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Ron Paul: We Already Went Over the Fiscal Cliff by Gary North

Are you worried about the fiscal cliff? You should be. Not the one that faces us on January 1. The one the government has already taken us over. Ron Paul explains:

As the year draws to an end, America faces yet another Congressionally-manufactured crisis which will likely end in yet another 11th hour compromise, resulting in more government growth touted as “saving” the economy. While cutting taxes is always a good idea, setting up a ticking time bomb with a sunset provision, as the Bush tax cuts did, is terrible policy. Congress should have just cut taxes. But instead, we have a crisis that is sure not to go to waste. The hysteria surrounding the January 1 deadline for the Budget Control Act’s spending cuts and expiration of the Bush tax cuts seems all too familiar. Even the language is predictably hysterical: if government reduces planned spending increases by even a tiny amount, the economy will go over a “fiscal cliff.” This is nonsense. This rhetoric is based on the belief that government spending sustains the economy, when in fact the opposite is true. Every dollar the government spends is a dollar taken from consumers, businessmen, or investors. Reducing spending can only help the economy by putting money back in the hands of ordinary Americans. Politicians who claim to support the free market and the lower and middle-class should take this to heart. This is like the carnival sharpie who takes your money by means of a pea under one of three cups. The cups are the House, the Senate, and the White House. Round and round they go. Can you spot the pea? Keep your eyes on those cups.

Meanwhile, the sharpie’s assistants are burglarizing your home.

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House GOP Propose $4.6 Trillion in Cuts to Obama

House Republicans, rejecting President Barack Obama’s demand for tax rate increases, offered a $4.6 trillion deficit reduction plan today that doesn't raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
The proposal is based on a framework from a year ago outlined by Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, one of President Obama's debt commission chairs, and includes an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits, likely to age 67. "What we're putting forth is a credible plan that deserves consideration by the White House," Boehner told reporters. The proposal, contained in a letter today to Obama from House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders, calls for $800 billion in new revenue over the next decade. It would also cut spending on entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid by at least $900 billion and save another $300 billion through cuts in discretionary spending, according to the letter to Obama. The House Republican leaders also proposed saving $200 billion by revising the way cost-of-living increases are calculated for Social Security recipients and others, such as retired federal workers. The White Houre swiftly fired back that the plan "does not meet the test of balance," and that Republicans were clearly not "serious" about averting the fiscal cliff.  See Above

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Why is Obama so insistent on raising taxes?
Obama and his staff are not stupid, so why are they so adamant about raising taxes on the "so called wealthy"?  They are exposing the ideological distain for people that have worked hard to earn a lot of money.  Connect the dots in Obama's own words; he told Joe The Plummer that taxes is the way to redistribute the wealth, he said it is time to recognize when you have earned enough money, "you did not build that" and government spending is essential to economic growth.  So, do not be fooled.  This "crisis" is not about taxing the rich to close any kind of gap.  Lastly, the White House "crisis" plan includes $1.6 Billion in additional spending.  Again, Obama is not stupid.  He knows that the level of debt we are under is unsustainable, what must he really be thinking?

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Going Off the Cliff Fulfills Many Liberal Dreams

RUSH: Okay, back to the fiscal cliff.  I want to reiterate what I said yesterday.  I haven't changed.  This proposal that Obama put forth, which Boehner has rejected and basically said he's not even serious, it's time for some adult leadership here, Obama wants to go over the cliff.  I was watching Fox during the break and the guy that runs Real Clear Politics was on, and he said something that a lot of people in Washington are saying. It's hard to believe that Obama would want to go over the cliff and start his second term with a new recession and massive unemployment.  Look at the problems that that would present him in accomplishing everything he wants. I understand people thinking this way, but I really have thought all along you cannot look at Barack Obama as a standard, typical American or Washington politician.  He doesn't have the same concerns.  You got all these analysts who naturally think that presidents care about reducing the debt, care about their legacy, care about making sure that the economy grows.  Where's the evidence that Obama cares about any of this?  If this were his first term and people were talking about this kind of stuff, I could understand it.  We have four years of evidence that he doesn't care about any of that.  We have four years of evidence to suggest that it is entirely proper, and in fact it may be wise, it may be intelligent to look at Obama through the prism of cynicism. 

