— Adolph
Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 6.
Controlling the message.
This administration has seemingly adopted the Joseph Goebbels' (the infamous Nazi Minister of Propaganda under
Adolph Hitler) strategy that history has labeled 'the big lie.' Hitler was a master of manipulating
large numbers of people. He intuitively understood that if you simply tell a lie, people who know (or
find out) the truth will easily reject it. But if you tell a huge, enormous lie that is blatantly false,
and repeat it over and over, people eventually will question their own ability to properly process the
information, and they will come to believe it.
The Obama Administration — No
Class, Bad Character. In short, the Obama administration falsely claimed that the Bush administration
had done no planning or analysis regarding the worsening situation in Afghanistan, even though it (1) knew
this was false, (2) had asked the Bush administration not to disclose its work, and (3) relied
in part on the same work it claimed the Bush administration had not performed.
Death, Taxes and
Two Trillion Lies. President Obama promised not to raise taxes on people earning less than
$200,000 per year and vowed not to increase the national debt "by one nickel." He promised that his
nearly-trillion-dollar stimulus plan would keep the unemployment rate below 8%. (Last month, our
unemployment rate was 9.8%, the highest it's been in 26 years.) In January 2008, then-candidate
Obama promised not to negotiate behind closed doors with health care lobbyists. ... After his election,
President Obama said, "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
What Obama and the Media Aren't Telling You about Taxes.
Even if Barack Obama does adhere to his income tax plan, his promise that he won't raise taxes on the common man
is still a lie. A continual theme of the Barack Obama campaign has been his vow that no one making less
than $250,000 a year would get a tax increase. Now he has provided more details, pointing out that to
qualify for a tax cut you must earn less than $200,000. Then, on Tuesday, Joe Biden said during an
interview that tax breaks should go to "people who make $150,000 a year." My, my, when Obama said he
was the candidate of change, he never mentioned that it applied to figures and campaign promises.
A pay-to-play White House.
Finally, it is clear what President Obama meant when he said this would be the most "transparent administration
in history." He wasn't saying that his White House would be open and accountable; he was saying that his
administration didn't feel much need to come up with plausible lies, they'd be fine using the transparent kind.
Obama's
Doubletalk on Political Dissent. President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow
of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face,
Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce
opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear."
How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?
Would
Obama Be President If He Made These Five Campaign Promises? Even amongst politicians, Barack
Obama is such a liar that he makes Bill Clinton look like honest Abe Lincoln by comparison.
Obama's Afghan Pickle.
[Scroll down slowly] By Memorial Day 2008, however, Obama was claiming that it was his "uncle" who
was "part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz." When reminded that his mother was an
only child and his father a Kenyan, Obama designated his "great uncle" as the liberator of Auschwitz.
This proved problematic as well because Auschwitz, as the Republican National Committee gleefully pointed
out, was actually liberated by the Soviets. No matter. Obama was learning that he could say
pretty much anything he wanted without consequence.
A Day Off. [Scroll down slowly]
Nancy Pelosi's promise to end the "culture of corruption" in Congress and Barack Obama's promise to run the "most
transparent administration in history" were unadulterated lies. An ominous thought: both of them might
actually believe they're doing just that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Such a profound
disconnect from reality is making Americans furious.
The Lies of Obama: When
politicians are caught out in lies, their supporters often resort to the old cliché: all
politicians lie. But that is itself a lie: most don't. Even among those who do, there
are enormous differences in the importance and frequency of the lies. And it is surely now clear that
this nation has a far from routine problem in the scale and regularity of President Obama's lying.
End of O's cowardly
lyin'. [Scroll down] It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib
talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement. At the center is a young and talented
celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His
self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches.
How do you spell brazen? In
listening to the State of The Union Address, and other recent pondering of President Obama, I am constantly
amazed at his ability to say things that he knows can be fact checked. Let me give you a few examples.
Why
Americans Hate Washington: In January, the Senate joined the House in passing "pay-as-you-go"
rules to require Congress to pay for new discretionary spending. On Feb. 12, President Obama
signed the bill. "Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else," Obama
crowed. Less than a month later, Obama and fellow Democrats are busily demonizing a lone senator for
pushing Washington to spend responsibly. It seems this administration is all for fiscal
restraint — as long as you don't mean it.
What a generous way to put it.
The president's habit of telling
untruths: Here's how predictable the president's slippery relationship with the truth has
become: Hours before the State of the Union address,
Washington Examiner reporter Timothy P.
Carney posted a "pre-emptive fact check" that, among other things, prebutted any presidential claim to have
"stopped the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying." As it happened, that night
Barack Obama made an even bolder (read: less truthful) claim: that "we've excluded lobbyists from
policymaking jobs."
Obama
budget spends more in each of the next ten years than the last one. President Obama promised a
turn toward fiscal discipline in his State of the Union Address. But his new budget doesn't just plan on
more deficit spending for a year, followed by austerity. Rather, it actually increases deficits in each
of the next ten years over what he'd planned for in last year's budget.
Lawfare, Voluntary Surrender, and Right-wing
"Extremists". [Scroll down slowly] Barack Obama, who passed his bar in 1991, "voluntarily
surrendered" his license in 2008, for unknown reasons. Why did Obama surrender his license?
Citizen WELLs reports that it may have been because of charges that Obama lied on his bar application.
Chicago Does
Socialism. [Scroll down slowly] I could go on and on, but again the pattern is clear.
Each time Obama prevaricates, we grant him an exemption because of his lofty rhetoric about bipartisanship and
his soothing words about unity. Only later do we notice that in retrospect each untruth is part of a
pattern of dissimulation within just a single year of governance. Obama has proven so far that in fact
one can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.
