Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Patience Patriots. Getting to the truth is taking a painfully long time. But it will be time very well spent to bring justice to the four brave Americans slaughtered in Benghazi.

Benghazi Attack Survivor Waited on a Roof Top for 20 Hours Before Help Came

Katie Pavlich | Jul 30, 201

Diplomatic Security agent David Ubben has been receiving treatment at Walter Reed Military Medical Center after being severely wounded on September 11, 2012 when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked by terrorists. According to Fox News, Ubben waited for help on top of a roof for 20 hours. What difference does waiting that long make? The lives of two Navy SEALs.


During the second wave of attacks on Benghazi, David Ubben was on the rooftops with the Navy SEALS. Eventually, several rounds of mortar attacks found their mark, killing Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty while shredding David Ubben’s right leg. Ubben was stuck on the rooftop for 20 hours before help arrived.

The House Oversight Committee is planning to hold a series of hearings about the 9/11 Benghazi terrorist attack in the Fall.  During the last Oversight hearing about the attack, the Obama administration's entire narrative about what happened that night was blown out of the water by State Department Whistleblower Gregory Hicks. Hicks was in Tripoli the night of the attack and was the last person to speak with U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens before he was killed. 

Comment to the above article written by usmcpgw Wrote:




We're the Battling Boys of Beghazi
no fame, no glory, no paparazzi,
Just a fiery death in a blazing hell,
defending the country we loved so well.
It wasn’t our job, but we answered the call,
fought to the consulate, and scaled the wall.
We pulled twenty countrymen from the jaws of fate,
led them to safety, and stood at the gate.
Just the two of us, and foes by the score,
but we stood fast, to bar the door,
Three calls for reinforcement, but all were denied,
so we fought and we fought, and we fought till we died.
We gave our all for our Uncle Sam,
but Barack Obama didn’t give a damn.
Just two dead SEAL’s, who carried the load,
no thanks to us — we were just “bumps in the road.”

NOTE: Here is the earlier Guy Benson article linked in the article above by Katie Pavlich. 
The Damning Dozen: Twelve Revelations from the Benghazi Hearings
Guy Benson | May 09, 2013
Much of the media and liberal establishment simply ignored yesterday's Benghazi hearings.  They were content to see, hear, and speak no evil -- which is typically the fastest way to kill a story in Washington.  Others framed the proceedings as just another quixotic, partisan effort to hype a long-resolved story.  Selling that template requires adherence to two fallacious assertions: First, that no major questions remain regarding the 9/11 terrorist assault on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya  -- and second, that no new information emerged from the whistle-blowers' hours-long testimony.  The former claim is outright insulting.  The latter betrays either aggressive ignorance or wishful thinking.  House Oversight Committee Republicans' focused questioning extracted quite a few nuggets of relevant information.  For their part, many committee Democrats were focused on unseemly efforts to attack, distract and smear -- all employed as they cynically groused about Republicans "politicizing" the investigation.  Cutting through the nonsense and dissembling, here's what we now know:

(1) Murdered US Ambassador Chris Stevens' second in command, Gregory Hicks, was instructed not to speak with a Congressional investigator by State Department lawyers.*   Hicks said he'd "never" faced a similar demand at any point during his distinguished 22-year diplomatic career. When he refused to comply with this request, the State Department dispatched an attorney to act as a "minder," who insisted on sitting in on all of Hicks' discussions with members of Congress (higher quality video is available here).  Sec. Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, later excoriated Hicks for cooperating with the investigation and permitting himself to be interviewed without a chaperone.  

(2) When Hicks began to voice strenuous objections to the administration's inaccurate talking points with State Department higher-ups, the administration turned hostile.  After being lavishly praised by the president and the Secretary of State for his performance under fire, Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones instantly reversed course and launched into a "blistering critique" of Hicks' leadership.  He was subsequently "effectively demoted."  Hicks called Rice's talking points "stunning" and "embarrassing."

