They say that spirits wander amongst the living when they are burdened by unfinished business. On a clear night, if you stand out on your porch and really listen, you might be able to hear the ghosts of Hope and Change, wailing sorrowfully in the winds. They oddly exist in the same realm as millions of jobs that have vanished from the face of the earth, but they could all easily be brought back to life if only someone would believe in them…

Well, it involves a little more than just closing our eyes and saying “I believe in jobs.”

Real hope and change will come to life only when rights are given back to the people, and Americans are allowed to prosper. It involves things like taking power away from the EPA, getting rid of ObamaCare, and ending this pathetic lie that higher taxes will ever improve things.

Americans have realized all this, and now the party of Big Government is in trouble this November. There is no denying it.

Nothing will get your attention faster than getting rejected for a convicted felon. Even by one person. Let alone 41 percent of people.

And “on May 10, for example, more than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved of Obama’s job performance as ‘strongly approve’ of the job he is doing.”— American Thinker

Yesterday, President Obama raised money from private equity businessmen—even though one of his chief attacks on Mitt Romney has been the Republican’s career in private equity.

Private equity firms try to make businesses more well-run, and thus more profitable. It’s a good thing for businesses to be efficient. But those who only dwell in the land of Government don’t understand efficiency. They don’t need to be efficient, because they can just keep taxing people who don’t have a choice but to pay up (unless they take drastic measures like the co-founder of Facebook who, in advance of the company’s initial public stock offering, has exchanged his U.S. citizenship for that of Singapore, due to the crazy American taxes he would face. Last year, a record number of Americans took this almost unthinkable action).

President Obama has accused Gov. Romney of being “quick to reap profits for himself and his investors at the expense of workers and communities.”

There’s always going to be some creative destruction in capitalism. It can be painful at times but it usually ends up making everyone better off. There are some poorly run companies that just can’t go on; in their place, hard-working entrepreneurs create something better, making consumers happy and creating more jobs.

This is what Romney did. Sure, some of the companies his firm Bain Capital bought had to be shut down. But most of them thrived. Here are just a few: Staples, Domino’s, Brookstone, and the Sports Authority. Romney has actually created jobs; the only jobs Obama has really created usually include the word “czar” in the title.

But all of his criticism of capitalism doesn’t stop the president from taking money from the capitalists.

Read more at the Weekly Standard (less than a page/345 words).

The Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” slideshow has summed up the president’s vision for America: one where we rely on the government in nearly every possible way. There have been all kinds of responses to this, but so far, the best one I’ve seen comes from Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express News. He writes:

“Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, ‘The Life of Julia’ presents a disturbing vision of a society where, aside from the benevolent oversight of Big Brother, people live an atomized existence. Obama’s Julia has no relationships — not with the parents and child who are mentioned in passing or the spouse and friends who are not. For both Julias, no institutions exist outside those supported by the Party and the state.”

Rightly disturbed, Gurtwitz says:

“Julia’s two acts of creation — a child and a business — are impossible without Obama. She has a son, evidently without the assistance of a father, but with the essential prenatal care and free screenings provided by the president’s health-care reform, which Romney would repeal. And she starts a Web business with help from a Small Business Administration program and Obama tax cuts that Romney would eliminate.”

Check out Gurwitz’s whole piece here, at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1.5 pages/695 words).

Here’s the Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” slideshow.

The Occupiers and their collaborators in politics and the press have been trying to get Americans to focus on the divide between the richest 1% and the “rest of us” 99 percenters. But if they would only expand their horizons and look beyond their own backyard, they’d realize that most Americans are better off than so much of the world.

To be among the world’s richest 1%, you only need to make around $34,000 a year. About half of the world’s “richest” people live in America, with 29 million, followed by Germany with four million.

So instead of railing against the wealthiest 1% of Americans, Occupiers should rail against America. Which, actually, is what they really are doing.