Obama Attends Non-Existent
Soccer Game? Reading the story about President Obama breaking tradition and ditching the presidential
press pool over the weekend to watch one of his daughter's soccer games, it appears harmless, right?
Not so. It is rather disturbing when you dissect it.
Jon Voight: A Letter to the
American People. In one year the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly
orchestrated by President Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds
the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all, or
the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of. President Obama feeds these people poison, giving
them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier, who have lived and worked in a democracy that
understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed.
Obama's 5 Big Lies About Israel.
In preparation for his attempt to impose a final solution on Israel, Obama is spreading a variety of lies through
the media and his spokesmen about Israel. And by exposing those lies, we can best get at the truth.
Obama Fiddled While the Gulf Burned.
President Obama has tried to sugarcoat his administration's inadequate and tardy response to the worst oil
spill in our nation's history. His claim that the administration has been "all-hands-on-deck ... from
day one" is laughable.
The Truth and Barack Obama:
[Scroll down slowly] Mr. Obama is also the person who, when he was running for the presidency, promised
all health-care negotiations would be broadcast on C-SPAN (They weren't.), that he would accept public financing
for his campaign (He didn't.), that he would put an end to "phony accounting" (He hasn't.), that lobbyists will
not work in his White House (They do.), that he would slash earmarks by more than half (He has not.), that he
opposed giving Miranda rights to terrorists (He favors them.), that he was against an individual health-care
mandate (He supported it.), and that he would resist the temptation "to fall back on the same partisanship and
pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long" (He succumbed to the temptation.).
The shameless,
shocking hypocrisy and lies of President Obama. [Scroll down slowly] He lies all the time.
He lied about how often he attended services at Jeremiah Wright's church; he lied about how his parents met;
how his uncle liberated Auschwitz; how his dad came to this country. The guy just lies about his own
background and life. What a phony... and, btw, for someone who decries people's use of IPODs, why did he
give one to Queen Elizabeth as a diplomatic gift — one filled with his own speeches. How
priceless!
Americans are Drowning in Our Government's Lies.
It's not just the lies about climate change. It's not just the lies about renewable, wind and solar, energy.
It's not just the lies about so-called endangered species. It's not just that the Obama administration
refuses to name Islam as the source of the terrorist attacks on America. ... It is a combination of these and
other factors that are based on a contagion of lies told to Americans by their own government.
Tinkering With the
Truth. President Obama used about an hour of his press conference yesterday [5/27/2010] trying to explain
how — in spite of his handlers' having spent the past month trotting out the Secretary of the
Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to be the faces of the
Gulf of Ocean oil spill — that he, Barack Obama, had been personally on top of this situation from
the moment the drilling rig exploded until that very moment.
Was Elizabeth Birnbaum Fired? Don't
Ask Obama. When President Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised to root out the "bad
apples" yesterday at a House hearing, the head of Minerals Management Service was at the same hearing —
about to be plucked from the tree. Elizabeth Birnbaum's departure was first reported as a "firing."
Later, a "resignation." When asked for clarity, President Obama told the press corps today [5/27/2010]
he had no idea.
Obama Knew
Birnbaum Was Fired. How could he not have? At his presser today [5/27/2010], the president
claimed that he did not know whether the head of the Minerals Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, had
resigned or was fired. Obama said he didn't know because he was engaged all morning and Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar was busy giving testimony on Capitol Hill. ... So Obama's point man in the Gulf fires a
key oil regulator without first clearing it — or even mentioning it — to the president
during one of their numerous briefings? Fat chance.
The Thrill is Gone.
The news conference [May 27] was Mr. Obama's first in 310 days. His performance makes it likely
it'll be at least that long before he holds another. The low point came when Mr. Obama professed not to
know whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the woman he appointed to head the Minerals Management Service, resigned or
was fired. No one expects the president to don scuba tanks and plug the hole himself. But he at
least ought to know what's going on with his own people.
Another
'job offer'. After first stonewalling, the White House yester day confirmed that it
tried to lure Andrew Romanoff out of the Colorado Senate primary with an administration job, to help
its preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. Sound familiar? The Denver Post
ran a story on the rumored job offer last September — but White House spokesman Adam Abrams
said then, "Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."
Like a Dime Store Cowboy.
[Scroll down] The new federal tax of 62 cents per pack, to $1.01, is the largest jump since
cigarette taxes were implemented in 1951. For a couple smoking a pack a day each, that's a tax hike of
$452.60 a year. If they're overly anxious about their economic situation and puffing two packs a day
each, that's $905.20 in additional taxes per year.
A Ban
On Truth. The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which
was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is
its lies.
Another Stumble in the Gulf.
The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report
that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts
selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that
the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it.
The President's Oil
Reserves Lie: During his speech, the president made a statement that was blatantly false.
The president noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil
reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the
ocean — because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water." We are
not running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. In fact, it is due to the president's
party of extreme environmentalists that BP had to drill some forty miles from the coastline in deep waters to
extract oil.
Leaks and Lies. For two months,
the Obama administration has been skirting the truth about its inept response to the April 20 BP Deepwater
Horizon drilling rig explosion and the resulting fire and oil spill. The O-Team claims it has been
"on top" of this problem since "day one." Reality shows that both the leaks and the lies
continue.
A Big
Government Disaster. On June 15, 2010, President Barack Obama made his first address
to the nation from the oval office. Hearing his address, several things struck me. First of all,
Obama mentioned that when the oil spill occurred, he ordered scientists and the Energy Department to study
how to repair the spill. True to his big government agenda, Obama wasted time on the study while more
oil continued to pour into the Gulf region. Secondly, Obama also said that we are running out of oil to
drill. This is patently false.
More
about Obama's Oval Office speech.