(3) Secretaries Clinton and Rice (the president's hand-selected messenger on Benghazi to the American people) repeatedly stated that the attack arose from "spontaneous protests" over an obscure YouTube video.  This was never true.  Hicks called the YouTube a "non-event" in Libya.  He and others on the ground -- including Amb. Stevens -- recognized the raid as a coordinated terrorist attack from the very beginning.  Hicks testified that he personally told Sec. Clinton as much at 2 am on the night of the attack, along with her senior staff.  [UPDATE - Rep. Trey Gowdy also revealed an email sent on 9/12 in which Assistant Sec. Jones confirmed to a Libyan official that the attack had been carried out by terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia].  Days later, Rice recited bogus talking points on five American television networks, and Clinton denounced the video while standing next to the flag-draped coffins of the fallen.  Hicks said that he never mentioned any "spontaneous demonstrations" related to a video in his phone call with Clinton.

Questions: How, why, and by whom did the administration's talking points get scrubbed and re-written?  Why did the president refuse to identify the attack as terrorism in an interview with CBS News on September 12, and why did he allow Sec. Rice to disseminate patently false information on his behalf?

(4)
A small, armed US force in Tripoli was told it did not have the authority to deploy to Benghazi in the midst of the attack.  Twice. Flight time between the two cities is less than an hour. Members of the would-be rescue contingent were "furious" over this obstruction.  The witnesses said they did not know who ultimately gave the "stand down" orders, or why.  If it was not the Commander-in-Chief calling the shots, why not, and where was he?  Whistle-blower Mark Thompson, a career counter-terrorism official at State, said he called the White House to request the immediate deployment of a Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) to Benghazi.  He was told it was "not the right time" to do so, then was cut out of the communications loop.

(5)
The US' security chief in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, averred that Sec. Clinton "absolutely" would have been briefed on his (and Stevens') repeated requests for an increased security presence in Libya.  This claim undercut committee Democrats' nitpicking over whether Clinton's signature appeared on the memo denying those requests: 
Furthermore, the Benghazi compound was operating below the bare minimum global security standard for US diplomatic missions -- despite being in an exceedingly dangerous place, and having been subjected to previous attempted attacks.  Only the Secretary of State has the authority to grant exemptions for minimum security requirements.

(6)
Amb. Stevens was stationed at the vulnerable Benghazi compound on a dangerous symbolic date at the behest of Sec. Clinton, who wished to make that diplomatic mission a permanent outpost.  This detail should only intensify questions as to why the consulate was so poorly protected (see item #7).

(7)
Nordstrom stated that elements of the lightly-armed Libyan militia group tasked with protecting the consulate were "certainly" complicit in the attacks.  No US Marines were present at the time. Hicks estimated that at least 60 terrorists swarmed into the compound during the attack.  Eight months later, zero arrests have been made.

(8)
A mortally wounded Amb. Stevens was taken to a hospital controlled by the Islamist extremist group (Ansar Al-Sharia) primarily responsible for the assault.  Administration officials initially pointed to locals rushing Stevens to a local hospital as evidence of local goodwill from protesters who didn't approve of the mob spinning out of control.  Hicks said the American contingent did not go to retrieve Stevens from said hospital during the fight because they were fearful that it was a trap.

(9) The US government did not seek permission from the Libyan government to fly any aircraft into Libyan airspace, aside from a drone.  The witnesses testified that they believe the Libyan government would have complied with any such request.  The fact that none was even made indicates that there was never a plan or intention to rush reinforcements to Benghazi.  This renders the "would they have made it on time?" argument largely irrelevant -- the facts in item #4 notwithstanding.  Another important point about the "they wouldn't have made it" defense: The assault lasted for eight hours and took place into two waves at two different compounds.  How could anyone have known how long the fighting would last?  How could they have anticipated that ex-Navy SEALs Woods and Doherty wouldn't have been able to stave off the enemy for a few more hours?  Help was not on the way.  It was never sent.
(10) Despite committee Democrats' repeated claims and leading questions, reduced funding or "austerity" had absolutely nothing to do with the inadequate security presence on the ground.  The State Department itself made this fact crystal clear at previous hearings, as did the administration's internal "ARB" review.  Why did multiple Democrats flog an obsolete, thoroughly-debunked explanation, if not to muddy the waters?
(11) Oversight Democrats tried to cast doubt on Mark Thompson's credibility, suggesting that he'd declined to participate in the administration's ARB probe.  Thompson corrected the record, noting that he "offered his services" to those investigators, who in turn did not invite him to testify.  Democrats also claimed that the House hearings were slanted because the leaders of the ARB investigation were not invited to participate.  In fact, Chairman Issa explicitly did invite them, as confirmed by letters obtained by ABC News.  They chose not to participate.  Democrats were dead wrong on both counts.
(12) During her Congressional testimony on Benghazi, Sec. Clinton memorably asked, "what difference does it make?" in regards to the provenance of the administration's incorrect talking points.  Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrom both attempted to answer that question.  Hicks did so in granular detail (the false explanation opened a nasty rift between the US and Libyan governments, impeding the FBI's investigation for weeks).  An emotional Nordstrom was more general (we lost friends; the truth matters):
One of the few points of bipartisan agreement was that the number of unresolved issues merit additional hearings on Benghazi.