What they forget is that much of the rest of the (sane) world aspires not to bring America down,  but to be like us, enjoying freedom and prosperity. And yet President Obama speaks about how America isn’t a place of fairness.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has said: “I see an America with a growing middle class, with rising standards of living,” he said, speaking in New Hampshire. “This America is fundamentally fair.”

See a chart of the world’s richest 1%, with breakdown by country, here.

In a new video investigation, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reveals that whether or not you’re a United States citizen, whether or not you’re even alive, whether or not you’ve already voted somewhere else, your vote counts in North Carolina!

The video is a bit long—it has a quirky tangential segment exposing the lunacy of an elections judge—but O’Keefe’s team also shows University of North Carolina administrators encouraging people to vote multiple times in different states. After all, it’s just like speeding, says one. Everyone does it.

Some might question O’Keefe’s style, but, seriously, why aren’t the massive news outlets, from newspapers to the big three cable news networks, undertaking these types of investigations? They have all the resources in the world.

Check out the video here (10:19). And take a look at Project Veritas’s website, where you can find similar investigations in other states. Looks like voter fraud is spread far and wide.

In stark contrast to the campaign promises of unification, President Obama has tried to stir up racial controversy in America. His campaign and the willing participants in the mainstream media have been clamoring over a fake ‘war on women’ in a divisive political move that will certainly prove to be unsuccessful.

But while the Obama campaign of 2012 targets minorities, and young people, and nonreligious women—they are forgetting about a pretty big voting bloc: the average white guy (Pittsburgh Tribune Review 1.5 pages).

We’ve documented how crucial this recall election is not just for Wisconsin but for the whole country. Scott Walker has stood up to the unions, the far left, and bully politics—fixing his state’s financial problems in the face of vicious attacks.

Right now, according to the polling firm We Ask America, he has a 9 point advantage over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett.

The Urban Health Initiative, a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Obama family friend Eric Whitaker, has received nearly $6 million from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The UHI won out over lots of competition. According to HHS, some 3,000 applications were received for a share on the $1 billion in 3-year grants available. Only 26 programs were included in the first batch of awards doled out.— Keith Koffler, White House Dossier

Here is a link to a story that mentions Eric Whitaker golfing with President Obama in Martha’s Vineyard.

Here is a link to a story that mentions Eric Whitaker golfing with President Obama in Hawaii.

You get the picture…

Wow. This is depressing. Here is another parody of the Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” propaganda. This one from Americans for Tax Reform is not amusing by any stretch—it just reveals the sad truths of what life will be like if President Obama’s policies continue. Check it out here.

And see the original “Life of Julia” here at the Obama campaign website.

This is still the best parody of it: thelifeofjulia.com.

The unemployment rate has a dropped a bit since last summer, but that’s only because the government doesn’t count those who have given up looking for work as “unemployed.” No, they’re just in a sad, unnamed category that could be called “Americans left behind thanks to the president’s growth-stifling policies.” Or something like that.

This coming weekend, more than 230,000 unemployed Americans will lose their jobless benefits. Maybe we should learn something from this. Extending benefits is just a temporary stop-gap that does nothing to address the problem. It just buys politicians time, as they stretch for a semblance of success from election to election. Getting real results would mean slashing taxes and regulations, freeing entrepreneurs to unleash their ideas, start and expand businesses, and create jobs.

But instead the government doles out money to the unemployed, keeping them dependent on its benevolence like little children, hoping they cast their vote for the current Ruling Elite before it all falls apart.

And, by the way, “giving up” is a new trend in America. I think we need some leaders who tell us to pull ourselves together and start living our lives without relying on the government. Because obviously that hasn’t worked–but more importantly, people came across an ocean to live in freedom not dependence.

Read more about the unemployment mess at The Hill (two pages/998 words).

For some inspiration, listen to this clip of John Wayne speaking as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1:26): “There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you’re livin’. You do the other and you may be walkin’ around, but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”