Chocolate really is good (for you)

Jewish World Review Fudging it: Chocolate really can be good for you By Hara Estroff Marano Psychology Today Magazine Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on print Share on email More Sharing Services149 Whether flagging from age or fatigue, ailing minds can benefit from chocolate JewishWorldReview.com | The very word "chocolate" is said to derive from the Mayan words for bitter water. Long before Cortes successfully introduced cocoa to Spain--Columbus was the first European to return with cocoa beans, but their value was unappreciated--the beans of the cacao tree were harvested, roasted, ground to a powder, and, mixed with water and spices, consumed as a beverage in Central and South America. An especially bitter cocoa beverage is still favored by Kuna Indians living off the coast of Panama, who drink about five cups a day. Researchers believe the bitterness is a mark of the very high content of flavanol phytonutrients in chocolate in its unprocessed state--which explains why the island-dwelling Kuna have unusually low rates of heart disease and cancer. FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". In addition to INSPIRING stories, HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. When the Indians move to the mainland, where they don't drink the same cocoa, they are no longer medically privileged. Scientists have gathered evidence that a high concentration of flavanols enhances blood vessel function throughout the body, and ongoing studies confirm that high-flavanol cocoa preparations especially boost brain blood flow. COCOA TREAT(MENT) Want to do a favor for someone in the early stages of memory decline? Give them a chocolate bar. In a double-blind randomized study, 90 elderly individuals with mild cognitive impairment were mentally quicker and more verbally fluent after consuming a daily cocoa drink loaded with flavanols. There were additional effects as well: Blood pressure decreased and metabolic and cardiovascular function improved during the eight-week trial. And there were no adverse effects. PRESSURE POINTS A daily treat of chocolate can help keep blood pressure under control. And that's a tasty way to modify a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A meta-analysis of subjects who consumed cocoa products yielded a "small but statistically significant blood pressure-reducing effect." The flavanols in cocoa may be lowering blood pressure by stimulating production of nitric oxide, a powerful dilator of blood vessels. Increases in blood delivery to the brain generally enhance neural activity. STRIKE AGAINST STROKE Scandinavian researchers found that high chocolate consumption was associated with a lower risk of stroke. For those study subjects consuming the greatest amount of chocolate--2.2 ounces a week--the risk was nearly 20 percent less than for those consuming none. The effect was independent of type of stroke, whether hemorrhagic or obstructive. Researchers cite a variety of mechanisms by which chocolate helps--it's antioxidant, antiplatelet, and anti-inflammatory. FLOW CHARTED A single cup of flavanol-enhanced cocoa increases gray-matter blood flow, studies show. The boost in circulation is sufficient to power a short-term enhancement of cognitive skills. "This raises the possibility that certain food components like cocoa flavanols may be beneficial in increasing brain blood flow and enhancing brain function among older adults or for others in situations where they may be cognitively impaired, such as fatigue," says Ian MacDonald, of the University of Nottingham. A SHOT IN THE DARK It isn't the darkness of chocolate that brings health benefits. Nor, despite its prominence in labels, can you tell from the cocoa content of a chocolate bar how good it will be for you. In fact, the darkest chocolate can miss entirely what is medicinally good--flavanol phytochemicals. By nature, flavanols are bitter, and reducing the bitterness--by Dutch processing, or alkalinization--also reduces the amount of flavanol. Until labels show flavanol content, look for chocolate that has not undergone Dutch processing.

The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

This short explanation explains a lot.

Even for non-Marxists, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is considered one of the most profound analyses of revolution. Marx’s imagery is taken from the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte on November 9, 1799 (the Eighteenth of Brumaire in the revolutionary calendar), but his seminal analysis is about the reign of the general’s nephew, Louis Bonaparte, who was brought to power by a coup against the Second French Republic on December 2, 1851.

The work is most commonly known for its play on Hegel’s aphorism that history repeats itself. But what is commonly overlooked is Marx’s addition to Hegel’s adage: for Marx, history didn’t just repeat itself, it manifested itself first as tragedy and then as farce.

