No Hesitation

Need To Know Basis
The first thing you need to know is that America wasn’t always like this. When John F. Kennedy was elected president, the top 0.01 percent was only about a quarter as rich compared with the typical family as it is now — and members of that class paid much higher taxes than they do today. Yet somehow we managed to have a dynamic, innovative economy that was the envy of the world. The superrich may imagine that their wealth makes the world go round, but history says otherwise.


To this historical observation we should add another note: quite a few of today’s superrich, Mr. Romney included, make or made their money in the financial sector, buying and selling assets rather than building businesses in the old-fashioned sense. Indeed, the soaring share of the wealthy in national income went hand in hand with the explosive growth of Wall Street. (Paul Krugman, NYT, 7/12/2012)


So Krugman wants to talk about how wealth is created? OK, let's discuss. How have some prominent Democrats "created wealth?" He invokes the Kennedys whose fortune - as we know - came from the illegal bootlegging activities of the patresfamilias. Ooops! Let's pick another wealthy Dem at random. How about John Kerry? What did he do to create wealth? Why he married a rich widow!  Ooops again! Shall we continue? Nancy Pelosi? Her husband. Harry Reid? Whatever happened with that investigation into his Nevada real estate deal? Jon Corzine? Why he is one of those financial sector types that Krugman disparages. 


Peculiar Terms
President Barack Obama, who has no business or economic qualifications whatsoever, accused rival Mitt Romney in a CBS interview of being unable to grasp "the economy as a whole." Success and profit in the private sector, Obama said, were only part of the economy: "[A]s president, my job is to think about the workers," he said, defining his role in terms peculiar to the world of community organizing and Big Labor. (Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart.com, 7/13/2012)


These Breitbart protegees are just outstanding and serve the memory of their boss with great distinction.


Fringed
That's why the conservative-fringe idea that Barack Obama was never vetted is silly; while it's always possible that something else might be out there, Obama survived a general election campaign against John McCain and a tough primary fight against Hillary Clinton (and several other seemingly competent campaigns up through Iowa, as well). Indeed, a lot of the story about Obama is a complaint that already-reported items have, for some Republicans, inexplicitly failed to get voters to reject him. To a large extent, even the fringe Obama vetters know that the 2008 campaign functioned to produce information about Obama. (Jonathan Berstein, Washington Post, 7/12/2012)


A Washington Post opinion writer that we have not followed...until now. Berstein defies reality by stating that because Obama went through the primary and general election process he was fully vetted. This is preposterous. Obama was not and there were two reasons why he was not. First, Team Obama locked down what they did not want the public to know (college transcripts, passport records, relationships with controversial figures like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, etc.). For heaven's sake, notwithstanding a longstanding controversy about where he was born, it took four years for Obama to release his birth certificate... AFTER he was president! This is a fully vetted candidate? Second, aided by a supine media, anyone who dared ask questions about Obama was tarred as a racist. Nice try, Berstein, your column is a joke. 


(And, by the way, the correct word is "inexplicably," not "inexplicitly.")