This is killing the economy nearly as much as the spending.

Regulation Nation!

From financial services to farming, plumbing to computer repair, business owners say new regulations have them so bogged down in compliance that it is hindering their ability to plan and expand for the coming years.
Even though President Obama recently acknowledged the need to minimize regulations, the number appears to be growing. Obama administration regulations on new business rose to 3,573 final rules in 2010, up from 3,503 in 2009 -- the equivalent of about 10 per week.
Indeed, the 2010 volume of the Federal Register, the "newspaper" of regulatory agencies, stands at an all-time record-high 81,405 pages composed of final rules, proposed rules, meeting notices and regulatory studies.
"There is something like 180 million words of binding federal law and regulation. It would take a lifetime just to read it," said Philip K Howard, founder of Common Good.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/regulation-nation-drowning-in-rules-businesses-brace-for-cost-and-time-for/#ixzz1XmNBG5Qq

Separated at birth?

My apologies to squirrels everywhere.

Backdoor Tax Hike

Obama is trying to raise income tax rates without having to admit it.

Reportedly, the vast majority of his proposed tax hike is a phase-out of itemized deductions for people earning over $250,000. This is simply a rate hike by another name.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obamas-backdoor-rate-hike

$421 Billion in New Taxes – Now that will make jobs…

$447 JOBS BILL: $421B FROM TAXPAYERS...
BILL SHIFTS INCOME CUTOFF TO $200,000...
JUST $40B COMES FROM OIL, GAS TAXES...
TAB FOR CORP JET OWNERS: $3 BILLION...

Obama approval rating falls after jobs speech

Not only did President Obama fail to get a bounce from his jobs speech to a joint session of Congress, but his approval rating actually declined slightly following last Thursday's address, according to Gallup.

In the just released Gallup daily tracking poll, which now has three days of polling since the speech was delivered last Thursday (Sept. 9th through 11th), Obama's approval rating has fallen to 42 percent.

By contrast, in polling done before the speech between Sept. 5th through 7th, Obama was at 44 percent approval, and on Sept. 6th through 8th, he was at 43 percent.

Trump card: Bobby Jindal endorses Perry

Oh my.

Cynicism and confusion: Obama's new campaign theme

Yuval Levin writing at NRO:

The White House’s proposed means of paying for the “jobs bill” the president called on Congress to adopt last week really sheds light on the cynicism and confusion at the heart of the president’s new campaign theme. In order to be able to insist that he is proposing ideas but Republicans are unwilling to act, the president will apparently propose exactly the same set of massive tax increases that even Democrats in a Democratically-controlled Congress were unwilling to consider in the midst of the Obamacare debate in 2009. Obviously, having proven unable to persuade his own party to raise those taxes by that much during his prime, the president will be unable to persuade Republicans to do so now. But since evidently his re-election strategy will involve arguing that he is incapable of persuading congress to act, the Republicans’ rejection of massive tax hikes should help him make his case.

If telling voters you’re unable to do your job were a wise re-election strategy, this might be a clever way to do it. But it isn’t.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/276941/obama-s-peculiar-pitch-yuval-levin

Canada's Oil Sands Are a Jobs Gusher

Mary Anastasia O'Grady writing in the WSJ:

For all its soaring rhetoric, President Obama's "jobs speech" last week didn't demonstrate a lick of insight into why economies grow or how wealth is created. It was merely trademark Obamanomics: using government diktat to move money that's over here, over there.

Having spent an hour the day before with Ron Liepert, the energy minister from the Canadian province of Alberta, I found it especially disturbing to hear nothing in the speech about reversing the administration's anti-fossil-fuels agenda. Canada has recovered all the jobs it lost in the 2009 recession, and Alberta's oil sands are no small part of that. The province is on track to become the world's second-largest oil producer, after Saudi Arabia, within 10 years. Meanwhile Mr. Obama clings to his subsidies for solar panels and his religious faith in green jobs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576560933917369412.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

$3 billion (or $200 a car) for what safety gains? Can you idiot proof a car? And would not the “closeness” beepers be cheaper and more effective?