He Blinded Me
With Science. [Scroll down] The White House issued a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil
drilling. Obama cited a report commissioned by the Interior Department that purported to recommend the
ban. "The recommendations contained in this report," declared the document, "have been peer-reviewed by
seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." Except that was untrue.
Barack Obama's
Attention Deficit Disorder. [Scroll down] So perhaps Obama isn't just our first
"black" president but also our first ADD president. At least, that's what the idea that he could carry
on a deep, 20-year relationship with [Jeremiah Wright] and not know of the man's vile views — and
not share them to some degree — suggests. Of course, there is another possibility:
Barack Obama is a liar. Barack Obama is a radical, a demagogue and a clear and present danger to these
United States.
Blather in Kansas City.
[Scroll down] Just as when the President lied about not having available oil reserves last month in his televised
address to the nation regarding the BP oil spill, he told another outright lie in Kansas City. It was so blatant
that it was almost humorous. Note the President's words, "So our goal has never been to create another
government program, our goal has been to spur growth in the private sector." Really? Does any sane
person who even casually follows politics or watched the 2008 presidential campaign believe this?
Obama's "False Narrative".
[Scroll down] According to the True Narrative, Obama the Great acted with wisdom and courage to forestall
another Great Depression. The charges of profligate spending have been manufactured out of thin air.
The stimulus package has been a spectacular success. ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down. The
economy is doing swimmingly. The outreach to the Muslim world has led to unprecedented breakthroughs.
Nation after nation — Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Venezuela — are bending to
Obama's will. And all the problems America faces — from nearly 10 percent unemployment
to polarization to acne among teens — are owing to Obama's predecessor. Yet ... Obama
has become massively unpopular among independents.
The Worst Ecological Disaster
Ever? David Axelrod on
Fox News Sunday this morning [7/11/2010] said that the Gulf oil spill is
the "worst ecological disaster ever" — or words to that effect (the transcript is not yet
available). This, of course, is historical nonsense. Except in terms of the volume of oil released
into the environment, it is not even the worst oil spill in American history.
Obama's
Economic Unreality. Sadly, with President Obama, each day is crazier than the previous one.
His latest economic speeches border on the surreal. I just can't quite figure out who he thinks his
audience is because so much of what he says doesn't square with reality. In a speech Friday [7/9/2010] in
Las Vegas, Obama painted quite a rosy portrait of his economic record to date — at least rosy
compared with what we've all experienced with our five senses. ... [It's like] a student telling a math
teacher that three minus two equals four.
A
Short History of the Recess Appointment. [Scroll down] Obama used a recess appointment
for Dr. Berwick not to avoid a filibuster but to avoid the Senate's advice and consent power altogether.
He blamed — surprise! — the Republicans for delaying the process, but that is a
bald-face lie, as Republicans would be only too happy to have hearings on Dr. Berwick's appointment in
order to put the deeply unpopular ObamaCare back on Page One four months before the midterm elections.
President Obama's action here shows his contempt for everything that stands in the way of his agenda, even
the Constitution.
Why Do Ethics Cost
More in the Obama White House? On his first day in office, Obama announced that he would freeze
salaries of White House employees making $100,000 or more, and the mainstream media trumpeted the announcement
as a supposed example of their hero's fiscal responsibility. The Washington Post even calculated the
amount that the "freeze" would save taxpayers: over $443,000 dollars a year. The Post, and the
rest of the Obamaton media, portrayed the announcement — described as Obama's first act in
office — as a symbolic tightening of the belt. But when Obama got around to actually
reporting White House salaries, as required by law, the numbers told a far different story. Instead
of tightening his belt, Obama was buying a bigger, fatter, and far more expensive one.
Gaslighting America.
[Scroll down] Obama proxies in the administration, Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder, would have us believe
that we are engaged in "overseas contingency operations" to deal with "man caused disasters." Napolitano
actually contends, straight faced, that our border with Mexico is secure, despite a surfeit of evidence to show
that our Mexican border is an anarchical combat zone. Holder peddles even more pernicious feculence.
Does Barack Obama Have
a Learning Disability? [Scroll down] BHO claims to have been a professor of constitutional
law. ... He was not really a law professor. He was a "senior lecturer," though the University of Chicago,
where BHO served as a senior lecturer, claims that he was "regarded as" a professor. How one is
regarded does not always determine what one is.
Secret Support for Lockerbie Terrorist
Reveals Need for "Lies Czar" in White House. Barack Obama desperately needs a "Lies Czar"
to keep track of the president's lies so that The One can avoid tripping over his own words.
Obama's latest lie-gone-wrong gaffe involves the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, AKA the Lockerbie
bomber. Just last week, Obama stated publicly that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed
and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.
More about the remarkably good health of
the Lockerbie bomber.
Obama's Lack of Disclosure.
You know when a politician starts a sentence with "frankly," he's about to lie to your face. The same
principle applies to campaign finance legislation dubbed the "DISCLOSE Act." The voter's instinctive
reaction should be: What are they trying to hide now?
Islam Means the End of Religious Freedom.
Obama concluded his remarks by saying: "
And we can only achieve "liberty and justice for all" if
we live by that one rule at the heart of every great religion, including Islam — that we do unto
others as we would have them do unto us." But that is not the rule at the heart of Islam. And
this is not the first time that he has tried to sell that particular lie. But Islam never equates Muslims
with non-Muslims, as Obama pretends it does. Its offer of brotherhood is only open to fellow Muslims.
Its tolerance is only for fellow Muslims.
Demogoguing Social Security.
The Democrats must know they're in trouble: they've turned to one of their hoariest dodges, demagoguing Social
Security. In his weekly radio address yesterday [8/14/2010], Barack Obama accused Republicans of
scheming to ruin the program.
Obama:
Social Security 'is not in crisis'. President Obama said Social Security is not in crisis and
only modest changes are needed to keep it solvent.
