"When President Obama took office, unemployment was at 7.8%. After three and a half years, it stands at 8.3%. Median income when the President took over was about $55,000. Now, $51,000. Gasoline prices in January 2009 were $1.84 per gallon. Now, $3.82 per gallon. That’s painful to working folks and it’s largely ignored by the President. National debt of $10.6 Trillion when President Obama took the oath of office. It is now more than $16 Trillion - an astronomical and dangerous rise. Finally, the budget deficit in President Bush’s last year was $458 Billion. In 2011, under President Obama, it had risen to nearly $1.3 Trillion - again, a dangerous amount of money to have to borrow. 

"There’s no way the Democrats can spin those facts; they’re in stone."

"The one sure way Obama can win is to convince a nation ready for change -- to fear, loathe and recoil from the proposed agents of change. 
 
Obama aides and media auxiliary have already painted the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., as permeated with lies and dog whistles to racists. 
 
Yet, one wonders: After such a campaign, how does Obama unite and lead the country should he win."

"America has been patient.  Americans have supported this president in good faith, but today the time has come the time to turn the page.  Today the time has come for us to put the disappointments of the last four years behind us, to put aside the divisiveness and the recriminations, to forget about what might have been, and to look ahead to what can be.  Now is the time to restore the promise of America. 

"Many Americans have given up on this president, but they haven't ever thought of giving up, not on themselves, not on each other, and not on America.  What is needed in our country is not complicated or profound.  It doesn't take a special government commission to tell us what America needs.  What America needs is jobs, lots of jobs."

"Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people, unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all.

"So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?"

"... [T]hese last few years have been harder than they needed to be. It's all the little things -- that price at the pump you just can't believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay. It's all the little things that pile up to become big things. And the big things -- the good jobs, the chance at college, that home you want to buy, just get harder. Everything has become harder. 

"We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers. But we're not dumb enough to accept that there aren't better answers."

"[T]he real objection to requiring voter ID isn’t based in civil rights, but in civil wrongs. With elections often decided by narrow margins, the ability to produce a few thousand more ballots can often swing the results. (In Minnesota’s 2008 disputed US Senate election, won by Al Franken — who proceeded to cast the deciding vote in favor of ObamaCare — the margin of victory was 312, but it turned out that 1,099 votes were cast by felons who were ineligible to vote. Many of them have gone to jail, but Franken has remained in the Senate).  ... 

"Many of America’s largest and worst-governed cities suffer from entrenched and corrupt political machines that maintain their position in no small part via voter fraud. Corrupt machines (like that of Detroit’s disgraced ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) siphon off money that should go to essential services and instead divert it to political fatcats and their supporters. Efforts at reform are often defeated with fraudulent votes."

"WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the middle class. At their conventions, the two parties will compete fiercely for its support. Republicans will accuse Barack Obama of destroying the middle class through policies perpetuating high joblessness and feeble economic growth. Democrats will portray Mitt Romney as a tool of the rich who doesn't understand the middle class. To the victor may go the election, because 'saving the middle class' has arguably become the campaign's defining issue. 

"This is mostly political symbolism. The idea that anyone can 'save' the middle class assumes that it's in danger of disappearing, which it isn't, and that presidents possess sufficient powers to resurrect it, which they don't. Still, the symbolism is potent because most Americans equate the middle class with the kind of society we are and ought to be. It is a society where hard work and personal responsibility are rewarded -- where 'getting ahead' is expected; where economic security and social stability are enjoyed; and where privilege is minimized. 

"The appeal of these beliefs -- across many economic, regional, religious and ethnic boundaries -- is a great unifying force."

"[T]he big broadcast networks plan to give the Republicans (and the Democrats) only one hour a night of TV coverage. 

"They used to give all night, long as it took, and treat the proceedings with respect. What they give now, to the people of a great democracy fighting for its economic life in an uncertain world, is . . . an hour a night? For a national political convention? 

This is a scandal. Mock them for it. This isn't Edward R. Murrow in charge of the news, it's Gordon Gekko in charge of programming."

"Obama talks about the auto bailout frequently, since it's one of the few things in his record that gets positive responses in the polls. But he's probably wise to avoid probing questions, since the GM bailout is not at all the success he claims. ...

'GM is going from bad to worse,' reads the headline on Automotive News Editor in Chief Keith Crain's analysis. That's certainly true of its stock price.

"The government still owns 500 million shares of GM, 26 percent of the total. It needs to sell them for $53 a share to recover its $49.5 billion bailout. But the stock price is around $20 a share, and the Treasury now estimates that the government will lose more than $25 billion if and when it sells. ...

"The UAW got their political payoff. And GM, according to Forbes writer Louis Woodhill, is headed to bankruptcy again.
 
"Is this really what Obama wants to do for all manufacturing across America? Let's hope not."

"On Tuesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down another misguided EPA rule. 

"Enacted in August 2011, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule was supposed to reduce air pollution emitted in one state and carried downwind to another. Under the Clean Air Act, if pollution from the upwind state is causing the downwind neighbor to fail federal air quality tests, then the EPA can order the upwind state to reduce the emissions causing the problem.   

"But even such expansive authority from Congress is never enough for the Obama EPA. So the agency decided to use the rule-making as a pretext to force down emissions even further -- illegally, as it turns out. ... 

"According to a scoreboard by the American Action Forum, Tuesday's rebuke from the D.C. Circuit marks the 15th time that a federal court has struck down an Obama regulation, and the sixth smack-down for the Obama EPA. This tally counts legally flawed rules as well as misguided EPA disapprovals of actions by particular states."