* An earlier version of this post stated that Cheryl Mills directly instructed Hicks not to meet with Rep. Chaffetz.  Though Mills likely had a hand in that edict, Hicks testified that unnamed higher-ups at State actually issued it.  Both Mills and Beth Jones subsequently dressed Hicks down for defying the effective gag order.




Alinsky, Clinton, Obama, Lucifer...perfect together

Reprinted from The Black Sphere by Kevin Jackson…a black man, so no liberal can pull the race card here….

When people ask me, “Why would Obama want to destroy America”—at least the America that most Conservatives know and love? It’s simple: Why wait for Hell, when you can create Hell on Earth.

We often hear of Liberals use of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and people discuss Alinsky’s organizing abilities. What they omit is his underlying philosophy. Alinsky built his organizing model on a love of creating hell.
Saul Alinsky interview in Playboy, 1972

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people.

The man who wrote what Liberals use as the definitive book on community organizing admits to having no virtue. So what that he destroys communities, using his kind of people.
Take Hillary Clinton for example. Hillary loved Alinsky’s work so much that she actually wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley College on his work, his most notable being the bible of Liberalism: Rules for Radicals. Obama loved Hillary’s work so much, he made her Secretary of State, or what I like to call America’s Marketing Department. Why stop at America, when you can ruin the world.
Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer:

 “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

Another Alinksy disciple was America’s very own Barack “You didn’t build that” Obama who built his community organizing model around that of Alinsky, not worrying much about the results.
The Washington Times reports:

“Under Reagan, adult black unemployment fell by 20 percent, but under Mr. Obama, it has increased by 42 percent. Black teenage unemployment fell by 16 percent under Reagan, but has risen by 56 percent under Mr. Obama. The increase in unemployment rates has been far worse for blacks under Mr. Obama than for whites and Hispanics. Inflation-adjusted real incomes are slightly higher for Hispanics and whites than they were in 2008, but are lower for blacks. The labor force participation rate has fallen for all groups, but remains far lower for blacks than for whites and Hispanics.”

How in the Beelzebub could you have results like this, and still be held in high esteem without some sort of satanic intervention.

Liberal blacks appear unconcerned about the devastation to the black community by Obama and the Left. It should be no surprise that while the Congressional Black Caucus of satanic worshipers met in Chicago, 9 black people were shot; by other black people.
Is Obama a leader? Certainly. And like the Pied Piper, Obama is leading black people to the gates of Hell. The good news is that most black Liberals don’t have to go far. They are already there. Thanks to Saul Alinsky…and Liberalism.
© 2013 Kevin Jackson, The Black Sphere, LLC – All Rights Reserved.


Our Coward-in-Chief has been identified as the source of the “Stand Down” order which resulted in the deaths of at least two brave American patriots defending our consulate in Benghazi.

What will it  take to get congress to impeach this dangerous amateur occupying our White House…he’s broken laws, trampled the Constitution, supported and enabled corruption among his staff, shredded the Bill of Rights…and NOW, has been fingered as the coward who ordered support for our consulate in Benghazi to stand down!

