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wo markets - the automobile market in the U.S. and the healthcare market in England - make interesting blog fodder this morning for free marketeer and big government junkie alike.

First, to the automakers, with the NYT reporting of General Motors:

G.M., the world’s largest automaker for decades, said Tuesday that it was in such dire straits that it would deeply cut jobs, factories, brands and executive pay as part of its plea to get $12 billion in federal loans and an additional $6 billion line of credit. …

G.M.’s president, Frederick A. Henderson, said the company would be insolvent if it did not receive federal assistance, including an infusion of $4 billion in cash before the end of the year.

“Absent support, frankly the company simply can’t fund its operations,” Mr. Henderson said in a call with reporters.

To which I say, why did it take having to grovel before the US taxpayers before you would promise to do what you should have done years ago on your own, Mr. Henderson?

Had GM dealt with its bloated workforce, eliminated costs associated with keeping Buick, GMC, Saturn et. al. afloat, and stopped paying its leadership losership as if they were actually accomplishing something, insolvency wouldn’t be just around the corner and Henderson wouldn’t be begging for $14 billion.

This is both a troubling and a glorious moment for any free marketer.

It’s troubling because we’re seeing the desperate lust for government money accomplishing what the free market should have accomplished on its own. And it’s glorious because we are seeing an admission by one of the world’s largest corporations that it is NOT anywhere close to the free market, and it’s killing them. Or it should be killing them … they may yet get hooked up to financial life support.

And speaking of life support, that takes us to another NYT article, this one a much more troubling tale of government’s influence on the free market.

RUISLIP, England — When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught.

“Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can,” Joy Hardy said in the couple’s modest home outside London.

If the Hardys lived in the United States or just about any European country other than Britain, Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost. A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000.

But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.

This is a tragic but familiar type of real life story that girds our loins as we fight against the Dems’ drive to impose universal health care in the US. But wait, there’s more:

Drug and device makers, which once routinely denounced the British for questioning product prices, have begun quietly slashing prices in Britain to gain NICE’s coveted approval, especially because other nations are following the institute’s lead. Companies have said that they will consult with NICE to help determine which experimental compounds enter the final stage of clinical trials, so the British agency’s officials will soon influence which drugs enter the market in the United States.

The British government created NICE a decade ago to ensure that every pound spent buys as many years of good-quality life as possible, but the agency is increasingly rejecting expensive treatments. The denials have led to debate over what is to blame: company prices or the health institute’s math.

After seeing the auto execs fly to DC in their three private jets and looking at Wall Street execs rake in hundreds of millions as their companies fail beneath their incompetent feet, there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s more lurking behind the cost of pharmaceuticals than legitimate R&D expenses.

Government has no moral authority to use the lives and quality of life of citizens as bargaining chips in a price war; that’s verboten. While the cruel effectiveness of NICE can’t be ignored, we free marketeers must realize that whatever NICE is accomplishing, it is not doing it in a free market. Access to pharmaceuticals is highly regulated, and the companies are using that to their advantage.

If there were a free global market for these drugs (with only patents protected), then we could take our prescription to Canada or Mexico or Khartoum for filling, picking the market where Pfiser or Glaxco offers the best price. And if that were to happen, the global price would quickly fall to the best price. That price would support needed R&D and salaries at the level necessary to provide effective managers, but it would cut out excesses.

Meanwhile, Bruce Hardy will die a little earlier and his widow will be not just sad but rightfully very angry.

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ank of America has invested nearly half of the $15 billion it received as a federal bailout from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program - sending the money off to China instead of investing it in the U.S., where it would help local businesses and stimulate the economy.

The money was poured into the China Construction Bank even as B of A was shutting off funds to construction companies in the U.S.  Writes Mick Pattinson, the president of a California homebuilder:

We had thousands of homes in various stages of development, all funded with loans from Bank of America. During the 27 years my firm and I have done business with the bank, we have borrowed more than $1 billion to build more than 10,000 new homes.

We always paid off our loans.