So you say, "Okay, why would he want to go over the cliff?"  Well, what happens when we go over the cliff?  A Democrat orgasm happens.  Taxes go up for everybody.  That's nirvana to these people.  Taxes go up on everybody on January 1st, in all kinds of ways:  income, payroll, Obamacare, taxes go up for everybody.  And then, after that, guess what Obama gets to do?  He gets to call a national speech to the nation and blame the Republicans for it, and then come out for tax cuts.  He knows as well as you do that the Inside the Beltway traditional analysts will look at that and say, "Brilliant move.  All presidents want to cut taxes. All presidents want more disposable income." It's a crock, but he knows that they're gonna look at him, and he's gonna get the benefit, by the way, of being looked at the, analyzed as a traditional politician while he's out there doing everything he can to back door nationalize American businesses and transform this country from capitalism to socialism. What better way could he do that, let's go over the cliff, everybody's taxes go, and there's an added bonus.  The second most orgasmic thing that could happen for Democrats is the defense budget gets cut.  Well, that would happen, too.  So you've got uncontrolled joy.  You have limitless joy for the Democrat Party going over the cliff.  You've got tax increases for everybody, automatically, without anybody signing anything.  It's already done.  And then you've got massive defense cuts.  Oh, folks, they can barely contain themselves.  Why propose something like this that has no prayer?  And how many working days do we have left in this?  Let's see.  We had seven weeks to come to terms on this.  Three of those weeks have passed.  We're down to four weeks, but that's not even true because they're not full weeks and we're not working to the end. What is it, 16 days, or 15 days, maybe 13 now, where everybody is going to still be in Washington. I think it's only common sense to realize Obama wants to go over the cliff.  My God, on the other side is nirvana.  On the other side, we're miles down the road to utopia, as they define it.  We're miles down the road to transforming the country out of capitalism into socialism.  And we have an instant crisis.  Because massive tax increases on small businesses means fewer people get hired, unemployment goes up.  That's gonna call for massive immediate fix.  Here comes President Obama on the white horse saying, "I'm gonna cut taxes for the middle class."  And the Republicans are not gonna be able to oppose that.  I mean, I think it's made to order.  The fact that he makes this ridiculous proposal is all the proof anybody needs.  They just have to have the courage to see it for what it is. But I cannot emphasize enough how excited they are at the prospect of taxes going up on everybody and the defense budget being cut and nobody has to do anything.  There's no political price to be paid, it's already signed as part of the raising the debt limit last time, sequestration, all that.  So Obama gets immaculated again on January 21st, three weeks of utter horror.  I mean, this is theoretical.  Some people think going over the cliff isn't gonna be that bad.  I think that it would be in every which way you and I as traditionalists could conceive.  But it's made the to order for what he wants to do.

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Half of Democrats, Quarter of Republicans Approve of Socialism

According to a Gallup poll conducted  November 18-19, more than half of Democrats (53%) approve of socialism, which isn’t surprising, but almost one-quarter of Republicans (23%) also do. What the poll reveals is that there is a significant difference between the reality of what voters approve and their reactions to terms that represent those realities. For example, Democrats favor the “federal government” over “capitalism” by 20 percentage points, yet they approve of “small business” almost unanimously, at a 94% level. When asked about big business, Democrats approval rate drops all the way to 44%. But when the term “free enterprise” is used instead of capitalism, 88% Democrats approve of it. This indicates that capitalism is a loaded term for Democrats and that the left has demonized the very word. Even among Republicans, there is a significant drop when big business is compared to small business; small business gets an approval rate of 95% while big business gets 75%. The apparent prejudice against corporations and capitalism that has been nurtured by those on the left for decades has borne bitter fruit; the inference that can be drawn from the approval of small business and disapproval of big business indicates that many Americans don’t mind success up to a point, but let someone get too successful and envy and anger seep in. This class warfare nurtured by the left has given us the success of Barack Obama.

SARAH PALIN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, hopefully people realize what Margaret Thatcher had explained. That the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money. But I think what the survey represents, Sean is perhaps some survey recipients who answered the question are confusing dirty crony capitalism with genuine free market capitalism which is the good kind of capitalism. You know, we’ve shown a bright light on the problems caused by crony capitalism in recent months and in the last year or two. And I think that perhaps capitalism in general has taken a hit because of this new public awareness because of that light that’s been shown on crony capitalism. And perhaps, people are believing that capitalism in general isn’t such a good thing. Of course, that’s a mistake to believe that.

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The U.N. doesn't need to be reformed; it needs to be abolished.