Louis Bonaparte’s presence on the stage of history was a farce. By culture he was a foreigner. By political inclination he was a pretender, a man who was all things to all people, and a man who was carried into political life by plying the outcasts of society with sausages. Then, as Marx so aptly put it, he plied them with sausages anew. Bonaparte represented no class interest and no transcendent interest except his own.

To Marx’s disgust, Bonaparte ruled by creating dependency on the state, by expanding the machinery of government. The organs of the state, the bureaucracy, and their ever-growing tentacles expanding into private life were Bonaparte’s substitution for a class or transcendent interest. Remember, the young Marx is the Marx of revolution who was appalled by the state as the corruption of humanity. Marx himself was a participant in the revolutionary skirmishes of 1848 and proclaimed the wrecking of the state — not its extension — as the road to the emancipation of humanity.

Confronting Marx was a political situation where no one class could achieve power. The bourgeois had failed to consummate its revolution, and the proletariat had marched too quickly on the bourgeois’ heels. This situation was ripe for exploitation by the foreigner, the pretender, who was all things to all people. To some scholars of this period, this was a description of whatwould later become known as fascism. The template for Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron is to be found in an examination of the reign of Louis Bonaparte.

So too, in a sense, is the presidency of Barack Obama.

As I have argued elsewhere, Obama is not a communist, even in the twentieth century meaning of the term. Communism is about state ownership of the means of production. The Obama administration does not seek ownership. In fact, where it acquired ownership through the bailout, the administration now works to divest itself. What Obama is building is a large government bureaucracy whose expanding limbs find their way into every facet of human existence, a government that does not own the means of production but controls them by increased and oppressive regulation and taxation. Obama’s political inspiration is more likely to be Mussolini or Peron, even Hugo Chavez, than Lenin or Stalin.

Obama has successfully done what few American presidential candidates have been able to do. He has mobilized the electoral periphery — the previously uninvolved youth, the apathetic poor, and the marginalized minorities. In politics, the agenda of the previous non-participants seldom resembles that of those traditionally involved in political struggles. This was one of Marx’s central considerations in his analysis of the Eighteenth Brumaire, and the one leftist political theorist Antonio Gramsci drew upon in comparing the rise of Mussolini to the rise of Louis Bonaparte.

How is it that a sitting president presiding over a damaged economy with high unemployment and no sign of recovery can get reelected? In part, the answer is that he has expanded access to the federal trough, made people dependent on the largess of the government, and caused them to be fearful that the “nasty” opposition is going to terminate the government programs upon which they are increasingly dependent.

Mitt Romney articulated it poorly and somewhat exaggerated the number, but the reality is that a large part of the population, especially the growing number of poor, is locked into the party that can be counted on to ply them with sausages. On the other side of the creation of dependency is an ever-growing government bureaucracy that administers those programs.

Mussolini and Peron, not to mention the recently departed Hugo Chavez, were popular with the social periphery. These dictators were the tragedy. As demagogues, they aggressively expanded state-created dependency on one hand and make-believe jobs on the other, giving many the comfort of a mediocre and predictable standard of living, while draining the real economy, borrowing incessantly, and perpetuating a dysfunctional system until its collapse could not be avoided. Obama, with his elitist pretensions and his insufferable allusions to the middle class, follows in their vein as farcical imitator.

The Peronist government managed the relationships between various interest groups and pretended to speak in the name of each of them, while micromanaging the economy with the promise of reducing income inequality. Ultimately, this policy led to one economic crisis after another.

The expanding role of government means a mutual dependency between a government bestowing favors and businesses and interest groups seeking them. This spawns an incestuous crony capitalism that produces Solyndras and causes the devastation of GM bondholders in favor of a United Auto Workers union that — like the Service Employees International Union — represents a Peronist-style syndicalism united with the Obama administration.