Former Ambassador: Benghazi “Stand Down” Order Came from Obama
Ann Wagner, a former US ambassador and current congresswoman from Missouri, was interviewed about what the protocol would be for a “stand down” order in the event of a consulate being under attack, and she answered what many have suspected already: that’s an order that would come from Obama himself.
This is one of the reasons that the Obama administration has essentially refused to provide details about where Obama was at or what he was doing during the attack. This is because we know exactly what he was doing — ignoring the cries for help for political reasons.
Being wrong about policy is one thing. But ignoring the screams of those who work for you because you’d rather them die than accept that your foreign policy is creating more terrorists is a level of treason rare, even for the most despotic tyrants.
Here’s a summary of the important part of the interview, courtesy of Special Operations Speaks:

Congresswoman and former United States Ambassador to Luxembourg Ann Wagner (R-MO) appeared on The Dana Loesch show and placed the blame, of the stand down order to those that could have offered assistance to Americans under attack, on none other than Barack Obama.
Loesch asked Wagner, ‘Because you have been an ambassador, you have been overseas with similar responsibilities and similar missions – who gives such an order to stand down? Where does that come from?’
‘The President of the United States,’ the Missouri congresswoman affirmed.
As top diplomat in Libya Gregory Hicks testified to on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, ‘The Libyans that I talked to, and the Libyans and other Americans who were involved in the war have told me also, that Libyan revolutionaries were very cognizant of the impact that American and NATO airpower had with respect to their victory.’
‘They are under no illusions that American and NATO airpower won that war for them,” Hicks continued. “And so, in my personal opinion, a fast mover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night.’
Meanwhile, General Ham has come forward saying the official story after the attack wasn’t true.

Obama’s response to everything? He promoted one of the women who helped craft the fake story. They know what they’re doing and they’re getting away with it.

This isn’t a “phony” scandal. This is abandonment, betrayal, and treason. All for what? To hide the fact that our foreign policy doesn’t work, it creates more of the enemy, and we need to change course. Pathetic and wrong.

And the beat goes on. NBC…the White House Propaganda Broadcasting Station...s already pumping up the low-information Masses to indoctrinate them with the wonderful, storied, and successful career of one-half of America's most lovable couple - The Clinton's

Can you just imagine the tingles going up the legs of Chris Matthews, Brian Williams and all the other Obama-Hillary worshipers at NBC and MSNBC?  
Top Five Hillary Gaffes You Won’t See In Upcoming Miniseries on NBC
  28 Jul 2013
NBC will produce a miniseries based on the political career of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a project sure to polish her 2016 presidential aspirations. NBC's programming is consistently left of center, and Bob Greenblatt, NBC Entertainment chairman, donated thousands to Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid.
Just casting the gorgeous Diane Lane in the lead role is bias enough.
The project will likely sugarcoat the Whitewater investigation, HillaryCare and TravelGate, but here's betting the following five moments get left on the cutting room floor.
·         Those Imaginary chats with Eleanor Roosevelt - This one seems like a visual slam dunk, the sight of the First Lady having tea with a former First Lady--in her mind, at least. Imaginary conversations wouldn't help Clinton's image, so these chit-chats will have to go.
·         The Reset Button - The so-called smartest politician in the world reached out to Russia with a gimmick so silly Carrot Top would hurl it back into his prop trunk. She brought a red "reset" button to her meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a way to distance herself from past negative vibes. Too bad she didn't bring her English to Russian dictionary along since she bungled the translation. The moment wasn't just embarrassing on the surface. Her button malfunction also signaled how she would undercut our allies in the region. 
·         "Under Sniper Fire" - Clinton tried to burnish her tough gal image with a fictitious story in which she was in danger from sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia. Clinton repeated the tale several times before admitting her landing reception wasn't quite so deadly. 
·         "What Difference ... Does It Make?" - Clinton's infamous reaction to a line of questioning regarding the death of four Americans in Benghazi is a portrait of clinical indifference, and a quote that would haunt the rest of her political career had a Republican uttered it in that context.

·         "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" - Clinton uttered this defense of her philandering husband, President Bill Clinton, as the Monica Lewinksy scandal was finding its legs. She blamed the rumor of her husband's unfaithfulness on his political enemies, the so-called "vast right wing conspiracy" committed to ruining his career. This moment might make the final cut, if only put in the context of Republicans using her husband's infidelities as a weapon against him. As if Democrats would do no such thing.