Will we look back in the years to come and remember last week as the beginning of the end of Israel? In spite of the "yes" vote from the United States, does the Obama administration's dismissive policy toward Israel and its coddling of the Muslim Brotherhood play a role in the world's further turn against Israel? Last week, the United Nations voted to grant the Palestinian Authority's upgrade to nonvoting observer state status. This motion passed the General Assembly 138-9, with 41 abstentions. Who were the brave 9 voting "no"? Israel, the United States and Canada, of course, and the Czech Republic, Panama and several Pacific island nations: Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau. Conspicuous in their absence is every single European country, who either voted with the Palestinians or abstained. The Palestinians could have had a state at any time over the past ten years. But they have refused to take yes for an answer. Why? Because a Palestinian state is not their real objective. What they really want is the destruction of the state of Israel. The UN, that democracy of tyrants where Israel-bashing is a daily occurrence, is the perfect venue for them to move this agenda forward. It is no secret that I believe the UN has become a cesspool of anti-American and anti-Semitic hatred. That's why the "Freedom Center" recently published a pamphlet called "10 Reasons to Abolish the UN". In it, Daniel Greenfield shows how the UN has become a depraved theater of the absurd where countries like Syria are allowed to chair the Human Rights Commission. This pamphlet will make you wonder, as I do, why the United States continues to subsidize this corrupt organization. The U.N. doesn't need to be reformed; it needs to be abolished.

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Bob Costas Rants About Gun Control But Misses The Real Issue by Tim Brown

NBC sportscaster Bob Costas decided he would go political during his halftime segment on NBC’s Sunday Night Football in the wake of the murder / suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins. Costas took the opportunity to push the liberal agenda of gun control. Costas said:

“In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? ….. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Costas said this in the wake of Belcher shooting and killing the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, Perkins, on Saturday and then driving to Arrowhead Stadium and committing suicide. So just as with all liberal arguments, this has nothing to do with Belcher having a firearm and everything to do with a man who apparently couldn’t control himself. The depravity of man should never be underestimated, not the “ability” of an inanimate object.

Costas argues that it is the gun that is the bad things here and apparently so does Jason Whitlock. Guns can be used for either good or bad. They can be used to murder, in the commission of other crimes such as robberies, and in the destruction of other people’s property. However, they can also be used to protect one’s self, family and loved ones, along with. Here’s what Bob Costas and liberals like him completely missed. If only Kasandra Perkins had been armed and able to defend herself, we might just be hailing her as a hero, having defended herself from a violent criminal, who just happened to be the father of her child. Instead, we are faced with two people who are dead and a child left without parents.

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Belcher spent night with a gal pal before killing By TARA PALMERI

KANSAS CITY, Mo — He was playing the field before he shot the mother of his daughter.Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher had a boozy dinner with another woman and spent the night at her apartment before he went home, fought with and killed his girlfriend, and then ended his own life in a practice-facility parking lot, sources said yesterday.After dinner and drinks Friday night at a local tavern, the former Long Island high-school star took the woman, Brittni Glass, to her home, but spent the next several hours asleep in his Bentley outside her building, neighbors said. Chiefs officials knew about the couple’s ongoing beefs and provided counseling, Kansas City police Sgt. Richard Sharp said.

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What Made Jovan Belcher Murder the Mother of His Child? Was It Football or the Gun? Or Maybe Something Else…

Okay, folks, I’m confused. I’m gonna admit being confused to you here. I’m listening to all of the learned analysis and reaction to the murder/suicide in Kansas City on Saturday, Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend. And the reason I’m confused is because I don’t know if Belcher playing football caused him to murder his girlfriend or if the gun caused him to murder his girlfriend. Because we’re hearing from leftist social reformers that both situations are possible, that it was the game of football that led to brain concussions, which led to all kinds of irrationality and oddities.

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60% Think Middle-Class Tax Increases Likely in Any Budget Deal

Most voters still think a middle-class tax hike is likely in any deal that President Obama and Congress reach to avoid the January 1 “fiscal cliff.” They view long-term spending cuts as much less likely. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 60% of Likely U.S. Voters believe middle-class taxes are also likely to go up if the president and Congress agree to a plan that raises taxes on wealthy Americans and cuts spending.

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How the Hostess Company Is Being Split Up

You may have heard that Hostess Bakery plants shut down due to a workers' strike, but you may not have heard how it was split up: the State Department hired all the Twinkies, the Secret Service hired all the HoHos, the generals are sleeping with the Cupcakes and the voters sent all the Ding Dongs to Congress.

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Darwinism, Badges, and Guns by Gary North

Government subsidies weaken those who receive them. The recipients fail to keep up. They cannot compete. This brings me to the subject at hand: Darwinism.