Last year, when the housing crisis was just beginning its downward spiral, Bank of America started aggressively re-evaluating the property we had pledged to secure our loans. The bank told us that we would soon need millions of dollars in additional cash as collateral.

Then the bank told us it would not renew two of our loans, and it raised our interest rate. BofA told us to keep paying them; keep working; keep hiring sub-contractors. They were sure we could work something out. So that is what we did. Until the bank pulled the plug on us — and other homebuilders across the country.

B of A could have taken the $7 billion it ferried off to China and re-invested it in our local economy, renewling loans to homebuilders, making mortgages more available, and spurring jobs, home purchases and recovery.  Instead, it looked after itself, making a speculative investment in a country that’s no friend of America - an investment that creates no American jobs.

And it can do this, apparently without consequence, because the bail-out is so poorly structured it’s become an “anything goes” party for recipients and a great disappointment to people like Pattinson, who were hoping it would bring some relief. If anyone out there thinks this is no big deal, let’s put it in perspective:

Over the last two years, 3,000 homebuilders have closed their doors. Today, one homebuilder is going out of business every hour. And 3 million construction workers have lost their jobs.

Foreclosures, construction unemployment, property values, confidence are all going in bad directions at record rates.

All the while, builders have been losing their property to the banks, which have no idea what to do with it. So its value plunges even more, hurting shareholders in ways they could not imagine.

It didn’t have to stay this bad.  B of A could have done something about it, but they greedily looked after themselves instead.  There oughta be a law, and there oughta be a prosecution.

A New Level Of Islamist Sub-Humanism

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eports coming out of Mumbai confirm that Islamist terrorists are capable of sinking still lower in the sight of decent humanity, capable of even worse crimes against decency:

“Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing,” a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said. (Source)

And what of the Jewish “hostages” that had the great misfortune of existing in a world in which Islamists exist?

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.

This “religion of peace” has become such a scourge on the Earth that we really just can’t allow it to continue in its evil ways. Does Obama see this? Does he have the spine to confront evil? I believe it’s a yes on the first and will prove to be a no on the second.

I’ve called AP the All Pro-Obama newswire and the Anti-Palin newswire, but I happily tip my hat to AP today for a little piece it ran called Obama’s Prime Time Ad Skips Over Budget Realities.

The article, by Calvin Woodward, very effectively rebuts these quotes from last night’s 30-minute Obama mis-infomercial:

“That’s why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year.”

“I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care.”

“I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.”

“Here’s what I’ll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we’ll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open.”

Unfortunately (or is it “not surprisingly?”) Woodward did not point out the family in question is now making less than $200,000, instead of the old $250,000 threshold.  Who knows what the threshold will be?  We have only the word of a guy who lied about campaign funding to guide us.

A hat-tip to Annie for the link. She asked how such a story would run, given AP’s recent history. I think it may be that the media’s doing a lot of last-minute base-covering because their bias has become too open and too frequently criticized by the only group that counts - their peers.

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y friend Jim usually just gets a hat-tip; this time he gets a post all his own.  Jim, carry on …

In a message dated 10/27/2008 10:43:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, “swingdawg” writes:

I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration should be enough time to repair all the damage that has been done.

Oh, by the way, it was Bush who just ‘Socialized’ the banking/mortgage industry.

Excuse me, but haven’t the Democrats been in charge of both houses of Congress since the last election? What great things have they to show for their turn at the oars?  (Besides a 12% approval rating, the lowest in history, and considerably lower than President Bush’s.)

“Swingdawg” would like to have everyone forget or ignore history and join the folks over at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos and succumb to BDS, but (thanks to the wonderful Internet that Al Gore invented) we can actually go back in time and see what happened.

It was during the Clinton administration (a Democrat if memory serves) that they enacted policies that set up the collapse of the housing market.  1) On November 12, 1999, President Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which for 55 years had prevented banks, the nation’s lenders, to get into the so-called “investment banking” business (stock brokers).     2)  Also in 1999, Clinton appointed Franklin Raines… to become the CEO of the obscure but powerful Fannie Mae giant GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), which had been “privatized” and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

So the pattern becomes clear. Harvard Law School attorneys - noted for their lack of economic knowledge — create an easy-money system which relies on flakey loans provided by fat-cat financial manipulators who are the primary contributors to the re-election campaigns of the legislators - almost exclusively Democrats. (Some more good history here.)