Obama Mandating Rearview Cameras in Cars

 

Earlier this month, Bloomberg published an article about regulations the Obama administration is pursuing that could cost business in excess of $1 billion.
Four of the proposed regulations discussed emanated from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has recently been under fire for actions entrenching its regulation-happy image.
However, one rule being pushed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency (NHTSA) is attracting some attention: NHTSA may be set to mandate the installation of rear-view cameras in all vehicles, including cars.

Government statistics indicate there are about 300 some deaths per year; proponents of the rule concede that the mandatory installation of the cameras would not prevent the vast majority (over 65 percent) of those deaths. In addition, the installation of a rear-view camera in a car adds about $200 to the purchase price, and would cost the industry as a whole close to $3 billion.

Read more: http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2011/09/12/obama-administration-to-mandate-rear-view-cameras-in-cars/#ixzz1XlXpfgxf

Poll: 3 Out of 4 Say Americans Are Overregulated

 

The Tarrance Group is pleased to present Public Notice with the key findings from a survey of N=801 registered “likely” voters across the country.  Interviews were conducted September 6-8, 2011, and, in 95 out of 100 cases, the margin of error on a sample of this type is +/- 3.5%.

KEY FINDINGS

– There is little appetite among American voters for additional regulations coming out of Washington.  Three quarters (74%) of voters throughout the country believe that businesses and consumers are over-regulated.  Further, another two thirds (67%) believe that regulations have increased over the past few years.   These percentages include majorities of all partisan affiliations, with 91% of Republicans, 75% of Independents and 58% of Democrats saying businesses/consumers are over-regulated.

– A key fear among voters is that regulations will hinder job creation, as most believe the result of new regulation will be either job losses (47%) or increased prices for American made goods and services (22%).

– More than two thirds (70%) believe increasing the number of regulations on American businesses will result in more jobs moving overseas.  Also, majorities agree that the increasing number of regulations have created uncertainty for large and small businesses (66%), and that agencies who enforce regulations fail to consider how their decisions lead to increased prices for consumers and job losses (69%).

– A majority (56%) agrees that “more government intervention and regulation to the process of overseeing business means you have less accountability because everyone assumes someone else is in charge”, while only 38% agree more that additional regulation leads to more accountability because of the increased number involved in oversight.

– One of the highest points of agreement in the survey is the fact that 73% concur that “every time the federal government mandates a new regulation on America’s large and small business, the prices of American made good and services like gasoline and food go up.” 

Read more: http://www.thepublicnotice.org/2011/09/11/memo-national-poll-on-government-regulations/#ixzz1XlXWm2p7

Yes it was that bad, see yesterday’s DailyBrisk.

Rumsfeld cancels NYT subscrip over 'repugnant' Krugman piece...

A D- failure. TSA.

TSA Creator Says Dismantle, Privatize the Agency...

They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.
But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.
Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at “D-.”

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46114

More wisdom from Jackie

'Indira Gandhi's a bitter pushy prune... and de Gaulle's an egomaniac': Jackie O's extraordinary verdict on world leaders revealed

The previously unreleased interviews also revealed that, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Jackie Kennedy begged her husband not to send her to safety in the event of a nuclear attack. The former first lady also laughed at the thought of 'violently liberal women' and agreed with the president's philosophy that wives should 'look up to' their husbands.

Wisdom from Jackie. True then, true now.

“Violently liberal women in politics” preferred Adlai Stevenson to JFK because they “were scared of sex.”

Obama starts to get what he wants, cutting the power in Texas

Texas company blames EPA regs in layoff of 500 workers -

'It truly saddens me that we are being compelled to take the actions we've announced today'

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/#ixzz1XkwBkUzl

LIbs words come back to bite?