Believers in Darwinism in the United States have a major problem. Almost nobody thinks they are correct. In 1982, a total of 9% of the people surveyed by the Gallup organization said that they believed that man evolved over millions of years, and that God had nothing to do with the process. This is straight Darwinism. It is the theory of evolution through natural selection. In 2012, 15% of those surveyed said they held to this view. In other words, 153 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, the Darwinists have failed to persuade 85% of the American population of the truth of their position. This is the case, despite the fact that Darwinists have by law captured all of the public schools, the vast majority of the universities, and most of the media, which includes captured Hollywood, the news networks, the publishing industry, and cable television. This has been the most concerted effort in government-financed, government-regulated propaganda in the history of the United States, and it has come a cropper. The overwhelming majority of Americans think that the theory is nonsense. Why have they failed? Because they have relied on the state to promote Darwinism and to defend it against rival views. Once any idea becomes dependent on federal money and federal law, its failure is guaranteed. Its promoters lose their ability to compete in the marketplace. Then the government pulls the subsidy. The main point of Darwinism is not the idea of evolution. That idea long preceded Darwinism. It goes back to classical Greece. The main point of Darwinism is to promote the idea of purposeless life prior to the advent of man. It promotes the idea that all life came out of a purposeless universe, and until the advent of man, there was no purpose in the universe. The main motivation of Darwinists has always been to elevate man as a replacement of God. What God is not allowed to do, namely, shape history, including cosmic history, in terms of His purposes, man is now said to be able to do, and therefore he has a responsibility to do it. It is the elevation of man as the new God that is the essence of Darwinism, not the doctrine of evolution. This is why Darwinism is a religion.

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Subpoena Granted for Obama’s Occidental College Records

There has been much controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s citizenship; and speculation that his Occidental College transcripts will provide proof of foreign citizenship, based on the application and receipt of a ‘non-US citizen’ scholarship to study in the U.S. Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire has secured a subpoena, from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, to obtain the following from the Records Custodian at Occidental College:

1) All records related to Barack Hussein Obama, II, also known as Barack Hussein Obama, including, without limitation, application for admission and transcripts.

2) All records related to Barry Soetoro including, without limitation, application for admission and transcripts.

If proof of foreign citizenship is obtained somehow through these documents, then Barack Obama doesn’t meet the basic qualifications for the presidency. “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Whether or not this is subpoena is upheld remains to be seen, but the stated deadline for the delivery of the documents to Dr. Ortiz’s office is December 14, 2012 at 11:00 a.m.

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Obamacore: The White House Takes the Schools

President Obama’s bid to control what your children learn in school is surely one of the most important and disturbing of his many transformative plans. Not only is Obama’s attempt to devise what is in effect a national K-12 school curriculum arguably unconstitutional and illegal, the fact that most Americans have no idea that the new “Common Core” (aka Obamacore) even exists may be the most troubling thing about it. Today’s Washington Post features an article on the controversy being kicked up by the new English curriculum that 46 states and the District of Columbia are just now waking up to. Not coincidentally, this new education war is hitting less than a month after Obama’s re-election, just in time to prevent the public from taking the most effective step it could have to block the changes. You have to get nearly to the end of today’s Post article even to get a hint of the fact that Obama is the real force behind the new curriculum. Following that link takes you to an article that more frankly lays out Obama’s role in commandeering the substance of what’s taught in the nation’s schools. The print version of this September 21, 2012 article featured a more revealing headline than the web version: “Education overhaul largely bypasses Congress.”  To say the least, the legality of Obama’s curriculum power-grab is dubious, as George Will explains.  Read More:  www.nationalreview.com

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Why 21st Century Men Are Wussies And What to do About It By Doug Giles

Nowadays, especially via TV and Hollywood, men are seen as despicable, cruel, pusillanimous, selfish, ineffectual oafs, veritable bumbling idiots who need women or some gay guy to help us through our primal fog towards metrosexual healing. If you’re a guy who wants to keep his guy-ness and not trade it in for the androgynous imago of the 21st century puss, then you will receive more scorn than Michael Moore at a NRA luncheon.  From the college classroom to the corporate boardroom, men have been meeting with man-hatred for quite some time now. Look, I’m sure men need some retooling, and I confess we do egregious things for which we need to take responsibility.  Y’know, just the other day while I was on a hunting trip without my wife during our anniversary, after not bathing for 5 days, while eating cold refried beans out of a can, chasing the beans with a hot Budweiser and belching so loudly that a Bull Elk came to our cabin looking for a fight, I was thinking that maybe I need to take some etiquette classes. However, the little tweaking that I’ll admit to needing with respect to balancing out my mannish weirdness will not be coming from our current culture of castration but from the scripture and from classical masculine values of days gone by. What are the basic elements of the masculine spirit?  Well, from Homer to Gomer, from Abraham to the Apostle Paul, there are three primary traits that men, if properly raised and allowed to express their biology, will and should naturally exhibit. They are the following:

· Competition
· Independence
· Responsibility

Let’s look at number one, competition.  Guys will fight over anything, and you know what, we’re supposed to.  Probably the thing that separates the men from the ladies more than the Austin Power-like hair on our backs is man’s innate combative nature. Take the animal kingdom, for instance.  Male animals will fight over who gets to breed, who gets to eat, and who owns a particular piece of turf, and aside from our cell phones we bipods are no different.  Men clash over women, ideas, politics, business, war, and if that does not suffice, we will make up crap to wrangle over. Nowadays, men are reviled and harangued for this traditionally esteemed and essential, God-wired, gung-ho spirit.  It is this positive bellicose behavior that causes men to rightly protect, even to the point of death, women and kids from whatever threatens them. This is what men have been classically known for, and this is what should be re-tabled for men in this Age of Wussification. The competitive spirit within the man, together with its spin-off fruits, is a must for our nation to continue to be the solid country it is.  Sure, this viable spirited competitive distinctiveness, allowed to grow on its own, ungoverned by greatness, can fester into an O.J.  However, the competitive spirit, governed by biblical ethics, has always produced powerful and productive patriarchs who were the backbone of whatever culture they grew up in.  That’s why traditional Judeo-Christian communities invested so much time, capital and oomph in the ordering of this potential force through the institution of rights, rules and heroic narratives. As society becomes more secular, dispensing with Judeo-Christian values that relate to man, and diluting the values which address their combativeness in a constructive fashion, man’s competitive bent will deteriorate rapidly into free-for-all competition and success at all costs.  On the flip side of that competition-minus-character coin is the current overcorrection of poo-pooing competition and turning  men into Charmin-like creatures. Traditional society esteemed and structured man’s aggressiveness, realizing that men who like to fight were a must for the good society.  Our forebears bridled the bad fruits and released the good produce of combative behavior by recounting great biblical narratives, by conducting ceremonies, and by maintaining an ethical code built around properly releasing this warrior spirit.

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Outside View: Soaking the rich won’t solve much PETER MORICI || UPI Outside View Commentator

To avert the fiscal cliff, U.S. President Barack Obama may get Republican cooperation in soaking the rich but the deal that emerges could put the nation in dire straits by the end of the decade. The Budget Act of 2011 requires the president and Congress to cut federal deficits by $1.2 trillion over nine years, or annual defense and non-entitlement outlays automatically will be reduced $107 billion annually on Jan. 1. Also, the Bush tax cuts, payroll tax reductions and other assorted programs expire. Overall, annual spending would be cut $136 billion, taxes raised $532 billion and economists fear a staggering recession would result pushing the unemployment rate into the teens. Obama wants to raise tax rates on families and many small businesses earning more than $250,000 and congressional Republicans would like to curb entitlements by increasing Medicare premiums paid by wealthier participants and slowing Social Security cost-of-living increases. The president also wants additional stimulus spending and the likely package would reduce the annual deficit by about $200 billon but that is hardly enough to fix what is broke.

In 2013, the budget gap will exceed $1 trillion -- up from $161 billion in 2007. Outlays for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements are up $665 billion and those may be expected to increase another $1.1 trillion by 2020. Keeping non-discretionary spending in line with inflation would cost another $300 billion. The bottom line: even if Obama delivers on his campaign promise to tax the rich and Republicans obtain some curbs on entitlement spending, the federal deficit will likely remain near or above $1 trillion for the foreseeable future and could easily rise to much more by the end of the decade.