Obama's foreign funny
money. In his weekly radio address on Saturday [8/21/2010], the president went on about the
supposed effects of the Supreme Court's January decision in the Citizens United case, which loosened
restrictions on certain types of corporate political activity. Mr. Obama warned of a "corporate takeover
of our democracy." With plenty of melodrama, he complained about "a flood of attack ads run by shadowy
groups." He even claimed, "You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation." Mr. Obama
surely knows his talking points are nonsense. His claim about foreign contributions repeatedly has been
proved false.
The un-faith of
Obama. All Obama has managed to prove over the past year is his inability to tell the truth.
Obama's
credibility is the big issue in religion poll. Thomas Lifson and Byron York have convincingly
demonstrated that the President's own behavior is the source of the one-in-five Muslim answer and that such
an opinion is rational given the evidence. In contrast, the mainstream media's response was a predictably
arrogant dismay that Americans do not believe the President is a Christian, given that the Administration has
said he "is obviously a Christian." ... [But] maybe six-in-ten Americans don't believe the President is a
Christian precisely because he claims to be so. Isn't it possible that Barack Obama has
lost his credibility and, as our parents taught us, such credibility lost is seldom regained?
Lies about "stimulus" money and job creation
Applying Alinsky: Why Obamacare Makes
No Sense. [T]he ordinary American can be excused for being confused, frustrated, and angry.
That's exactly where President Obama, the Chicago political mafia around him, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority
Leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want people to be. At one point in the pointless all-day meeting
on Thursday, she even claimed that passing Obamacare would create four million jobs overnight! Even for
Speaker Pelosi, that's a new level of insane babble.
Did
someone mention the big Health Care Summit?
The President's Bogus Green Economics.
The Obama Administration's recently released "Economic Report of the President" devoted an entire chapter to
"Transforming the Energy Sector and Addressing Climate Change". Whenever the government promises to
transform an entire sector of the economy, we know to watch out. ... Since the report says the stimulus
package provided "$60 billion in direct spending and $30 billion in tax credits" to "jump-start"
the transition to a "clean energy economy," there is a whole lot of 'splainin' that the administration
must do.
Is the kettle black
enough? If ever there was a case of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, it is the
cluster of new financial "reform" regulations Washington politicians are trying to foist on the back of
Wall Street. In a typical political smoke-and-mirrors misdirection, President Obama wants us to
believe greedy Wall Street bankers are to blame for our economy sinking in financial quicksand and that
more government regulations and controls are the answer. Don't believe it.
Deception as a
Principle of Governance. Every economic indicator during Clinton's last year in office turned
decisively downward — the surplus, government revenues, and the markets included. Economic
projections made at the very top of an economic bubble are foolish, but the dot-com bubble had long since
popped, and everything was going south by the time Clinton left office. Consequently, the Democrats'
projections of surpluses years into the future at a time when all indices were falling are not just foolish,
but dishonest.
CBO Report
Was Pre-Ordained to Show the Stimulus Succeeded. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has
produced a new report estimating that the $862 billion stimulus has thus far saved or created 1.5 million
jobs. Yet the CBO's calculations are not based on actually observing the economy's recent performance.
Rather, they used an economic model that was programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates
jobs — thus guaranteeing their result.
Vote for him or the wife gets it!
Yesterday Politico reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed for a $15 billion jobs bill Monday
by suggesting that unemployed men are more likely to abuse their wives: "Men when they're out of work
tend to become abusive," Reid said as he argued in favor of a cloture vote on the jobs bill.
Obama
A Moderate? Saying So Doesn't Make It So. To make the Tea Party movement look extremist, the
president's backers are trying to portray him as a moderate. Here is Obama Administration waterboy E.J. Dionne:
"Obama, after all, is the man who saved the banks and the capital markets. Now the bankers are secure and
most of them are still rich." ... [That] is little more than a distortion. Then-Sen. Obama supported the
bank bailouts, which were proposed by then-President Bush. Further, it leaves out the fact that Obama has
since let his "pay czar" Ken Feinberg dictate the salaries of those banks, not to mention the nationalizing of
General Motors.
Con jobs: When
will Obama stop lying about the stimulus? The administration boasts that it has "created or saved" about
1 million jobs, even as the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a loss of 558,000 jobs in October. Not only is
unemployment still increasing, but the rate of job loss is still accelerating. "The 'created or saved numbers' are
meaningless," Joseph Lawler writes on Politico. "Employment is 3 million jobs below what the president's Council
of Economic Advisers had predicted it would be." The Associated Press discovered that an outfit called the Southwest
Georgia Community Action Council reported that the stimulus had enabled it to save 935 jobs — out of 508.
Jobs
'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist. Here's a stimulus success
story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just
$761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama
Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. There's one problem, though: There
is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.
Obama creates
30 new jobs in non-existant congressional district. Chicago politics, where voting is such a
revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath
the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.
Stop
lying about those stimulus jobs. Give the mainstream news media some credit: They have
diligently dug into President Obama's fanciful boasts of job creation. When Obama claimed earlier this
month that his $787 billion economic stimulus package had "saved or created" 640,000 jobs, a dozen news
organizations pounced. They soon highlighted some of the most egregious cases of sketchy job creation
in about 20 states.
Phantom districts in
Texas receive millions in 'stimulus'. According to the Obama administration's latest count, the
President's economic stimulus package has created 45 jobs in Texas' 58th congressional district and
30 jobs in the state's 91st district. The White House's recovery.gov web site declares that
Texas' 52nd district received exactly $8,937,289 in stimulus funds, while the 68th district has had
precisely $310,963 funneled into it. Trouble is, none of these congressional districts exist.
Stimulus Fraud.
