"After Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., successfully added his 'swipe fee' amendment to last year's Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, he promised, 'By requiring debit card fees to be reasonable ... small businesses and their customers will be able to keep more of their own money.' That was the theory, at least.

"But big banks didn't become big by eating billion-dollar losses. Last week Bank of America announced it will start charging customers a $5 fee every month they make at least one debit transaction. And BofA is not alone. Wells Fargo, Chase and SunTrust are all instituting similar versions of the 'Durbin fee.' Washington Mutual says it is not adding any debit fees, but is tightening restrictions on free checking accounts. The bottom line is that whatever extra cash retailers are picking up from debit card transactions, consumers are losing from banks."

"... Obama is not an FDR, nor a Lincoln, nor a liberal Reagan. At this point he’s simply hoping not to be a Carter. And that’s fomented establishment despair. Tina Brown, editor of both the Daily Beast and Newsweek, recently let it slip on MSNBC (a trifecta of establishmentarian liberal media outlets!) that she thinks Obama 'wasn’t ready' for the job in 2008. 

"The establishment can’t bring itself to blame liberalism (or themselves). So instead they blame the system. Obama’s own reelection theme of running against 'Washington' — a town he had near total control over for two years and in which he is still the most powerful figure — is a variant of the same argument. Obama can’t blame the party he leads, so he blames the 'system.'"

"Class warfare is now not about brutal elemental poverty of the sort Charles Dickens or Knut Hamsun once wrote about. It is too often the anger that arises from not having something that someone else has, whether or not such style, privilege or discretionary choices are all that necessary. Endemic obesity, not malnutrition, threatens America -- including the nearly 50 million Americans who are on food stamps.

"These are hard times, with high unemployment rates and economic stagnation. But we are not a nation of the malnourished and starving who are preyed upon by idle rich drones who pay no taxes. And a government that borrows $4 billion a day and spends $2 trillion more a year than it did just 10 years ago is hardly stingy."

"In 2004, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gave us a window into his vision for American leadership. He said, 'Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.' 

"Now, seven years later, President Obama prepares to divide our nation to achieve re-election. This is not a leadership style, this is a re-election strategy. Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others. Trying to cynically convince those who are suffering that the American economic pie is no longer a growing one that can provide more prosperity for all who work hard. Insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American Dream. That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy for President Obama, but is a demoralizing message for America. What happened to State Senator Obama? When did he decide to become one of the 'dividers' he spoke of so eloquently in 2004? There is, of course, a different choice."

"Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company's rapid ascent. 

"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help."

"The presidential debates are looking more and more like symptoms of the problems we’ve got than part of the process of solving them. 

"Maximum style, minimum substance. Focus on sizzle, forget about the steak. 

"These events are supposed to be about quality information, raising the bar, and producing a thoughtful, informed electorate. But they are being produced to provide entertainment, and we are barely getting that. 

"Technology doesn’t take the place of substance. Youtube and real time polling are not substitutes for thoughtful, provocative questioning."

"The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of 'fairness' — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality. 

"That’s why 'soak the rich' is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation. It’s why for all its gratuitous cynicism and demagoguery, Obama’s populist Rose Garden lecture on Monday was delivered with such obvious — and unusual — conviction. ... 

"Good. There’s something to be said for authenticity. A choice, not an echo, said Barry Goldwater. The country will soon choose, although not soon enough."

"All Florida voters disapprove 57 - 39 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his worst score in any Quinnipiac University poll in any state. 

"In possible 2012 presidential matchups, Romney tops the president 47 - 40 percent while Perry gets 42 percent to Obama's 44 percent, a dead heat. In the August 4 Florida poll, Romney and Obama were deadlocked 44 - 44 percent while the president led Perry 44 - 39 percent. 

"Obama does not deserve a second term, Florida voters say 53 - 41 percent."

"If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever. 

"Welcome to LightSquared. It's a toxic mix of venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase), campaign finance influence-peddling and perilous corner-cutting all rolled into one."

"'Damn the economy -- I need to be reelected!' That, basically, was President Obama’s message to the nation in yesterday’s Rose Garden speech ostensibly addressing DC’s runaway deficits. 

"Obama knew full well that the GOP-run House won’t back tax hikes while the nation flirts with double-dip recession. (Somebody has to be the adult.) Yet he insisted on them anyway (some $1.5 trillion, in fact), claiming they merely ask 'the most fortunate among us' -- that is, the most productive -- 'to pay their fair share.' 

"In other words, Obama told Americans bluntly he’s itching for another standoff."