As they say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and the one below of an empty Ohio early voting location, is worth even more! Photos and stories like this are being buried by the press because they do not go along with the current leftist media narrative that suggests early voting enthusiasm for Barack Obama is at an all time high. Newsflash: This isn’t 2008 and not everyone is as excited about Barack Obama as Chris Matthews and Nate Silver continue to be.

Less Americans are rushing to the polls for this President. Even powerful dems, like our Vice President, are having a difficult time rallying the vote! The media needs to get real. This race is NOT a shoe-in for Obama.

Amonix’s North Las Vegas facility was approved for $5.9 million in federal tax credits under the stimulus plan, to underwrite early production of four 11-ton, 50-by-72 feet solar cell arrays per day — enough to power up to 30 homes and support about 300 jobs. That tax assistance never materialized though, according to the firm, because the facility never made any money to offset through tax credits.

Amonix has ties to a few prominent Democrats, including Steve Westly, an Obama bundler who had partial-stake ownership in both Amonix’s North Las Vegas facility and in the infamous Solyndra. Others have hitched their political futures to the company’s fortunes, including Rep. Shelley Berkley, who is currently challenging incumbent Sen. Dean Heller.

Berkley supported the trillion-dollar stimulus package that cost taxpayers $1.11 million per month for this boondoggle that created zero new permanent jobs. She is already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for pushing legislation in Congress that would have helped her husband’s business. Taking donations from a PAC organized by a defunct solar industry company run by an Obama campaign contributor will not help her image, but she accepted $3,100 from Amonix.

It has not been difficult for Heller to brand Berkley as a corrupt government spender as a result of these problems. Berkley was already lagging in the polls, but the race was considered competitive. Now it’s become an uphill battle for the beleaguered Democrat.

This is despite the fact that the second quarter was the worst for job creation in two years, and the jobs engine is not keeping up with population growth. Most damningly, the unemployment rate would actually be a horrific 10.9% if labor-force participation were at the same level as it was when Obama took office.

But don’t read too much into it. This is a one-off sort of deal, at least according to the chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers:

“It is important not to read too much into any one monthly report. There are no quick fixes to the problems we face that were more than a decade in the making.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is: the Obama Administration has used that nearly that exact same wording to describe the situation nearly every month since November 2009. In fact, here is a list of all 30 times that Americans have been advised not to read too much into the jobs report numbers, courtesy of ABC News.

It’s just a coincidence that the unemployment rate has actually been over 8% for the entire duration of Obama’s Presidency. Don’t read too much into it! The stimulus bill was sold to Americans on the basis of the promise that the unemployment rate by now would be only 5.5%, but don’t read too much into that, either.

Many of those taxes are going to have a huge impact on the middle class. The detested individual mandate has now become a tax penalty on those who “choose” to go without health insurance. Of course, few people truly choose not to have health insurance; most who don’t simply can’t afford it. The Affordable Care Act won’t fix this problem; in fact it will only make it significantly worse.

It’s typical of the way government programs work, but the most likely outcome seems to be that many of the poor will qualify for expanded Medicaid subsidies that will get them insurance fulfilling their tax obligations. The middle class probably won’t be allowed to sign up for those things, but they will be paying for them. Individuals or families who can’t afford coverage complying with the regulatory burden of PPACA will be zapped with tax penalties that can go up into the thousands of dollars, just to add insult to injury.

There are a handful of new taxes aimed at reducing the attractiveness of alternatives to participating in the exchanges or signing up for a government program. Increased tax penalties on Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts will make it more difficult for those who like to pay out of pocket for health care or have special needs children. For some reason, so-called “Cadillac” health care plans will also be taxed at a rate of 40%, even though that seems inimical to the stated goals of the law’s supporters.

All of this, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says, “It’s a penalty, because you have a choice. You don’t have a choice to pay your taxes, right?” The distinction might be important for purposes of public relations, but in terms of logic it constitutes a false dichotomy. Make no mistake, the penalty is a tax. And it will affect the middle class, despite the President’s claims to the contrary.

Brown also is attached to President Obama’s hip while his administration wages a War on Coal. Brown’s War on Coal has had dramatic consequences for coal-fired power plants in Ohio, causing not only job loss within Ohio’s domestic energy industry but skyrocketing electricity rates for Ohio families.

If all this evidence were not convincing enough to Ohioans, Brown was the deciding vote on the president’s health care law.