Louis Bonaparte came to power through a coup, as did Mussolini, but both Hitler and Peron were elected. Elections are not the only measure of democracy, especially when the incoming regime uses elections to expand power and seize wealth.  Peron, like Hugo Chavez, raided the private retirement funds of individuals and coerced them into government social security in order to pay for a government increasingly burdened with debt from pandering to the social periphery. There is a move now in leftist Democratic circles to have the Obama administration implement similar policies.

The monetizing of the government debt by aggressively and artificially lowering interest rates and falsifying real inflation has created problems for those dependent on interest-bearing instruments for their income. Meanwhile, programs for the social periphery are expanded in the name of compassion, where compassion has become a shibboleth that really means the government takes from some and gives to others.

The ultimate goal of such programs is neither compassion nor social justice, but building a political base of dependents made up of program recipients and program administrators on one hand and crony capitalists on the other. And so, we are in the era of another purveyor of an alien culture, a pretender who is all things to all people, and a demagogue who is hoisted on the shield of the social periphery that is constantly plied with sausages and then sausages anew. Welcome to the Eighteenth Brumaire of Barack Obama.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Antithesis of the Austrian solution

Looking for the reason we are having difficulty getting a recovery on track one needs look no further than this explanation below.  As long as central banks keep expanding their balance statements by buying assets of governments we will have the makings of ever expanding financial bubbles.  This is all the antithesis of the Austrian school of economics solution which calls for the elimination of the misallocation of capital by allowing markets to function freely.  No pain no gain.

Then we get into more exotic territory, such as this offering from Steven Lewis at Monument Securities, via the FT:

More likely, investors realise the ‘knock-on’ effects from a Cypriot default are literally incalculable. But they are insensitive to bad news. They respond to those factors which would lead them to buy financial assets; they can do nothing with any other information. Central banks’ massive asset purchases have set up a situation where the markets’ normal signalling mechanisms no longer operate because investors have huge volumes of uncovenanted liquidity, created by the central banks, to commit to long-term assets. The central banks would, no doubt, claim this as a triumph for their asset-buying policies. They do not want to see economic recovery blown off course by recurrent financial crises. However, for those who believe free markets are the most efficient means of allocating capital, the impairment of the capital markets’ pricing function must be cause for concern. It presages serious misallocation of capital, carrying negative implications for future economic capacity. The most extreme and obvious form of misallocation is seen when a market ‘bubble’ forms. The bursting of a bubble may have spectacular consequences. But misallocation of capital may occur even when a ‘bubble’ does not form. For example, when investors, in their quest for yield, overlook significant differences in the risk-adjusted returns that assets may realistically be expected to provide. Central bankers say they are on the look-out for ‘bubbles’ but they seem unconcerned about any broader misallocation of resources their policies may generate.

The engines of the left

Here is a probably fairly complete list of all foundations that distribute millions of dollars every year to anti-capitalist, far left organizations and causes around the world.  Want to know why it's so hard to hear a conservative voice in the political dialogue these days?  The answers here.

The Wine, Women and Song Foundation

By Clarice Feldman

I have watched over the years how publicly unaccountable foundations have amassed billions of dollars, tax free, and spend it on dangerous, leftwing, often anti-American and anti-Israeli outfits, conferences and promoters.  Taxpaying citizens opposed to abortion without restrictions, open borders, balkanization of the country, erosion of their constitutional rights, dumbed down education of their children and environmental extremism are fighting opposition very generously funded by these groups.

The irony of this development is that capitalists -- like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Pew -- who owed their fortunes to American free market policies, started most of these foundations. Further, the notion of permitting many of the thousands of foundations to exist tax free developed during the Depression when public funds were tight and, it was argued, these foundations could supply the money to provide for necessary public services in the absence of any other resources that could do this.

Today the Ford Foundation sits on about $11 billion in assets. The Rockefeller Foundation holds about $5 billion in assets. The Carnegie Corporation holds about $2.5 billion in assets and the Pew Foundation about $5 billion. Those are just a few of the most  well-known of the "charitable" foundations.