We knew something was funny when the White House claimed that 640,000 to 1 million jobs had been created from
this year's stimulus. What we didn't know was that it would turn into a massive fraud. Not only
have 640,000 new jobs not been created from the stimulus — an absurd claim, given the economy's loss
of nearly 4 million payroll positions this year — but it now seems that even the jobs themselves
are fictional.
$6.4 Billion
Stimulus Goes to Phantom Districts. Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one,
it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds
were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.
Imaginary Districts Receive Stimulus
Money. There are questions about how the federal government is spending tax dollars. It
appears millions of economic stimulus dollars are being spent in Congressional districts that do not exist.
Many California jobs 'saved' by stimulus funds
weren't in jeopardy. Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus
money in California probably never were in danger, a [Sacramento] Bee review has found.
$230,000
per job. The administration will report this week that roughly 650,000 jobs have been created or
saved on spending of $160 billion. [But] The Associated Press checked the administration's initial
jobs claims and found numerous exaggerations, duplicate counts and outright misstatements. Even using
the administration's more generous projection, it's still $160,000 spent for every job created or saved.
Stimulus
saves nine out of every five jobs. I've always believed that President Obama will take credit
for saving 2 million jobs as long as there are 2 million jobs left in the United States. But
his jobs report apparently goes beyong this, the Associated Press reports, taking credit for saving jobs
that really don't exist.
Lies,
damned lies and stimulus jobs. "If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your
job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said. Save a portion of a job? That doesn't make sense on any
level. How can they justify plundering stimulus funds to preserve already existing government jobs?
To do that and claim it's evidence that of the stimulus' success at "creating or saving" jobs is simply deceitful.
Painting a
street green hasn't stimulated one new job. In Baltimore, the 300 block of
East 23½ Street is getting patched up in time for winter. One economic stimulus program
is paying to insulate 11 rental rowhouses, another is paying for furnaces and a third is covering the
cost for reflective roofs to be installed by prison inmates in a job-training program. The block is
part of one of the biggest initiatives ever undertaken by the federal government, a nationwide push to
improve the energy efficiency of buildings. But ... the work on East 23½ — even with
all of its activity — has so far not produced a single job.
Jobs Created or Saved' Is White House
Fantasy. When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national
income accounting, spending other people's money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government
statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services. But the government
has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation.
GOP on health
care: In 568 words, what's wrong with 1,990 pages. Texas Republicans on Friday [10/30/2009]
ridiculed claims by the White House that President Obama's stimulus package had created or saved exactly
19,571 jobs in Texas — and 640,329 jobs nationwide. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio.
Citing recent Labor Department figures, said the Obama administration promised the stimulus would create
269,000 jobs in Texas "but we lost 225,300."
NY jobs don't add
up. [Scroll down] The spokesman could not immediately give a breakdown of what the new
jobs entailed. But a memo issued by Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler suggested the number of stable new jobs
was under 300. The memo had a footnote explaining that the city used a formula required by the feds to
count 2,882 "full-time-equivalent" as created jobs. That number was based on 19,518 youths who took part
in a summer employment program, Skyler said.
GOP challenges
job stimulus data. The government watchdog in charge of tracking stimulus dollars said he
can't be sure how many jobs the $787 billion program has created, admitting it "could be above or
below" the 640,000 jobs the administration touts. Republicans said false numbers amount to
"propaganda" and that the uncertainty should cool Democrats' talk of passing a second stimulus bill.
Kelo,
GM, and the Stimulus: Three Examples of Government-Induced Failure. [Scroll down] The
chairman of the government's Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has told lawmakers that he cannot
"certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable."
What is transparent is that these people don't know what the heck they're doing and that the mother of all
boondoggles looms on the horizon.
A $787 billion
waste. So many billions out the door — and nary a clue about what Americans got in
return. That's the tragic-but-too-true story of last February's $787 billion federal stimulus
program — the first major legislative package out of Washington after the Democrats took control
of the city. What a monumental waste. The Obama folks claim that, as of Oct. 30, stimulus
funds "created or saved" 640,329 jobs. They might as well claim 640 billion. The truth?
No one really knows if the package "created or saved" any jobs.
Stimulus
benefits at least 14 percent phony, and counting. California's state government said it took
its share of stimulus money and saved 18,229 corrections jobs. But fewer than 5,000 of those
jobs — perhaps fewer than 1,000 — were ever in any danger of being lost, according
to a letter released this week by the state's auditor.
The New War
against Reason. Over the last nine months, the official government website Recovery.gov has
informed us how the stimulus has saved jobs — even as hard data reflected the unpleasant truth
of massive and spiraling job losses. In other words, not the real number of jobs lost, but rather the
supposed number of jobs saved by Barack Obama's vast dispersion of borrowed money, was to be the correct
indicator of employment. The message? In superstitious fashion, the public is to ignore what
statistics say, and trust instead in the Obama administration's hypotheses.
These Boots Are Made for
Talking. According to a report from a shoe store in Campbellsville, Kentucky, the Army Corps
of Engineers "created or saved" nine jobs when it used money allocated by the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act to buy nine pairs of work boots. The Wall Street Journal reports that the store's
owner, frustrated by the government's confusing online forms, enlisted the help of his 42-year-old
daughter, who figured nine — the number of people who would use the boots on the
job — made as much sense as any other answer.
The biggest lie yet. Now,
after a quick assessment of the Obama Recovery through October, one is stuck with the conclusion that his spending spree
has resulted in 10.2 percent unemployment — except, of course, in such places as Washington, DC, where
government jobs are immune to recession. That would be double-digit unemployment — so now you know why
Obama cleverly framed his recovery program in terms of jobs "created or saved." His administration announced that
through October, the American Recovery Act had "created" or "saved" 640,329 jobs. However, a growing number of
skeptics, even among his once-adoring media, found some very questionable accounting methods used to come up with
that figure.