Monday, July 29, 2013

Every now and then we need a little reminder how the treasonous, Lame Stream Media has betrayed America to further their liberal agenda


Of course, as a very last resort...when a liberal can't distort the truth...just outright lie

Obama comments on Keystone spark ire, more concerns about project’s future


Published July 29, 2013
FoxNews.com
·        
President Obama’s latest comments on the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- including an attempt to downplay the number of jobs it would create -- are re-igniting concerns that the administration may not approve the project.

The proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline has been one of the most divisive political issues of the past four years, essentially pitting Republicans and other pro-business groups including unions against environmentalists and their Democratic allies. 

The president, in an interview Saturday with the New York Timeshttp://global.fncstatic.com/static/v/all/img/external-link.png, repeated his position that the administration’s decision will be “based on whether or not this is going to significantly contribute to carbon in our atmosphere.”

However, he also took a swipe at what he described as the Republicans’ argument that Keystone would be a “big jobs generator.”

“There is no evidence that that's true,” Obama said, arguing the best estimate is 2,000 initial construction jobs followed by no more than an additional 100 jobs. The newspaper's transcript of the interview showed Obama chuckling as he made the point. 

“That is a blip relative to the need,” he said. 

His estimate is significantly lower than his own State Department’s projection of 42,000 constructions jobs and way smaller than the 118,935 that project developer TransCanada expects. 

Regardless of the accuracy of the numbers, the comments only fueled concern that the administration is viewing the pipeline with increasing skepticism, after sidelining the decision during the presidential election year.

Republicans blasted Obama on Monday for his comments and for apparently chuckling while discussing the controversial issue while at his own jobs rally Wednesday.

“A president disparaging private-sector jobs while backstage at a jobs rally is beyond belief,” Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told FoxNews.com. “In this economy, any source of private job creation should be welcomed with open arms. After nearly five years … there is no reason to delay these jobs another day. Republicans, Democrats, leading unions, and job creators all agree, it’s time to start building.” 

The Republican National Committee said in a statement Monday: “President Obama joked about the potential job creating power of the Keystone XL pipeline. With our economy lagging, the president should be jumping at any opportunity to create jobs instead of bending to the will of special (interests) at the expense of out of work Americans.” 

U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman Matt Letourneau told FoxNews.com the president’s comments indeed raised concerns but that the group “was not terribly surprised.”

“The president has had ample opportunity to approve this, and he has repeatedly found ways not to,” Letourneau said.

The White House did not respond to a question about where the president got his estimate -- after Obama challenged reporters in the interview to confirm the jobs projections.

Letourneau pointed to a 2011 Cornell University study with similar numbers, while adding the president “should probably stick with his own administration’s numbers.”

He also argued the non-controversial southern leg of the pipeline has already created 4,000 jobs.

The 1,179-mile-long pipeline is expected to transport as much as 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the Canadian oil sands (which will result in much of the additional carbon output) and the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Supporters say the estimated $5.3 billion project also will lower the price of gasoline and reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.

However, the president also downplayed those expectations, beyond the “potential benefit” of bolstering our energy-relations with a “reliable ally to the north.”

“That oil is going to be sold on the world oil markets, so it does not bring down gas prices here in the United States,” Obama told The Times. “In fact, it might actually cause some gas prices in the Midwest to go up where currently they can't ship some of that oil to world markets.”

The final decision will be made by Secretary of State John Kerry and is not expected until the end of the year or early 2014.

Kerry will base the decision on a second and final State Department environmental report scheduled for a fall 2013 release and a so-called “national interest” report.

The second one, which is expected to be complete in late 2013, is being compiled by eight federal agencies and focuses on such issues as Keystone’s potential impact on transportation and the overall U.S. economy.

Letourneau said Obama in his major climate change speech last month also hinted at another possible layer of review.

Upton has repeatedly argued that Keystone has already been subject to 15,500 pages of environmental study and that the time is now to approve the project.

“After more than four years of regulatory delay, the administration has run out of excuses,” he said several weeks ago

Facts? What Facts? "We dun need no stinkin' facts."

It’s a new term for the old leftist dream of redistribution over wealth creation.