The normal pattern with these is that the benefactor's family and/or associates who held his views sat on the board that determined how these funds would be spent. In time, they died or drifted away and the sums, which kept growing, were under the control of people who held views diametrically opposed to those of the founders.

While tax- exempt foundations are by law supposed to spend down a percentage of their assets annually, they've invented numbers of dodges around this and their fortunes grow as those of the taxpayers and government treasuries diminish.

I cannot list all of the misguided expenditures made by these foundations in recent years, but here's a short reminder:

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation played a large part in funding the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), which degenerated into a circus of anti-Semitic and anti-American displays. Ford has given funding to a number of the NGOs that played key roles in the Durban Conference. Among these were: LAW (which received $1.1 million from Ford between 1997-2003); the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO (which, from 1999 to 2002, received several Ford grants, totaling $1.4 million, and an additional $270,000 supplemental grant); the Al Mezan Center (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received $100,000 in Ford money for "community based advocacy work on economic, social and cultural rights in Gaza" -- i.e., the disruption of Israeli Defense Force activities); and the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received two Ford grants totaling $135,000). Ford has also provided large amounts of funding for Rabbis for Human Rights, for "rabbinically based" educations efforts "supporting human rights policies by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
Ford has provided financial backing to the New Israel Fund (NIF) since 1988. In 2003 Ford awarded a $20 million grant to NIF; four years later, it gave another $20 million to the organization.

Through its Cairo office, Ford disbursed more than $35 million in grants to 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations during 2000-2001 period alone -- plus 62 additional grants (totaling more than $1.4 million) to Arab and Palestinian individuals. From the 1950s through 2003, Ford's Beirut and Cairo offices awarded over $193 million to more than 350 Middle East organizations, almost all of which were Arab, Islamic, or Palestinian. Edwin Black, in a four-part article series titled "Funding Hate: Ford Foundation finances anti-Israel Activists," written for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, states: "The overwhelming majority of Ford's monies for the Middle East are granted to pro-Palestinian and Islamic rights groups."

Carnegie Corporation  

During the past few decades, the political leanings of the Carnegie Corporation (CC) have shifted leftward. Today CC believes that its mission is to serve as a catalyst for social change of a leftist nature. One notable individual who served on the Carnegie Board of Directors until recently was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Senator John Kerry. [snip]

 Among the many recent recipients of Carnegie Corporation grants are the American Bar Association; the Alliance for Justice; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Aspen Institute; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center; theBrookings Institution; the Center for Community Change; Citizen Action; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Cornell University Peace Studies Program; Democracy Matters Institute; Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action; Duke University; the Earth Day Network; the Economic Policy Institute; the Gates Foundation Funds; Human Rights Watch; the Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project; the Interfaith Education Fund; the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the League of Women Voters Education Fund; the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund; theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense & Education Fund; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; National Council of La Raza; National Public Radio; National Urban League; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Neighborhood Funders Group; the Paul Robeson Foundation; People for the American Way; the Ploughshares Fund; Project Vote; the Proteus Fund; the Public Broadcasting System; Public Citizen; the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; Rock the Vote Education Fund; the Rockefeller Family Fund; Rutgers University; State Voices; the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Urban Institute; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and the William J. Brennan Jr. Center for Justice.

The Pew Foundation

With other foundations, Pew manipulated surveys and provided fake research to facilitate the passage of the campaign finance reform act, now largely emasculated by the Supreme Court. This seems to be the clearest evidence that Pew and other tax-free foundations want to and have worked to retain their monopoly -- along with the mainstream media -- on free speech in America:

Starting in 1994, Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) and a few other leftist foundations began bankrolling front groups and so-called "experts" whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for "campaign-finance reform." This deceptive strategy was the brainchild of Sean Treglia, a former program officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts.3 Between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote campaign-finance reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations, one of which was OSI, which contributed $12.6 million to the cause.4 Among the major recipients of these OSI funds were such pro-reform organizations as Common Cause ($625,000); Public Campaign ($1.3 million); Democracy 21 ($300,000); the Alliance For Better Campaigns ($650,000); the Center For Public Integrity ($1.7 million); the Center For Responsive Politics ($75,000); Public Citizen ($275,000); and the Brennan Center for Justice (more than $3.3 million).5 The "research" which these groups produced in order to make a case on behalf of campaign-finance reform was largely bogus and contrived. Forinstance, Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno had clearly admitted in his February 19, 1999 grant proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of the proposed study was political, not scholarly, and that the project would be axed if it failed to yield the desired results: "The purpose of our acquiring the data set is not simply to advance knowledge for its own sake, but to fuel a continuous multi-faceted campaign to propel campaign reform forward. Whether we proceed to phase two will depend on the judgment of whether the data provide a sufficiently powerful boost to the reform movement." The other seven foundations that, along with OSI, contributed most heavily to the promotion of campaign-finance reform were the Pew Charitable Trusts ($40.1 million); the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million); the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($14.1 million); the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million); the Jerome Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million); the Ford Foundation ($8.8 million); and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million).

Congress has known for some time the extent of the money locked up by these new era versions of Medieval abbeys -- then rolling in wealth garnered from tithes and taxes and gifts,   while all around them the peasants starved -- but has chosen to do nothing about closer monitoring their operations; limiting what this money can be spent on, forcing a faster pay out of this treasure for the public welfare.

There's only one thing left: The creation of a new Wine, Women and Song Foundation, led by yours truly, with the aim of persuading rich young men to spend their cash on wine women and song. (In the case of the newly rising cadre of wealthy women entrepreneurs, the term "women" embraces men.)

Do not leave your money to a foundation. You will not gain entry to heaven by doing so. You will surely be funding those whose views are anathema to you and who will prevent others living here from attaining what you did.

Buy that yacht!

Cover yourself and your loved ones with jewels.

Build 90,000 square foot homes wherever you choose to.

Travel the world in private jets.

Just don't leave your money in the hands of "public interest" grifters who will further beset your fellow countrymen  and the world.

It's for the public good.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/the_wine_women_and_song_foundation.html#ixzz2OTrOIQU8
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HOW REPUBLICANS OUGHT TO ACT