That's if the bond investors permit Washington to continue reckless borrowing and the Federal Reserve doesn't have to unleash inflation by printing money to buy trillions in new U.S. Treasury securities the bond market won't take. Americans are living longer and healthcare costs are rising exponentially. Obamacare will do little to curb the latter because it does more to extend insurance coverage through government subsidies and employer mandates than it does to contain rapidly rising prices and demand for services created by breakthroughs in medical technology. The reasonable solutions are to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 and pattern U.S. healthcare after other national systems that better contain costs. The Germans and Dutch spend one-third less on healthcare because their governments more aggressively regulate prices, better ration care and spend less on lawsuits. Democrats, hamstrung by unions, are loath to require Americans to work longer and are too beholding to tort lawyers and the medical establishment for campaign support. Republicans refuse to admit vouchers and more competition -- we already have plenty of the latter among providers, drug and device manufacturers and insurance companies -- won't adequately slow rocketing costs. Without significantly raising the retirement age, more effective price controls and rationing in healthcare and torts reform, federal spending and the national debt will jet into the stratosphere -- no matter what the president and Congress agree to in their current negotiations. Mounting interest payments will cause investors to balk at buying U.S. Treasurys and draconian reductions in federal spending that must follow will thrust the United States into the kind of crisis gripping Greece and Spain.

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Is Healthcare A Right?

Often when someone nears the end of life, they begin to contemplate their lives and recognize that of all the things they’ve accumulated, all the accolades that have been bestowed upon them, nothing is as valuable as life itself: there is nothing that should be protected more than life itself. But if it’s the most valuable thing we possess, whose responsibility is it to protect it? Is it the responsibility of the individual that possesses it? Is it the responsibility of the society in which that individual is a constituent? The answer most likely lies somewhere between those two choices. Certainly both the individual and society have something to gain by having healthy components. Neither of them benefits by simply expecting the other to take on the whole responsibility. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that an individual should take at least some responsibility for their own health and society should serve as a safety net. But it seems that our politicians have not yet struck that balance between safety net and individual responsibility. Given the already disastrous budget, we plow full-speed ahead towards the fiscal cliff and a mandatory healthcare plan that will worsen a doctor shortage. The quality of our current healthcare system as we know it will decline, and most hurt of all will be—surprise, surprise—the poor.

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Polls: Nation that re-elected Obama wants more spending cuts than tax hikes, still hates Obamacare

Let’s see if that can change in the near future. Presumably it should if the press reports that a realistic compromise is on the table that— hey, looky here— aligns with the public’s and the press’ professed desires, but early signs show it’s being treated unseriously in the press. Heck, even a plurality of Obama voters want the deficit dealt with by making more spending cuts than tax hikes:

A survey of Obama voters, conducted last month by Benenson Strategy Group for the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way and shared first with POLITICO, finds that 96 percent believe the federal deficit is a problem and that 85 percent support increasing taxes on the wealthy. Yet 41 percent who supported the Democratic incumbent want to get control of the deficit mostly by cutting spending, with only some tax increases, while another 41 percent want to solve it mostly with tax increases and only some spending cuts. Just 5 percent of Obama supporters favor tax increases alone to solve the deficit, half the number who back an approach that relies entirely on spending cuts.

Too bad they all voted for the man who’s offering a rather more unbalanced approach than Republicans.  And, you read that right— double the number of Obama supporters want to deal with the deficit entirely by cutting spending than want to do it entirely by raising taxes. In other news, voters still hate ObamaCare, especially independents.

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Fiscal Cliff Notes
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days.
And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting "the rich" to pay "their fair share" is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics. Taxing "the rich" will produce a drop in the bucket when compared to the staggering and unprecedented deficits of the Obama administration.

No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year. Yet political and media discussions of the financial crisis have been focused overwhelmingly on how to get more tax revenue to pay for past and future spending. The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. For example, "We are just asking the rich to pay a little more." This is an insult to our intelligence. The government doesn't "ask" anybody to pay anything. It orders you to pay the taxes they impose and you can go to prison if you don't. Then there are all the fancy substitute words for plain old spending— words like "stimulus" or "investing in the industries of the future." The theory about "stimulus" is that government spending will stimulate private businesses and financial institutions to put more of their money into the economy, speeding up the recovery. But the fact that you call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. Stimulus spending began during the Bush administration and has continued full blast during the Obama administration. But the end result is that both businesses and financial institutions have had record amounts of their own money sitting idle. The rate of circulation of money slowed down. All this is the opposite of stimulus.

What about "investing in the industries of the future"? Does the White House come equipped with a crystal ball? Calling government spending "investment" does not make it investment any more than calling spending "stimulus" makes it stimulate anything. What in the world would lead anyone to think that politicians have some magic way of knowing what the industries of the future are? Thus far the Obama administration has repeatedly "invested" in the bankruptcies of the present, such as Solyndra. Using lofty words to obscure tawdry realities extends beyond the White House. Referring to the Federal Reserve System's creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars out of thin air as "quantitative easing" makes it seem as if this is some soothing and esoteric process, rather than amounting essentially to nothing more than printing more money.