Racism against whites; AAA Rating til Obama; S&P wanted $4 trillion cuts; Telegraph blames Obama; Obama didn't hire union members for b-day party; New panel a major change to Constitutional order; Baseline budgeting explained; Iowans with ink on index fingers; Obama administration fails to see Russian intimidation; Obama's stimulus squandered money; John Kerry, on media's responsibility; Tax restraints and spending decreases

Report: Black ‘Mobs’ Attack White Patrons Outside Wis. State Fair http://www.theblaze.com/stories/report-black-mobs-attack-white-patrons-outside-wis-state-fair/

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 Expose Obama wrote: Three years ago, many well-meaning Americans suspended concerns about Barack Obama's experience, judgment, and associations in order to vote for an "historic" president. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, they got one -- good and hard. Friday night, for the first time in history, Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. The United States earned the top rating the moment such rankings began in 1917 -- which means we maintained our AAA rating through the Great Depression, stagflation, malaise, and the 1982 recession. Thirty months of Barack Obama, and it is gone for the first time in history. Change we can believe in! http://www.exposeobama.com/2011/08/06/u-s-credit-downgrade-another-obama-first/?utm_source=Expose+Obama&utm_campaign=0d78238f0f-EO_08_05_20118_6_2011&utm_medium=email

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Reuters reports: Sources familiar with talks that took place between S&;P and the U.S. Treasury on Friday afternoon said the rating agency had wanted to see $4 trillion sliced from future budgets as part of a hard-fought deal secured earlier this week to lift the nation's debt limit. That agreement would reduce deficits by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/06/us-usa-ratings-sp-sources-idUSTRE7750IM20110806

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The UK Telegraph weighs in: The decision by credit agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years is a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy. No doubt the White House will pathetically try to blame the Bush Administration, Republicans in Congress, and of course its favourite target, the Tea Party, for the move by S&P. But without a shadow of a doubt, responsibility for the country’s financial mess and staggering levels of debt lie with the current US president and his administration.  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100099762/america%E2%80%99s-debt-downgrade-is-a-damning-indictment-of-president-obama%E2%80%99s-big-government-disaster/

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Big Government opines: In case you live under a rock and haven’t heard, Barack Obama turns 50 today. And, the place to be tonight is the Aragon. The party starts at 7:00. But don’t bother to show up if you’re a union member. The White House hired a non-union crew for the event tonight.
A confidential and trusted union source contacted me today to report that the crews called in to work Obama’s birthday bash are non-union. Union members are OUTRAGED that Obama would turn his back on them.  http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2011/08/03/union-members-outraged-after-white-house-hires-non-union-crew-for-obamas-birthday-bash/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernme
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Townhall reports: Interesting, in that such a major change to the constitution of our government could be contemplated without any official mention of the actual Constitution.
Scary, in that it goes in entirely the wrong direction, towards oligarchy and away from republic. We need more representation from the people (the “public” in the “republic”) — that is, more representatives in Congress — so that the ratio between politicians and citizens is not so lopsided, in favor of politician power and political class insularity.
Congress and the Executive Branch conspire together to always increase the budget. The current system is based on the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which set up the insanity of baseline budgeting, where the Congressional Budget Office creates an estimate of future government spending growth, which allows Congress to make minor downward adjustments to the expected upward spending and call them “cuts.” (It also prevented the Executive from strategically not spending congressional largesse, the traditional function people talk about replacing with the “line-item veto.”)
The solution is obvious. Repeal the act. Start from scratch. http://townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/2011/08/07/rogue_government,_usa/page/full/
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National Review writes: Under the “historic” “resolution” of the debt crisis (and don’t those very words “debt crisis” already feel so last week?), America will be cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years. “Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years” is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over ten years. And, as they’d originally planned to increase it by eight trillion, that counts as a cut. If they’d planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion. See how easy this is?
[By 2020] When interest payments consume about 20 percent of federal revenues, that means a fifth of your taxes are entirely wasted. Pious celebrities often simper that they’d be willing to pay more in taxes for better government services. But a fifth of what you pay won’t be going to government services at all, unless by “government services” you mean the People’s Liberation Army of China, which will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers by about 2015. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/273876/mad-debt-mark-steyn# 
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The Des Moines Register writes: To ensure only Iowans participate in the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll next Saturday, voters must bring a photo ID.
And to prevent double voting, voters will mark their index finger with indelible ink after casting their ballots, Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn said Friday.  http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/08/06/all-iowa-voters-can-weigh-in-at-next-saturdays-straw-poll-just-bring-photo-id/
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Former Sen. Christopher S. Bond, who served as the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 2007 and 2010, said he had raised the issue of Russian intimidation of U.S. diplomats with the Obama administration.
“We are concerned about the acts of intimidation as well as their record on previous agreements and other activities,” Mr. Bond said. “It’s a real concern, I’ve raised it. It’s not the intelligence committee that fails to understand the problem. It’s the Obama administration.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/4/russia-uses-dirty-tricks-despite-us-reset/
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The Week reports: Peter Ferrara in Forbes.com wrote: In early 2009, unemployment rates in the U.S. and Canada sat at 8%.  But after Obama's stimulus program began squandering money, America's jobless rate actually went up, hitting 9.2% last month.  In contrast, Canada's rate has fallen to 7.4% today.  That 's because instead of relying on "government spending, deficits, and debt," Canada cut taxes and regulation, giving people genuine incentives to "produce, save, invest, and work."  "Private investment or private consumption is crowded out in favor of government spending."  [In the same article it is noted by the Washington Post that the stimulus was not Keynesian enough.  Saying that because by now the public has lost its taste for massive spending programs, Keynesian economics is dead.]
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According to John Kerry, who thinks it is he who should be the arbiter of what the media covers: "And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media’s got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual. It doesn’t deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything’s put into this tit for tat equal battle and America’s losing any sense of what’s real, of who’s accountable, of who is not accountable, of who’s real, who isn’t.” http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/08/05/john-kerry-wants-media-to-ignore-the-tea-party/    
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Human Events reports on Grover Norquist's statement:  I suggested that we could learn from the success or failure of the 50 states—some of which had recently refused to increase taxes and in fact demanded spending restraint.  Florida and Texas have focused on spending restraint without tax hikes for the past decade, and California, Illinois and Connecticut have increased spending and taxes.  How are they doing?  Since the 2010 election, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey (2009) have elected Republican governors who have refused to increase taxes and insisted on spending cuts.

I argued, “The states that have reduced spending and not raised taxes are doing better than the states like Illinois and Connecticut and California, which are trying to raise taxes.” http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45324