West Coast Maverick Fight On By Michael Walsh March 19, 2013 4:30 P.M. Comments 337 Print Text    Advice to the RNC: Don’t “re-brand.” Fight. That’s it. Fight. Fight them on every front, fight them in every state, fight them on television and in print and on the airwaves. Confront them at every opportunity, seek out and embrace conflict, and fear not bullies like Chuck Schumer (the living embodiment of the Lefty Sneer), Dick Durbin, and passive-aggressive corruptocrats like Harry Reid. Don’t make nice with them, don’t play fair with them, don’t reach across the aisle and above all, treat them and their ideas with exactly the same amount of respect with which they treat yours: none. Contempt is the only language they understand. Remember that, thanks to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Alinsky Left, the personal is now political, so get personal; all’s fair in love and war, and politics isn’t love. AsPat Caddell just reminded the GOP, his team plays to win, and doesn’t really much care how it does it — “by any means necessary” is their motto. If you’re not using their own rules against them, you’re not playing the game. Put them on defense for a change and see how they like it. Create your own version of Media Matters — tax exempt! — and cut their bylined operatives and apparatchiks off at the knees. Revamp Fox News’s prime-time lineup — I said this on the most recentNR Cruise, so I might as well own it — by redeploying Sean Hannity (who’s already got plenty of exposure on the radio) and Bill O’Reilly (whose Factor has devolved into a parade of tired hacks and buy-my-stuff hucksterism) and replacing them with somefresh new faces before their ratings start to slide. Hey, MSNBC’s doing it. Cashier your risk-averse krack kadres of kampaign konsultants, whose idea of cutting-edge technology is ’70s-style television media buys (from which they profit handsomely) and who never seem to pay a price for being spectacularly wrong. Forget tactical management-school metrics and instead concentrate on strategy: If you set out to take Vienna, then take Vienna. Conjure up the ghost of Lee Atwater and put him back to work. Never listen to Dick Morris again. Get rid of the old guard. John McCain’s typically nasty “wacko birds” crack about Ted Cruz and others ought to finish him as a force in the Republican party — and he would be finished if not for his constituency in the media. With millstones like McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Boehner, conservatives have to fight through their own officers to get to the enemy. Knock them out in the primaries before Karl Rove (priceless video at the link) knocks out your candidates. Nominate presidential standard-bearers who actually want to engage their opponents ideologically, and know how to sell the fundamental concepts of America, such as personal liberty and spiritual freedom. Draw sharp distinctions between Left and Right and put a positive spin on small-”r” republican virtues. Force the Democrats to defend their unmanly culture of dependency, and mock their misuse of the word “compassion.” Tighten the borders but trust in the cultural alchemy of America and lose the implicit xenophobia. Don’t tumble too hard for Marco Rubio or Rand Paul or whoever the flavor of the month is until you get a fuller picture of them. Remember the Palin/Scott Brown ticket? Don’t confuse vulture capitalism with capitalism itself. Stop putting up millionaires with nothing to lose and instead steal a page from the Democrats’ playbook, and run hungry young pols who miraculously become millionaires while in office; the Democrats understand the difference between honest graft and dishonest graft, and so should you. Remember that, thanks to the miracle of the two-party system and a mouthpiece media, there’s absolutely no downside in becoming a criminal organization masquerading as a political party so long as you cherish the right platitudes. After all, fascism in the name of “doing it for the children” always sells, even by the party that’s busily aborting children yet somehow thinks the Social Security system will last forever. Strike preemptively. By now, what Obama’s doing ought to be obvious even to Weepy John, the epitome of Rotary Club republicanism. (But don’t take it from me; take it from Democrat Mickey Kaus.) Why wait for the president or his henchmen to push the progressive peanut another inch up the hill? You just know that if the money grab in Cyprus succeeds, it’s only a matter of time before the Democrats try it here, in the Marxist name of “fairness” and “income equality,” so beat them to the punch. Why not, as Glenn Reynolds suggests, introduce a bill to prevent just such a thing, and dare them to vote against it? Aim for total victory. It ought to be child’s play to send the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition the way of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings. What are RICO statutes for, unless to be used against the Tammany Party and its continuing rackets? Why isn’t what’s happening in Detroit — the slow-motion demolition of one of our great cities at the hands of a single political party — not on the lips of every prominent Republican? Or the parade of prominent Democrats heading off to the slammer? Only a party as timorous and as brain-dead as the GOP could fail to hang what’s habitual behavior around the Democrats’s necks, and make them pay for it at the ballot box. Finally, stop cringing. As Vito Corleone exclaims as he slaps Johnny Fontane around: “You can act like a man!” Stop caring what your opponents say about you. Stop the counter-factual whining (“if this were Bush . . .”). Of course, they’re going to be opposed to you — that’s the nature of opposition. Politics ain’t beanbag, and smart gangsters and politicians alike understand that. Get in their face, harass them, worry them, give them not a moment’s peace or respite. Come at them constantly, in shifts and in waves. Never back down. But act like it’s fun while you’re doing it — that’s what being a “happy warrior” means. You may lose, you may win. But at least fight.

The last word on Obama

Deceiver in Chief

By RON ROSS on 3.20.13 @ 6:08AM

If he loved his country he wouldn’t be wanting to “fundamentally transform” it.

Barack Obama’s most dangerous talent is his ability to make people believe he’s something he’s not. He is not recognized for whom and what he is, especially the fact that he does not like the country he’s governing. He is effective because he has successfully hidden his true objectives. He has convinced his followers that he has their interests at heart, that he cares about them and wants to help them. The key ingredient in his power lies in his ability to deceive. People do not want to believe that he does not like the country. Our country is in collective state of denial.