Luckily, American Commitment’s new ad is reminding Ohio voters of Brown’s record.

Voters are beginning to wake up and examine the terrible records of their legislators. With ads like these from American Commitment, Brown will not be able to hide or escape from his own failed record.

Now more than ever, we need senators who are willing to do what bureaucrats won’t or can’t. We now know that the president’s health care law is a tax, even though he promised us it was not a tax. As a result, we need 51 Senate votes to repeal it under reconciliation. Because Brown has carried water for liberals and the president since day 1 of his tenure, we need another man to bring Ohio’s fight to Washington.

In the ruling, the high court decided the most controversial provision — the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance — is valid as a tax, even though it is impermissible under the Constitution’s commerce clause.

“In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

The majority decision says that the penalty for failing to comply with the individual mandate “may reasonably be characterized as a tax”. These penalties can be over $2,000 per household. It amounts to “one of the largest middle-class tax increases in the history of the country”. This extra expense will hurt low-income workers the most.

Over the next decade, the federal government will spend over $1 trillion expanding Medicaid to include millions of new and mostly middle class patrons, at least some of whom probably already had quality health insurance before this law came into existence.

That money will have to come from somewhere, and it comes from not only fines and penalties but also higher payroll and investment taxes.

Americans were hungry for reform when the President’s health care law passed, but it is clear that this is not the solution to our problems. We need real reform that preserves the relationship between patients and doctors and doesn’t raise taxes.

There are a few pieces of evidence that could point to a ruling that would involve a ruling that would, at minimum, strike the individual mandate from the law.

The first is that many legal experts are beginning to come around to the viewpoint that the law may be unconstitutional. A Purple Strategies survey of former Supreme Court clerks and attorneys whohave argued before the Court found that, “Fifty-seven percent of the attorneys and former clerks now saythey expect the court to strike down the law’s individual mandate — compared with just 35 percent whothought that was likely in March.” Respondents indicated that, as many have noted, they felt the justices seemed to have a skeptical attitude toward the arguments made by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

The other is that the majority opinion is likely to be read by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush. Sean Trende explains here why that is. While it’s possible that Roberts could vote to uphold the law, it seems unlikely.

Lastly, conservatives are winning the messaging war on the president’s healthcare law. It is grossly unpopular with Americans. If you do not believe me, consider the number of Democrats in Congress who will celebrate Court’s killing of the president’s health care law. Can you blame them? Why would anyone support a law that means less coverage, less care, and higher costs?

Conservatives have every reason to be optimistic heading into this decision. Even if the Court does vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act, it’s still the President’s health care law, and he will still be blamed for the problems it will cause. Conservatives then can go onto to win the fight for repeal.

like “corporate raider”. The Washington Post reviewed this claim and found it to be false.

The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.

Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a “corporate raider.”

“Corporate raider” has a very specific meaning in the world of finance, which has very little to do with the actual work Bain Capital did. In fact, Bain Capital was a highly-respected company until its reputation became politicized by its cofounder running for President and facing these attacks. Even Obama’s former auto czar has has been willing to admit that much, writing in POLITICO, “Most important, Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path.”

The Fact Checker also disputed claims that Romney outsourced jobs, both in his career at Bain and later as governor. Overall, WashPo gives the ad Four Pinocchios. “The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing. Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct.”

When the ATF sent thousands of firearms to Mexican drug cartels with no way of tracking them other than by finding the bodies, the media was just really busy. Now that the situation has led to the House Oversight Committee voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the media has finally had to pay attention to Rielle Hunter’s tell-all book about her love affair with John Edwards.

Only three major network news stations led with a story about the investigation after the contempt motion was referred to the House of Representatives. The narrative seems to be that the investigation is a result of gridlock or a failure of bipartisanship, rather than the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

The cruel irony is that normally the media will go far out of its way to scandalize pretty much anything as a way of attracting attention. Rod Blagojevich and his hair were worth months of intense coverage during a slow summer news season. Every time John Boehner sheds a tear, the headlines come out to pat him on the shoulder and tell him that everything will be okay. Now, when an actual, bona-fide scandal loaded up with abuse of power, hypocrisy, conspiracy, death, and just plain incompetence makes itself known, suddenly the media has collectively decided to grow up and talk about mature things like… that heat wave hitting the East Coast, isn’t the humidity just crazy?

Yes, it’s crazy all right…