Scott Alan Walker” (the Governor’s middle name is “Kevin”).

Even facing this information, Gillick refuses to make any clarifying statement or apology, allowing the allegation to simply float. With a straight face, her lawyer delivered:

“I’m not a political activist; she’s not a political activist. There was certainly no strategy involved. It was something she told family and friends based on her personal experience; they encouraged her, and there was no consultation with any political committee or anything like that.”

With the election Tuesday? It’s all just a coincidence? No strategy, coordination or consultation? Hoo boy, you crazy wingnuts.

But that’s not all. Lighting the match isn’t your issue if someone else throws it into the gasoline. You can’t help what someone else did with it, right?

“I don’t see a problem with a person being able to make statements about her knowledge of a public figure,” her lawyer, Michael Fargione says. “What happens with that statement is outside of her control.”

Embarrassing. Desperate. Pathetic. Obvious.

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Monday Afternoon News and Links

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