Barack Obama is arrogant, intolerant, mean, dishonest, vengeful, and ruthless. He does not wish us well. He is considered by many of his supporters to be a savior. In fact, he’s a destroyer. Is that an unfair indictment? Consider the evidence.

The economy is operating far below its potential. Is he doing anything to discover why? Millions of people are unable to find jobs. Does he seem concerned? He has an abysmal ignorance of how a market economy actually works. He doesn’t show the slightest curiosity about the causes of our economic distress.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know. He’s so incredibility arrogant, he doesn’t think he even needs to know. The very fact that he thought he was qualified to fill the most important office in the world demonstrates his profound arrogance.

Obama sees no difference between his opinions and the truth. He assumes whatever he says is true simply by the act of saying it. He claims to have proposed $3.9 trillion in budget cuts but no one can explain what he’s referring to. He doesn’t seem to recognize that there is such a thing as the truth.

The reason he has to use a teleprompter is to keep himself from expressing what he really thinks. Honesty or sincerity would lead to his undoing.

Obama despises his political opponents. He shows no interest in compromise or negotiation and is not interested in debating or persuading. He wishes the Republican Party did not exist. He resents constitutional checks and balances. When he said recently, “I am not a dictator,” he was in fact whining. He wishes he were a dictator or emperor.

Whenever he faces a choice between his interests and the country’s interests, he always chooses his own. He is indifferent to the country’s pain. In fact, he seems to relish seeing it happen. He wants the sequester to cause as much pain as possible. He wants to maximize, not minimize, the country’s pain.

We have a president who has a profound conflict of interest with the country he’s leading. Economic growth is by far the most effective solution to many of our problems. But economic growth reduces the need for a large number of government programs — food stamps, housing subsidies, and unemployment compensation, for example. He wants to pile on ever more growth-killing regulations and taxes. Economic growth is detrimental to his policy objectives. He only wants to redistribute wealth, not create it.

He has stated that his desire is to “fundamentally transform” America. Obviously he does not approve of what America is and has been in the past. If you love your wife you do not want to “fundamentally transform” her. If you do want to, then you don’t love her. In his opinion, the birth of our country wasn’t a blessing, it was a kind of original sin. The Obama White House is comprised of people who see America in the same way.

He does not like our history, our traditions, and a large segment of the population — Republicans, gun owners, “millionaires and billionaires,” for example. He told his supporters in the 2012 election that “voting is the best revenge.” He has pitted citizen against citizen.

Can it be denied that he has fomented class warfare? Is class warfare a good thing? Why has he done this? He has done so in order to serve his own selfish ends. Class warfare is good for Obama and his Democrat allies, but it’s bad for the country. His all-consuming policy objective is to expand the size and scope of government in everyone’s lives. The corollary is the diminishment of the individual.

He has indicted entire groups of people (millionaires and billionaires, for example), virtually all of whom are honest, law-abiding, productive members of society — no trial, no evidence, just a verdict. They are found guilty simply because they have wealth. Financial success used to be admired, now it is ridiculed and demeaned. His heart is filled with malice, not generosity or gratitude. He is fomenting hatred and envy. Most people want to believe that he is basically a nice person. He is not.

Republican senators and congressmen either do not see the real Obama or they do but don’t want to go public with their beliefs. They need strategies based on who he is, not who he ought to be.

America has made a grievous error in electing and then reelecting a leader who hates the country he’s leading. Everyone who loves the U.S. — its history, traditions, and a free-market, voluntary exchange economy — is profoundly disheartened by what’s going on before their eyes.

Barack Obama is doing profound and long-lasting damage to the United States. He will continue to do so until people finally recognize who the real Obama is.