In 2005, we almost fixed the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac problem, but the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

(Another bit of historical data here.  [NOTE:  Do not read if you are a "Progressive," it is not healthy to be confused by facts after your mind is made up.])

Since your friend writes. “I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area…”, I have to ask if he blames the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims, on President Bush’s policies as well?

Referring back to our Internet history sources once again, it seems that our earlier attacks go back to President Carter’s time (I think that he was a Democrat too), and really ramped up under President Clinton, where in 1993 we had our first attack on the World Trade Center; (and allowed our Special Forces to be humiliated by a pissant Warlord in Somalia); followed by (Oklahoma City in 1995?), the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the coordinated bombings of our two US Embassies (Tanzania & Kenya) in 1998.  President Clinton then finished out his term with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.

In my opinion, President Bush’s kick-ass response to that is pretty much what has helped keep us safe for these past years, not the Democrats or Progressives!

Your friend might also want to consider how poorly Democrats do in other areas of government.  In spite of what the Media would like folks to believe, it was Democratic Mayor Nagin and NOT President Bush, who left all the school buses parked during Katrina.

Or how about those crime statistics?

A popular chain email, Chicago War Zone Information, sloshing around Chicago informs the reader, “Body count.  In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq.”

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley. . .  . our leadership in Illinois. . . . all Democrats.  Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago (a lot of good gun control does, huh?). Of course they’re all blaming each other.  Can’t blame Republicans; there aren’t any!

The Illinois state pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, the worst in country.  Cook County (Chicago) sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in country.  (Look’em up if you want).  Chicago’s school system one of the worst in country (despite the millions from Ayres/Obama).  This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois.  He’s gonna ‘fix’ Washington politics?  Give me a break!!!

You might ask “Swingdawg” if he can give an example of where a Progressive policy (other than just a hand-out, of course) has actually improved conditions for a minority group?

Oh, and just for the record…

Demographers have shown that since the 1940s, the Democratic Party has segued from the party of the working middle class to the party whose voters look like a double-hump camel: they are either the poor who vote for entitlements or the extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires who provide the “juice” to buy the allegiance of the first group.

McCain-Palin 2008!

“If you don’t believe me, just watch how Congress and Barney Frank run the banks. If you thought they did a bad job running the post office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the military, just wait till you see what they’ll do with Wall Street.” - Arthur B. Laffer

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rthur Laffer - yes, that Arthur Laffer, who so influenced Ronald Reagan - let that … er … laugher slip in an otherwise sobering WSJ op/ed today, “The Age of Prosperity is Over.” The rest of the piece isn’t nearly as funny:

The stock market is obviously no fan of second-term George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama or John McCain, and again for good reasons.

These issues aren’t Republican or Democrat, left or right, liberal or conservative. They are simply economics, and wish as you might, bad economics will sink any economy no matter how much they believe this time things are different. They aren’t.

I was on the White House staff as George Shultz’s economist in the Office of Management and Budget when Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls, the dollar was taken off gold, import surcharges were implemented, and other similar measures were enacted from a panicked decision made in August of 1971 at Camp David.

I witnessed, like everyone else, the consequences of another panicked decision to cover up the Watergate break-in. I saw up close and personal Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush succumb to panicked decisions to raise taxes, as well as Jimmy Carter’s emergency energy plan, which included wellhead price controls, excess profits taxes on oil companies, and gasoline price controls at the pump.

The consequences of these actions were disastrous. Just look at the stock market from the post-Kennedy high in early 1966 to the pre-Reagan low in August of 1982. The average annual real return for U.S. assets compounded annually was -6% per year for 16 years. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a bear market. And it is something that you may well experience again. Yikes!