President Obama has finally stopped blaming George W. Bush for America’s current economic mess. 

Now it’s Ronald Reagan’s fault.

Obama didn’t use those exact words or make that explicit claim in his Knox College speech last week, but that’s the gist of it. The Great Recession and its slow-growth, high-unemployment aftermath are really just the culmination of three decades of pro-market economic policies that favored the rich at the expense of the middle class.

Here’s how Obama rewrites economic history: The shared national purpose of World War II was followed by a golden age of shared prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. Unions were strong, taxes high, pension benefits guaranteed — thanks to a grand egalitarian bargain between Big Government, Big Business, and Big Labor. “But over time, that bargain began to fray,” Obama said. “Technology made some jobs obsolete. 

Global competition sent a lot of jobs overseas. It became harder for unions to fight for the middle class. 

Washington doled out bigger tax cuts to the very wealthy and smaller minimum-wage increases for the working poor.” And with the recession and financial crisis, Obama concluded, “the decades-long . . . erosion of middle-class security was suddenly laid bare for everybody to see.”

In other words, according to Obama, the only lasting effects of the Reagan “neoliberal” revolution are stagnant middle-class wages, extreme income inequality, and reduced income mobility. And with those claims, Obama is using the bully pulpit to propagate the leftist story that after 30 years of failed supply-side, “trickle-down” economics, America needs a dose of “middle-out” economics. That phrase, “middle-out,” was coined by Clinton speechwriter Eric Liu and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, who argue in a new Democracy magazine essay, “We have 30 years of terrible policy to undo.”

Time for a fact check:

1. The U.S. economy in the 1950s and 1960s benefited greatly from its temporary postwar position as the world’s dominant industrial producer. That, along with a constrained labor supply from the 1930s baby bust and from war casualties, produced huge income gains for workers. But both factors were fleeting, of course. 

Our competitors rebuilt their industrial capacity, and all those returning soldiers started families. What’s more, research from economist Alexander Field finds that the basis for much of the productivity boom of those decades was built on technological advances of the 1930s.

2. With their postwar recoveries fully in place, our competitors began to catch up to U.S. levels of wealth — until the 1980s. At the exact moment that Obama and the middle-outers contend the U.S. economy went off track, it began once again to pull away from Europe. French per capita GDP, for instance, went from 64 percent of U.S. per capita GDP in 1960 to 82 percent in 1980. But when America decided to re-embrace market economics, France sniffed at it. France’s per-person wealth is now back down to 73 percent of America’s.

3. Echoing the claims of the middle-outers, Obama said, “The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.” That’s not right. The economic consensus is that real median market household income — inflation-adjusted income before taxes, government transfers such as Social Security and the Earned Income Tax credit, and health-care benefits — actually rose more like 20 percent over that period. And once you adjust for taxes, transfers, and benefits — median incomes are up 40 percent.

4. Obama also claimed the “link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries” was severed during the past three decades, with workers no longer enjoying the fruits of their labors. The gains all flowed to the wealthy. But research from both the Heritage Foundation and liberal economist and productivity expert Robert Gordon of Northwestern University finds only a small gap between middle-class incomes and productivity.

5. While high-end income has risen dramatically since the 1970s, it doesn’t seem to have affected economic mobility. Research from Brookings scholar Scott Winship found that men experienced, at most, only a bit less ability to climb the economic ladder than did their counterparts born in the early 1950s.

To believe the middle-out view of economic history, one also has to believe that beleaguered middle-class voters from 1981 through 2008 voted time and again against their own economic interests by electing conservative Republican presidents and a Democratic one who slashed investment taxes and signed a massive free-trade agreement. When it comes down to it, “middle-out” economics seems little more than a mildly clever rebranding of pre-Clinton, Democratic economics: high taxes, protectionism, and industrial policy all held together by boomer nostalgia for the ’50s and ’60s. It’s the familiar leftist dream of redistribution over wealth creation. Dealing with America’s economic woes will take fact-based, data-driven analysis of its problems and an accurate appraisal of how we got here. Obama and the middle-outers are apparently uninterested is doing either.
— James Pethokoukis, a columnist, blogs for the American Enterprise Institute