GROUND ZERO MOSQUE comes up in the Weiner-seat race.

Remember all those lengthy lectures 13 months ago from our moral and intellectual superiors on the Ground Zero Mosque? Liberals insisted that we should be tolerant and support those all-American things like freedom of some religions, single moms, and the Prius. My how our liberal betters strutted and preened and clucked their tongues at us mouth-breathing, booger-eating, inbred, racist Tea Baggers for daring to suggest that maybe this was a bad idea. We must stand by basic American principles, they said.

Now, with a congressional seat in balance, liberals are saying How Dare You Quote Us!

Have you no decency, sir, and all that bunk.

I am rather amused. Republican Bob Turner faces Assemblyman David Weprin in Tuesday’s election to find a successor to Democratic former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose boner on Twitter cost him his job. Weprin appears in a yarmulke in his ads. Turner cannot. That is how important a certain religion is in the Brooklyn/Queens district. The problem for David Weprin is, a year ago, he supported the Ground Zero Mosque. . . . My, my, my. If supporting the building of the mosque is the right thing to do, why not stand by those words that were said 13 months ago? Oh wait, that high-moral-ground stand might cost Democrats a seat in Congress. So what liberals are saying is that they are willing to stand up for unpopular causes — unless doing what they say is right may cost them a few votes.

So far over his head. Like taking two airplanes to Martha Vineyard...

Obama Shows Up 30 Minutes Late to Speech, Demands Congress Pass Bill With 'No Delays'

Fire it up

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AP

President Barack Obama bluntly challenged Congress Monday to act immediately on his new jobs plan, brandishing a copy of the legislation at the White House and demanding: "No games, no politics, no delays."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-congress-act-jobs-bill-152431593.html#ixzz1Xkto9anW

Not backing down

Rick Perry in USA Today: I am going to be honest with the American people

Straight shooter.

10 Coolest Garages

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ANSWERS OF THE DAY

The ten coolest garages you’ve ever seen

You wouldn't hang a da Vinci in your root cellar and you wouldn't store your spotless supercar in that big room full of boxes and inline skates that passes for a garage. Take a tour of these ten creative and expansive chambers

Very interesting

Doomsday weapon: Israel’s submarines

The day the Twin Towers collapsed in Manhattan, September 11, 2001, IDF submarine “Leviathan” of the advanced Dolphin model was on a training sail somewhere at sea – the exact location of Israel’s submarines will always remain classified, even dozens of years after the fact.

At one point, the submarine rose to the surface to take a break. The sub’s commander, then-Lt. Colonel Oded, looked through the periscope and saw a calm, blue sea. However, one crew member soon informed him that he just saw the New York towers collapsing on television. Oded’s first reaction was laughter: What kind of movie are you watching there? How could the Twin Towers collapse? Yet soon after, the official announcement arrived from Israel.

The training session ended abruptly. Orders started to pour in from Navy headquarters. The submarine went into high alert and sank into the water for a lengthy period of several weeks. “In such case,” Oded says, “nobody knows where you are except for your crew and your direct commanders. Even your family doesn’t know. They don’t know what you’re doing or when you’ll be back. They know nothing.”

Dolphin fleet plays crucial role in game of deterrence (Photo: AFP)

Still not buying the NY seat. Way too Democratic for them to lose it.

Democrats Fear New York, Nevada Losses

ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seat has given Democrats the biggest headache.

Democrats are facing the very real possibility that a pair of special elections on Tuesday will shake the foundations of the 2012 political landscape. The party is at serious risk of losing a House race in New York City that few thought would be close, and campaign officials are already close to writing off a Nevada House race they had once hoped to contest.

If Republicans win both contests, it would raise fresh concerns about President Obama’s drag on down-ballot Democrats and the party’s ability to keep its Senate majority. The losses would also raise questions about whether the party can gain the 24 seats it needs to regain the House.