Get rid of Keynesian policies

We've been down this road so many times before that it becomes almost disheartening to have to revisit it once more. Basically, the Great Depression proved, by its severity and longevity, that Keynsian prescriptions for curing the ills in the economy associated with unemployment and reduced business activity did not and could not work.  If they could work, the GD would have been over by the start of the 1930's and the 20% unemployment throughout the '30's never would have happened.  Unfortunately FDR and his socialist administration never gave up in applying Keynesian policies and the GD lasted 11 years until the outset of WWII.  Hard to believe we continue to make the same policy mistakes by electing another bunch of socialists to get us out of the current depression and unsurprisingly after 4 years of bad policy choices we are far from a recovery.  Somebody, anybody, make these people go away so we can begin the recovery.  The following excerpts from an article in the WSJ are the right policies for a recovery. Won't happen with the democrats in power.

Mr. Alesina, a professor at Harvard University, may be the last economist that Democrats want to deal with at the moment Americans are finding sympathy for spending cuts.

Ever since Ronald Reagan legitimized the

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Editorial page editor Paul Gigot on whether Republicans can trust President Obama's overtures. Photo: Getty Images

efficacy of tax cuts, Democrats have sought to discredit his idea and restore the New Deal theory of a Keynesian multiplier, which dates to 1931. It holds that more public spending will revive a struggling economy.

No president has believed more in the miracle of the multiplier than Barack Obama. Across four years he has led the country on a kind of Keynesian death march, pushing federal spending to 25% of GDP and producing weak growth. We're looking at four more years before the Keynesian mast unless the Republicans can offer an intellectually respectable alternative.

Mr. Alesina has identified the alternative. His, and others', work the past decade with how struggling economies revive suggests that the Obama spend-more solution is the opposite of what the U.S. should be doing.

There is general agreement on at least two things about the current U.S. economy. It is emerging from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and its debt level is unsustainable. The path back to stronger growth, argues Mr. Alesina, is a combination of significant, permanent cuts in public spending and relatively small tax increases, if any.

This view isn't born of "right-wing" ideology. Mr. Alesina is an Italian, as are many of his co-authors. As Europeans, Mr. Alesina and his colleagues were forced to confront the biggest challenge facing Western economies the past 40 years. Europe rose from the ashes of war, but how would it rise from the ashes of debt, as benevolent postwar spending programs outstripped revenue?

Mr. Alesina and his colleagues wanted to answer the most basic question: What works?

They sought the answer (which they published in an August 2012 paper on "fiscal consolidations" for the National Bureau of Economic Research) by analyzing an International Monetary Fund history of all the fiscal plans that 17 OECD governments enacted between 1978 and 2009, including the U.S., Canada and Japan. Together, these countries tried everything to grow—raise spending, cut spending, raise taxes or cut them, in endless combinations. What helped?

"Adjustments based upon spending cuts," the economists concluded, "are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. Spending-based adjustments"—that is, cuts—"have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all. Tax-based adjustments"—tax increases—"have been associated with prolonged and deep recessions."

The debate over "failed austerity" is misleading because it emphasizes spending cuts but rarely mentions tax increases. "Austerity" plans, the Alesina studies suggest, fail to revive growth when they too heavily rely on raising taxes on income and capital—as across Europe and now in the U.S.

There is no magic ride back to prosperity. The Alesina team is describing the least-bad antidote for the long-term poison of destructive national debt. Fiscal plans based on large, permanent spending cuts are associated with renewed growth more than any alternative policy mix that has been tried. Indeed, spending cuts without big tax increases look to be the only thing that really works. The leading example the past 15 years is . . . Canada. And just an observation: The Dow proceeded to its high after the sequester happened. The cuts were the first credible step in rebuilding private-sector confidence.

The Patty Murray budget: A $975 billion spending cut and a $975 billion tax increase.

The Paul Ryan budget: $4.6 trillion of spending cuts and no new taxes beyond the fiscal-cliff increases.

Neither budget is anything the world has never seen. The available record suggests which of the two is the road to perdition.