Illinois Ground Report: It is now safe to walk around Chicago in a Mitt Romney tee shirt. No one will scream at you, spit at you, or call you a racist…I swear!

My friend Penny Arcade and I designed the above Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan shirt based on a photograph she liked of the two of them; we’re going to wear these as our campaign 2012 uniforms.  I made a few of them so I could wear one every day, and one for Justin too. I plan on wearing it everywhere I go through November 6th. Remember that I live in Chicago…and let me remind you what happened in 2008 when I’d wear anything with Hillary Clinton on it (and then later John McCain or Sarah Palin) when I’d go out and about in Chicago.

Just four years ago, black people would come up to me, try to spit in my face, and would scream that I was a racist because I was not supporting Barack Obama and DARED to wear anything backing Hillary and then later McCain/Palin.  They would go completely UNHINGED at anything that wasn’t praising “The One”.  Leftie loons of the privileged, young, white variety would also scream expletives, push me on the train, and shout that “Anyone who doesn’t vote for Obama is racist!” garbage.  Though no one was sitting at Obama command centers specifically telling each individual to do this, the general vibe in Obama supporter ranks was to “get in their faces!” and to essentially bully and otherwise intimidate people who weren’t supporting Obama to become completely invisible.  Anyone backing Hillary in the primaries or McCain/Palin in the general election was targeted with the full-on Alinsky Death Star.  It was actually kind of scary to go out in Chicago in my Democrats for McCain tee shirt because the laser-focused hatred emanating from the eyes of Obama supporters did make me feel afraid for my personal safety at times.

Things are 100% different in 2012.  That fervor to elect Obama is long gone and his supporters no longer even bat at eye at someone supporting Mitt Romney.  Even in Chicago, his formerly zealous voters feel no compunction to berate Republicans, bully Romney supporters, or call anyone a racist who isn’t drinking the hopeychange Kool-Aid.

Obama is going to lose, folks…and lose BIG.

I’ve spent the last week or so going to all sorts of places in Romney/Ryan gear and while I have received a few looks from people who are surprised to see a Romney shirt on someone in Chicago, I’ve had no bad experiences while in 2008 I couldn’t walk to the end of my block without being screamed or spit at by Obama lunatics.  I even get a lot of thumbs-up and questions about “where (I) got that”.
This is something the media doesn’t report, or even acknowledge exists, but the reality is that 2008 was a massive fluke and was powered largely by raw emotion: Americans thought it was time to “make history” and elect a magical black man to be President because they thought the color of this guy’s skin was going to “change the world”.  Well, they were right about that…but in a very Twilight Zone kind of way people were not at all careful with what they wished for and the change that resulted over the last four years isn’t what they wanted.

Record unemployment, with between 25-30 million Americans either out of work or underemployed. $16 Trillion in national debt (and exploding with more daily). Islamic radicals conquering the Middle East, raping and murdering male ambassadors, and the White House ignoring clear security warnings and even considering releasing the “Blind Sheik” 1993 World Trade Center bomber.  Obama’s watching the world burn and is enjoying it.  Meanwhile, Obamacare’s terrified small businesses, forced many of them to shutter, and has frozen most hiring.  We’re in an economic Depression caused by the wasteful 2009 “stimulus” (that went mostly into union coffers) and the uncertainty and zealous regulations of Obamacare.
People know Obama has failed and made a giant mess in Washington.  Many are still uncomfortable admitting the first black man in the job was not as magical as they thought he’d be. These people not only won’t turn out for him in numbers he needs them to in November, but here in Chicago at least they have no interest at all in physically accosting, screaming at, or otherwise trying to bully anyone who doesn’t support Obama.

What happens when a would-be dictator loses his unpaid goon squads on the street?
I think we’re going to find out come November 6th, folks.

 

Is Barack Obama America’s Most Dishonest Politician?

A lot of politicians are dishonest, but Barack Obama may be in a league by himself. He appeared on the David Letterman show, and Letterman asked him about the national debt (somewhat surprisingly). Obama’s answer was a masterpiece of prevarication. He described how the debt originated, and claimed, falsely, that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit. In fact, this country had never run a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion until FY 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. (And, no, Bush isn’t to blame for it; the Democratic Congress waited until Obama was in office to pass the vast majority of the bloated spending for that fiscal year.) Letterman, to his credit, went on to ask Obama how much the national debt actually is. Obama evidently knew that if he said $16 trillion his audience would be horrified, so, incredibly, he pretended not to know! You have to see it to believe it:



He keeps saying we had a "surplus" under Clinton when speaking about the national debt. we actually never had a surplus. Check out http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16 and you'll see that our debt went UP every year under Clinton. But politicians tell lies corporate heads would go to jail for.

