Obama’s dark side

Defensive president tries to deny his dirty campaign practices

By Brett M. Decker

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  President Obama waves Aug. 6, 2012, as he boards Air Force One ... more >

President Obama’s ugly campaign is backfiring. With bad news clouding over our struggling nation, Americans are sick of all the political lies, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes for 10 years and the Obama camp’s inference that the Republican presidential candidate was guilty of a felony related to his business background. A defensive Mr. Obama even stopped hiding from the press for a few minutes on Monday to stammer, “We point out sharp differences between the candidates, but we don’t go out of bounds.” Yeah, right.

Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

Obama’s fuel follies

‘We can’t wait’ for cheaper gas, Mr. President

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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Don’t look now, but gas prices are beginning to bite hard again. That’s bad news for President Obama, who, until now, might have thought he had gotten lucky when prices dropped earlier in this critical election year. As the energy issue makes the campaign trail bumpier, Mr. Obama has no one to blame but himself.
The average price of a gallon of gas at the pump has jumped to $3.70, more than 30 cents higher than just six weeks ago. This means the cost has climbed more than halfway back to its high for the year, which was $3.94 in April. Market analysts point the finger at a host of factors for the rapid escalation, including fears of conflict with Iran, summer-driving-season increases, a better-than-expected July jobs report that boosted oil futures and, most recently, a California refinery fire that could reduce West Coast gas supplies by nearly 10 percent. Some gas stations in the Los Angeles area already are selling fuel at $4.50 a gallon.