Who In the White House Has Ever Created a Job?
After 10 months and the authorization of $787 billion in government spending, the economic policies
of the White House and the Democratic Congress have failed. 15.7 million Americans are out of work,
3.2 million of them since the stimulus was first passed in February. Unemployment, at 10.2 percent,
is higher than the President promised it would be
if he did nothing. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid
economic policies are hurting, not helping.
Saving more jobs than there are.
He promised that in exchange for $787 billion, he would create 4 million jobs, later downgraded to
3 million jobs created or saved. If we do nothing, the president warned in January, unemployment
will rise to 9 percent. In November, doing nothing looks pretty good. Unemployment is now
at 10.2 percent.
Time
to corral 'Sheriff Biden'. President Obama's early, overeager claims of his stimulus
package's success have crumbled under media scrutiny. After making big promises, he needed to make
claims about "jobs created or saved," but polls show that the public hasn't bought it.
Jobs Summit Charade. The very idea of a jobs
summit does not make sense. To begin with, we don't wish to create jobs. It is possible to create jobs
by hiring people to dig ditches and fill them up again. The strength of the economic system of market capitalism
is that it allows people to be productive, much more productive than any other economic system. So the very title
of the summit is misguided.
The title is off topic, but the article is not.
I was a
birther before Obama's certificate questions. We now know that the job gains reported by Washington this
past spring were an illusion. Early in 2010 the Labor Department will subtract about 824,000 jobs from its
official count in what is called a "benchmark revision" to more accurately reflect the jobs that weren't created
this past spring.
Jobs or Snow Jobs?
President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is "creating" but there are more people unemployed
now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been "created"?
Greenspan: Census will save Obamonomics.
Since he became president, unemployment has gone up by a third, topping 10% and there has been a net
loss of 3.3 million jobs. We spent $787 billion and have to show for it 640,000 jobs
"saved," including jobs in 440 imaginary congressional districts that the administration made up.
Stimulus
Watch: Now it's fake zip codes. Recovery.gov, the Obama administration's supposedly
transparent attempt to let citizens know how every dollar of the $787 billion stimulus package was
spent, is turning out to be a lot more comic fiction than fact. Not only have fake jobs been reported
in phantom congressional districts, Steve Allen Adams of NewMexicoWatchdog.org discovered that some of
the $27 million of federal money his state received also went to nonexistent zip codes.
Now stim bill
money being sent to fake zip codes. Jim Scarantino of New Mexico Watchdog was the first to
uncover the fact that stim bill money was being listed as spent in non-existent congressional districts.
Now he's uncovered another tasty tidbit; the money is going to fake zip codes.
Phantom
zip codes also found in Virginia. As much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars
went to 14 zip codes in Virginia that don't exist or are in other states, Old Dominion Watchdog reports.
The fake zip codes were listed on Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that is supposed to track how the
stimulus money is being used.
Stimulus money sent to
phantom ZIP codes in North Carolina. The federal government sent 2.5 million stimulus
dollars to North Carolina ZIP codes that don't exist. The information came from the government's
own Web site — Recovery.gov. ... It lists 479 North Carolina ZIP codes as the destination of
$4.2 billion in grants, contracts, and loans. Four of those ZIP codes — 24858,
28389, 23854, and 27600 — are nowhere to be found on U.S. Postal Service maps. In the
four ZIP codes, the Web site reports, the $2.5 million created 0.5 jobs all told.
The Editor says...
How does the government create half a job, and who has that half-job now?
You
Have to Watch Both of Obama's Hands. It comes down to this: Borrow and spend to create
jobs, regulate to destroy them. The original $787 billion stimulus package is due for a supplement
that will bring the total to around $1 trillion. Spending so far has created or "saved" between
1.7 million and 2 million jobs says Christina Romer, chairman of the President's Council of
Economic Advisers...
The Editor says...
Just a reminder: One trillion dollars divided by two million jobs equals $500,000 per job. That's
assuming that two million jobs are actually created, which they probably won't be.
Democratic
Payoffs, Er, Stimulus. [Scroll down] Consider the $787 billion stimulus bill.
Veronique de Rugy and Jerry Brito of George Mason University report that "a total of 56,399 contracts and
grants totaling $157,028,362,536 were awarded in this first quarter for which Recovery.gov reports are
available. The number of jobs claimed as created or saved is 638,826.54 — an average
of $245,807.51 per job."
A Big Snow Job.
As the economy continues to destroy jobs, we hear a new excuse. Frigid weather, the White House says, made
the jobs report look worse than it is. Actually, even without snow, it's worse than you think.
'Anti-Lobbyist'
Obama Administration Recruited Left-Wing Lobbyists to Sell Bogus 'Green Jobs'. A FOIA [request]
reveals the Department of Energy turned to George Soros and to wind industry lobbyists to help cover up two
economic studies pointing to the failure of European wind energy programs.
How
the Labor Dept. finessed the jobs report. As you know by now, the Labor Department last Friday
[3/5/2010] announced that the country had lost another 36,000 jobs in February. Sure, that's a lot
fewer than the amount of jobs the economy had been shedding last year. But if the pace of early
2009 had been maintained, none of us would be working by now. So the slowdown in bad news was to
be expected.
Media
Plays Along With WH Employment Report Whitewash. As many have pointed out for months, the
expanded version of the unemployment rate has been well above 15% for quite a long time, and it at least
occasionally gets referenced in media reports and political pronouncements. But on the jobs added/lost
front, what the press, pundits, and even opposition politicians are continuing to ignore is the key information
that leads to the "seasonally adjusted" figure on which everyone seems to fixate — to the point
where it's not unreasonable to believe that almost everyone in America believes that 36,000 jobs lost is
what really occurred during the month. It isn't.