Barack Obama is a world-class liar. At least, we’d better hope he is a world class liar, because if he really has no idea what the national debt is, we are in even worse trouble.

Mitt Romney’s Remarks are Another Chick-Fil-A Moment

 
Just a few months ago, Dan Cathy of Chick-Fil-A, gave an interview to a Christian publication that asked him about the Chick-Fil-A Foundation’s support of marriage. Cathy defending his position and spoke about his family’s faith. CNN.com picked it up and ran a story that Cathy had come out against gay marriage.
In fact, Cathy hadn’t been asked directly about gay marriage, but it was implicit in what he said. The CNN.com story swirled around the internet. Leftwingers and media mouthpieces across the country condemned Chick-Fil-A for serving bigotry on a bun. Suddenly the most controversial thing in America was two buttered buns and a pickle. Mayors were demanding Chick-Fil-A not come to their cities. Liberals were screaming about intolerance and bigotry.

Then Mike Huckabee and others declared a Chick-Fil-A Day. On the appointed day, lines of cars stretched around city blocks. Lines of people stretched across parking lots. Turns out a lot of people agreed with Dan Cathy. But it also turned out a lot of people who did not agree, but were not offended and showed up to support Chick-Fil-A.
 A counter protest was held — a so called “kiss in.” Few people showed up.

The Chick-Fil-A controversy animated a whole lot of people. It just turned out that the people it most animated were the people who agreed with Dan Cathy.
So it is, I think, with Mitt Romney’s comments. I think the media and the left have badly misread the American mood on this. On CNN yesterday, I spent a fair amount of time with Kate Bolduan and Joe Johns, two of my favorite people. They kept focusing on Mitt Romney’s characterization of the word “victims.”
What I explained to them and what I think the media misses is that many of the people the media would claim Mitt Romney described as “victims’ weren’t who Mitt Romney was speaking about. And those people intrinsically know it. They may technically fall into the category Mitt Romney described as government dependent victims, but they know he’s not talking about them. He’s talking about the people they also are talking about.

But more than that, and this is really what the left and media miss, a fair number of those people in the 47% are not there by choice. They are there by Barack Obama’s economic policies. And they absolutely understand that Barack Obama’s policies got them there. All they need to hear from Mitt Romney is that he really does get it and really will fix the problem, not just manage the decline of the nation as his primary opponents claimed he would.

That off the cuff, off the record talk was what they needed to hear. Mitt Romney recognizes we have a problem with government dependency, as do a majority of Americans. But more importantly, Mitt Romney will improve the lives of that 47% by growing the private sector, not redistributing pieces of the economic pie.

Remember folks, if you listen to the media and watch the public opinion polls, gay marriage wins everywhere. But if you actually pay attention to the voters at the polls, it has lost in every state in which it’s been put to a public vote. That issue doesn’t actually animate and motivate enough gay marriage supporters to offset how it motivates actual marriage supporters. Mitt Romney’s comments may rile up the left, but I think it’ll rile up a whole lot of people who agree with him.

As a bonus, it puts the left and the media in the very awkward position of telling key segments of the population that they’re the victims Romney was talking about when those people don’t view themselves as victims and think a whole lot of people are actually living off the system. You ever try telling someone they aren’t doing as well as they think they are? Good luck with that. It didn’t work convincing people they were better off than they knew, might as well try it! Oh, and in the process, you might as well accuse them of bitterly clinging to their guns and religion.

One caveat here — Mitt Romney must be prepared to fight on this ground now. He should let Paul Ryan do a lot of the talking. This is Paul Ryan’s turf and there are few, if any, more articulate people on the issue of government dependency.

One final point as well — this episode epitomizes how the media is an enemy collaborator with Barack Obama’s campaign. When conservatives accurately quoted Barack Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line including the context in which he meant it, the press immediately folded when Obama claimed conservatives were taking him out of context. In Romney’s press conference after the revelation of the tape he said he was speaking off the cuff and maybe was not as articulate as he could have been without a prepared text. Nonetheless, unlike Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark, the press demands that we all take Mitt Romney literally in his remarks.

MSNBC Won’t Show Obama’s Redistribution Video Because It Hasn’t Been Vetted

Kind of like…. Obama.
The liberal media’s lies are only eclipsed by the credit they give our intelligence.