Then we have this administration’s panicked Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and of course the deer-in-the-headlights Mr. Bernanke in his bungling of monetary policy.

And all those well known errors, and their well known disastrous results, are nothing, Laffer says, compared to what’s happening now - panicky decisions that will stick it to us for the next generation or so.  If you want to read more, he’s got a new book on it - The End of Prosperity - How Higher Taxes will Doom the Economy - If We Let it Happen.

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n this 2001 Chicago public radio interview, Barack Obama makes his plea for the redistribution of wealth in a long, protracted way, both in his initial statement and in his answers to listener’s question.

Speaking of the advances made by the civil rights movement, Obama says the Warren court did not go far enough:

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution …

Obama positions himself as left of the leftist Warren court. He continues:

… generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf …

Hugh Hewitt could say that and believe it, and it wouldn’t make him a radical. But Obama goes on:

… and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Barry Glib will be able to talk around that like he’s talked about so much evidence in this campaign that he’s unworthy of the presidency.  But he won’t be able to convince those who aren’t totally sold out to his vision of America that he does not, in fact, believe that it’s a “tragedy” that redistributive change has not yet come about.

So he was not just some liberal law prof just talking about how things work. He was criticizing the courts for not taking up wealth redistribution and outlining his preferred route to accomplish a goal, which is through what the president gets to initiate: legislation. Michelle Malkin nails that part of the tape:

A caller asks The One to explain how he would do “reparative economic work.” Obama gives the legislative route two thumbs up as his preferred method of “breaking free of the constraints” placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution and then burbles about cobbling together the “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Stop the ACLU, where I read this first, suggests McCain quickly incorporate it into an add, pointing out that the nation is 84% to 13% against forced government redistribution of wealth. It’s not a bad idea. Obama’s comment to Joe the Plumber got McCain more traction than any of the criticisms of The One’s hard-left cabal of buddies, and this is Obama in his own words, not some plumber they can send their henchmen after - what are they going to do, attack the radio station?

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oe Biden just did the nearly impossible - he has out-gaffed himself.

Finding himself in an unusual situation - tough, even hostile questions from a member of the media - he was faced with a question from Orlando’s WFTV’s Barbara West about Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth around” comment to Joe the Plumber.

By this time, he was already flustered by West’s first question, asking if he was embarrassed by ACORN’s “phony attempts to register voters,” and he blurted:

The only person who spread the wealth around has been George Bush and John McCain’s tax policy.

What happened to the Bush who rewarded only the richest of the rich? The Bush that is the anti-cornerstone to Obama’s tax policy? Here is Bidden admitting that trickle-down and low tax rates actually does spread the wealth around.

Kudos to West for treating Biden like everyone else treats Palin, with tough question pounding in after tough question. She followed up the Joe the Plumber question with a Marx quote - “From each according to his abiltiies to each according to his needs.” - and asking “How is Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?”

Biden’s response was not up to Palin’s level: “Are you kidding? Is that a question?”

The Obama campaign’s response was to blackball WFTV, canceling an already scheduled interview with Jill Biden.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

McGinnis said the Biden cancellation was “a result of her husband’s experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West.” (source)

The West interview is fascinating because it is so rare. We’re just not used to seeing these guys under the gun, and if the rest of the media had acted more like her, Obama would not be leading in the polls today.

Here’s the clip.

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o, despite what you may think, the headline isn’t rhetorical.  There’s something a-stinkin’ in Obamaland that should get every small businessman wondering what The One has up his sleeve, should he find himself occupying the Oval Office.

Back in February, Obama came out swinging in support of small business when a report found that billions of dollars in federal contracts intended for small business ended up being directed to Fortune 500 companies.  At the time, his Web site posted this statement:

“I am proud to have the support of the American Small Business League and their grassroots efforts to help protect American small business. Helping American small business is part of our movement for change and the end of politics as usual. 98 percent of all American companies have fewer than 100 employees. Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.”

