LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

"I have reached the point where I say enough," Obama said, according to the aide. "Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I've reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this." This is funny, because in the past week, House Majority Leader Boehner was compared to "Reagan at Reykjavik" in a Reuters blog, when he wouldn't yield on higher taxes. Obama's statement is asinine: Reagan would agree with the GOP position, but Obama seeks to just "transpose" liberal vs. conservative positions as equally valid. He seeks to claim Reagan's "optimism" about the economy, but his policies are the opposite of Reagan's. This quote shows how shameless a political poseur he is, though I suppose every president has to "play the game." Good luck with that strategy, when they'll be saying "Mourning in America," instead of "Morning in America." Oh, wait, they're already...

Not to belabor the point, but does President Obama remember his own sentiments after the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords? Or was it just rhetoric, no different from his accusation that the GOP is "holding a gun to the head" of the nation? No excuses, that's vile hypocrisy, and an insight into our president's POV. It's twisted, yet understood by most Americans. When you don't have a better argument to make, call your opponent "the devil." Once again, the President of the USA has done the opposite of his promise to "elevate the political debate." I am more ashamed of President Obama than any liberal could have been ashamed of Pres. Bush...

CNN canned Eliot Spitzer's "In The Arena" show because of low ratings. That is the bottom line, and I don't intend to say otherwise, here. I want to look at the impact that the Anthony Weiner scandal had on an already failing program. This show was seen as the "rehabilitation" of Eliot Spitzer, and it wasn't going well. I think Spitzer would have been given more time to build an audience, had another prominent NY politician (Weiner) not been caught with his pants down. Giving Spitzer a show was a gamble, and CNN paired him up with the conservative Kathleen Parker, trying to do the basic "left/right" format. Unfortunately, "Parker-Spizer" had low ratings, and there was some animosity between the two. Parker left the show, and the show was renamed "In the Arena, with Eliot Spitzer." It received even lower ratings. Along comes the Anthony Weiner scandal, and the inevitable jokes about him joining Spitzer on CNN. I never watche...

Nancy Pelosi famously said that we have to pass Obamacare, to find out what's in it. Well, they did pass it, and we're still not done finding out what's in this law. The latest "glitch" is a provision that expands Medicaid coverage to retired people who are considered "middle class." From AP: "Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That's because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility. It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps." I found the food stamp comparison interesting, because many middle class people already qualify for food stamps, in this economy. They used to have ads touting "you may not know you qualify for food stamps." I can imagine an ad, after Obama's re-election, saying the same thing to people who didn't know they qualifi...

OK, so Rep. Anthony Weiner has 'fessed up about his "online" fetish, after lying in the national spotlight for a week. He says he's not resigning, and I'm not sure whether to believe him. At best, he's lost his ability to be the TV "face" of the House Dems. At worst, his House ethics investigation will weigh down the national ticket next year, as Charlie Rangel's did in 2010. While Rangel won re-election with 80% in his Harlem district, Weiner's district went 39% GOP last year. In other words, his campaign for re-election will not weather this scandal as well as Rep. Rangel's. He better forget about becoming Mayor Weiner, as well, with that photo of his weiner out there (Sorry, it was obligatory). As Chris Cuomo reports from ABC : "On May 18, Broussard received an image from the RockOh77 account that shows a man's erect penis. Two days later, she received a shot of a bare-chested man sitting at an office desk. The man in the pho...

The DNC is making a big mistake, reading too much into the victory of (D) Kathy Hochul over (R) Jane Corwin. The campaign was successful, but it's no indicator of a "national trend." In fact, if there's any "trend," it might be to the special congressional election in NY23, back in '09, which the Democrat candidate (Dede Scozzafava) also won in a "traditional" GOP district. They boasted about that win, and then came 2010, and the GOP "Wave." What the national parties underestimate is the depth of voter apathy and political indifference throughout NY's electorate. Most of the people who vote are being paid off, one way or another, by the corrupt progressive bureaucracy. Imagine you're a Republican who voted for the idiot that caused this special election. You were part of that national GOP "wave," and now this guy's made you look a bad judge of character. You don't trust the NYS GOP to put up a "conserva...

John Crudele has a scathing column in Tuesdays NY Post, which has information not widely reported. "The government said the GDP in the first quarter grew at an "annualized" rate of 1.8 percent. That means you have to divide the 1.8 percent annualized rate by four quarters to see how much the economy really grew in the first three months of the year. The answer? A puny 0.45 percent." He goes further: "The problem is, the economy wasn't just slow in the first quarter. The last three months of 2010 were worse if you know how to read the figures. Here's what you have to understand for any of this to make sense. The GDP numbers reported by the Commerce Department are derived after inflation is deducted from overall output. So, that 1.8 percent annualized first quarter growth was what was left after inflation of 1.9 percent was removed. (Yes, inflation is probably worse than 1.9 percent but that's for another column.) The much better 3.1 percent annuali...