Your
"Stimulus" Dollars Hard at Work: Social Engineering and Tax Increases. [The "stimulus"
package] has clearly failed to meet its stated goals (after all wasn't the unemployment rate not supposed to
go above 8 percent with its passage?). Instead, taxpayers have had to watch helplessly as their
money is being doled out to prop up government rather than stimulate job creation in the private sector, and
is being spent on questionable projects under the even more questionable — and debunked —
claim of "saving and creating" hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Lucre for lobbyists.
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), or stimulus, has been subject to a great deal of criticism
since its enactment in February 2009. ... The stimulus package was supposed to alleviate the Great Recession's
burden on struggling Americans. ... Since President Obama placed his signature on the stimulus, 2.16 million
Americans have lost their jobs, total unemployment is at 14.9 million, and the Great Debt stands at
$12.7 trillion.
Underworked
Americans hit 20.3 percent. We've heard it all before, but no matter what the Obama administration
claims, economic recovery has not arrived. Last Friday in North Carolina, President Obama said the economy
is "beginning to turn the corner." At the end of May last year, he claimed, "We are already seeing results." ... Mr.
Obama's profligate policies have destroyed vast amounts of wealth, and all there is to show from the stimulus is
massive debt.
White House Caught Altering Stimulus Baseline Projection by 7 Million
Jobs. The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million. So to
justify the Administration's current claim of 2.8 million jobs "created or saved" by stimulus,
they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only 126.9 million jobs. That's
exactly what they do, displayed as the "baseline projection" level in the graphic [shown in this article]
from an April 14, 2010 report.
An Age of Untruth.
Recoil from the word "stimulus" — whether used by a Republican or Democratic administration.
There is no such thing as an easy, fuzzy notion of instant money creating economic growth. Instead it is a
euphemism not for borrowing, but for massive borrowing and unsustainable debt. Indeed, note that we do
not even use words like "borrowing" or "debt," but instead prefer "deficit" (e.g., It's only a year-to-year
thing) and "stimulus" (e.g., spending what we don't have somehow makes us richer in the future).
"Stimulus" is thus a lie as it is used, or at best a half-truth.
$1,152,642.36 for every job created —
if the report is true.
Stimulus created nearly 683,000
jobs in first quarter. The White House's $787 billion stimulus plan funded 682,779 jobs in the
first quarter, administration officials said Friday [4/30/2010].
Only
6,662,000 More Needed in 2010 to Fulfill Obama Promise. Any positive job growth is good news to
be sure. But in order for Obama to meet his pledge of 4 million jobs created by the end of 2010,
the U.S. economy would have to add 932,000 jobs each and every month between now and the end of the year,
taking into account both temporary jobs and the number of new positions needed to keep even with population
growth. According to the BLS, 2,662,000 jobs have been lost since February 2009.
Obama
Hypocrisy on Small Businesses and Jobs. After 15 months in office, Obama has yet to make any
good decisions to help small business or create jobs. Instead, additional levels of Obama Administration
bureaucracy stifle innovation and burden American entrepreneurs with silly new rules buried in thousands of
pages of legislation. In short, Obama is killing the American growth machine. Evidence of Obama's
assault on business, capital and innovation is everywhere.
There's
a noticeable boom in the fake job market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 430,000
new jobs appeared in the US economy in May. That, of course, would be reason for profound joy, except
for the fact that 411,000 of those jobs were temporary, part-time positions created by the US Census.
And we don't really know whether the Census is making its employment statistics look better by churning
workers and hiring unnecessarily.
Obama: Not as honest
as FDR. [Scroll down] The United States in the 1930s recognized that government-funded
make-work jobs were not the same as real jobs. To be sure, jobs financed at taxpayer expense were
plentiful. But back then, the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't count people on work relief as employed.
In fact, persons listed on Depression-era work-relief rolls were not included in the labor force at all.
Nowadays, the unemployment rate equals the number of unemployed persons divided by the total civilian labor
force. If you are working as a temporary census enumerator or planting road signs along the highway
courtesy of a government "stimulus" grant, you are considered employed.
Obama Jobs. The Obama White
House, stung by criticism of the recent May employment report, which showed virtually no job growth beyond
the 411,000 temporary census workers, is attempting to find ways to put as many of the 411,000 in permanent
government jobs. ... Another byproduct of the census hiring? "It's essentially a new job created if
these volunteers move back to the unemployment rolls [and then back to a fulltime job in the federal
government]," says a Senate Democrat leadership staffer.
Obama's Problem Isn't
Leadership — It's Liberal Policy. [Scroll down] People want jobs and,
despite Obama's claim of "saving" them, the most recent job-growth numbers prove that federal spending
is insufficient to the task of raising employment levels. (Nevertheless, the president has just
asked Congress for an additional $50 billion in recovery funds.)
Obama's
endless summer of spending. The White House kicked off a "recovery summer" public relations
blitz yesterday to promote the alleged benefits of stimulus spending. The mood of self-congratulation
was interrupted by a Labor Department report that found initial jobless claims for the week climbed by
12,000. A Conference Board survey showed the average wait in unemployment lines increased from
30 weeks at the start of the year to 34.4 weeks in May. It won't be a summer of love in
those households. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was enthusiastic, declaring the stimulus
"an absolute success" on Wednesday [6/16/2010].
The Truth about the
Unemployment Rate in America. Changes in the unemployment rate are driven by interaction of job
destruction, which consists of job losses through voluntary and involuntary job termination and job creation
resulting in the hiring of employees. This interplay of job destruction and job creation drives the changes
and direction of the unemployment rate. James Sherk at the Heritage Institute points out in his latest
article that job losses in the current recession are not as severe as they were during the recession in 2001.
The reason the unemployment rate is so much higher in the current recession is due to the lack of job creation.