The American Small Business League has found that the Web site has been modified so the sentence in bold above has been deleted and replaced with:

Helping American small business is part of our movement for change and the end of politics as usual.

Says the American Small Business League:

On Tuesday of last week, CNN ran a story on the fact that neither of Senator Obama’s recent rescue plans for small businesses or the middle class made any mention of his February statement calling for the end of the diversion of federal small business contracts to “corporate giants.” There has been absolutely no response from the Obama campaign to the story.

Since making his original statement in February, Senator Obama has refused to mention the issue publicly or include any mention of it in his criticism of the Bush Administration. To date, Senator Obama and his campaign have not released a statement on this issue in any capacity.

What’s up? A counter-intuitive truth is what’s up: Despite all the railing by Dems about evil corporate America, they love big corporations because big corporations don’t hold to fundamental American values. They like government intervention when it serves their purposes; they would just as soon give in to the latest liberal social cause than fight it; they’re supporters of markets that are slanted in their favor, not free markets; and they’re all for big-money contributions and junkets because they know they can out-spend the smaller competition.

It’s called corporatism. The domain is owned by some left-wing paranoids who define it as a right-wing corporate fascism - they’re all messed up because they cling to the leftist mantra that corporations are a bad thing, while more enlightened liberals realize that if big government controls big corporations, it’s not that far removed from Socialism.  Wikipedia does a much better job with the term:

Political scientists may also use the term corporatism to describe a practice whereby a state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy, as well as sometimes running them, either directly or indirectly through corporations.

Sounds exactly like what’s happened to the financial sector in the last month, doesn’t it?  And doesn’t it sound precisely like the kind of vision Obama would hold for all sectors of American business?  Pull out his health care proposals again, for starters.  Yikes.

(A hat-tip to somebody for helping me get my arms around corporatism.  It was a talk radio host this morning; I think the stand-in for Michael Medved.)

Small businesses, on the other hand, are cantankerous.  They are often exempted from rules and regulations that apply to larger businesses, and therefore it’s much harder to get the bit in their mouth and direct them where you want them to go.  They insist on growing whichever way they want to and aren’t interested in fitting neat formulas or following book-thick directives.

Obama has thrown small business bones, but they’re brittle and hollow.  We’re screwed if we make over $250,000 ($150,000 for singles) - and only a fool would expect him to keep that promise; it’s no better than his campaign financing promise.  And capital gains breaks for start-ups?  Give me a break.  Since when have start-ups had capital gains to write off?

If there are any small business owners out there who are still for Obama, consider all this and please think again.  He’s got you right where he wants you, and you’re not going to like the results.

hat-tip: Jim

Obama’s Big Three-Year Ayres Lie

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o we know Obama and Ayres worked together and knew each other, yet Obama continues to slither away from big negatives from the association. In fact, if we’re to believe the MSM, the Obama/Ayres meme may actually have hurt McCain among some voters who merely see it as “negative campaigning” - or who may actually like the idea of having a president who likes hanging out with terrorists.

But there are two ways to tell this story that McCain hasn’t pursued. One he’s had a long time to develop - that Obama and Ayres share a radical approach to education that should raise fears with any parent. And two, a story that’s still developing, the depth of lying Obama has foisted in order to minimize his friendship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist.

The lying meme got a big boost recently from Verum Serum, which tracked down documentation that the two shared an office for three years - a level of familiarity far beyond Obama’s “guy in the neighborhood” lie.

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money to is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screen grab from the website’s footer:

In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address:

The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted for at least three years. I can’t say for sure because 1998 is the earliest tax information available online. [Correction: I can say for sure that they shared the same building for the years 1995-1998. Here is a 1995 progress report from the CAC with the same address.] …

I’m going to suggest that two guys working in the same building for a period of years probably crossed paths pretty often. For all we know, they had lunch together on a daily basis. Maybe, in an effort at conservation, they were even carpool buddies. After all, Ayers is a guy from Obama’s neighborhood.

The message here is simple and devastating: You just can’t trust what comes out of Obama’s mouth.

hat-tip: What Bubba Knows