Obama's Funny Numbers.
Last week, as Congress failed to pass a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits, the Obama White
House put out talking points for Democrats on Capitol Hill going home to their districts, as well as to the
talking head class, pushing the message that Republicans were "sabotaging" the U.S. economic recovery for
political gain. By Sunday [6/27/2010] those points were being pushed on the blogosphere and elsewhere,
but some Republicans on Capitol Hill are wondering whether the Obama Administration isn't cooking the books
itself...
I'll Take a Double-Dip. While
Obama spins rising GDP and a falling unemployment rate as proof that his economic policies are making our economy
stronger, the Thief-In-Chief is engaging in a campaign of bald-faced lies and he knows it. Our economy is
essentially dying, the victim of institutionalized chaos and growing uncertainty. The only thing keeping
it alive at this point is money seized from those who earned it and given to those who didn't, while the government
coerces them into buying cars, or appliances to prop up the federal government, or its major propagandists and
campaign contributors at General Electric and SEIU.
Results not matching Obama
rhetoric. The administration pushed the $862 billion stimulus package last year as a
measure to keep the unemployment rate from going over 8 percent. It's at 9.5 percent and
would be at 10 percent if hundreds of thousands of people had not simply stopped searching for a
job. A New York Times/CBS poll found 6 percent of Americans believe the last stimulus created
jobs.
Obama awards huge loan guarantees to solar companies promising
scant jobs gains. During his weekly address to the nation over the Fourth of July weekend,
President Obama announced that the Department of Energy was awarding $2 billion in loan guarantees
to two energy companies — Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing. The plan, Obama
said, is for the companies to use the money to construct solar plants and panels to power thousands of
homes — and create 5,000 jobs in the process. Only about 1,600 of those jobs are slated to be
permanent, though, meaning that the total cost to the taxpayer for each permanent job would exceed
$1 million. But over the past week, observers have questioned whether even that high figure
accurately represents the total cost of the president's plan.
Obama aborted the
recovery. The Obama administration has declared "Recovery Summer," basically an ad campaign
claiming wondrous job-creation results for $1 trillion or so in stimulus funding. Even more
impressive, however, are the steps the administration has taken to destroy jobs at the very time it claims
to be focused on their creation. And if we consider the sorts of jobs under attack by the administration,
it's clear there is method to the mayhem. Many thousands of existing jobs have been killed, and many
thousands more that could be created are instead being aborted.
Squandering the Stimulus.
The strategy behind Obama's latest stimulus sales pitch goes like this; a large portion of the stimulus funding is
about to be spent this summer and Obama, like Superman, plans on swooping down upon various stimulus funded projects
to declare, as only a President as arrogant as Obama can, that his policies have saved the day. In truth, the
"Summer of Recovery" is nothing more than a political ploy that was built in to the stimulus with the hope
that it will lift Democrats' prospects in the mid-term elections.
More
about the so-called stimulus.
Recovery
summer? Obama can't spin this one. In May, total non-farm employment grew by 431,000
jobs — and 411,000 of them were temporary Census worker positions. In June, 225,000 Census
jobs ended, and the private sector created only 83,000 new jobs in their place. Last week, Obama
traveled to Missouri and Nevada to sell his "Summer of Recovery" propaganda. But the people
aren't buying it.
"Fruit Loop" Nancy's Stimulus. Does Nancy
Pelosi actually expect Americans to believe extending unemployment insurance is the fastest way to create
jobs? Just a reminder: This ridiculous woman is two-short-steps from the presidency.
Nancy claims that handing out unemployment checks to the 10% of the jobless labor force is "one of the
biggest stimulus' to our economy." The Speaker supports such an absurd statement by saying "economists
will tell you this money is spent quickly." Nancy can you name the brilliant, and I use this title
loosely, economist? Wait; let me guess, economic genius Paul Krugman?
Obama
is pro-growth (of government). President Obama and his top officials embarked on a public
relations blitz last past week evidently designed to portray him as "pro growth." All such political
PR pushes tend to bear tenuous relationships with reality, but in this case the gulf between the truth and
what the politicians are saying is about as wide as the Grand Canyon. Say what he will, Obama's actions
since his first day in office have made clear that his business is growing government.
One Job Forward, Two Jobs
Back. The Great Obamanomic Job Creation Machine rumbled into action again over the Fourth
of July weekend, promising to spend as much as $2 billion to support creation of 1,585 "permanent"
jobs by two solar energy companies. That comes to a potential cost of over $1.25 million
per job.
More
about green jobs.
Signs of the Times.
If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted
to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by
using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs." It doesn't matter politically that the stimulus is not actually
stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and
all the rhetoric about jobs. And of course nothing negative will ever matter to those who are part of
the Obama cult, including many in the media.
If
This is "Recovery Summer," I'd Hate To See "Recession Winter". President Obama is in Michigan
today [7/15/2010], begging voters to believe that his economic plans and policies are helping the state, the region and
the country recover their economic bearings. Voters aren't buying the spin, however, and the White House
aide who came up with the slogan which Team Obama is deploying along with the president, "Recovery Summer,"
must be a GOP plant.
Batteries included
on tour. Just a few years ago, the U.S. produced only 2 percent of the world's
electric car batteries, but the Obama administration says that if the stimulus is allowed to work
that could rise to 40 percent by 2015. ... But so far, it's been a tough sell — voters tell
pollsters they don't think the stimulus has helped much, they have a pessimistic view of the direction the
country is taking, and are increasingly taking a dim view of Mr. Obama's economic leadership overall.
$287,333 per job:
Obama
looks to Bill Clinton for help on jobs as stimulus argument falls flat. President Obama
summoned former President Bill Clinton and business leaders to the White House on Wednesday [7/14/2010] to
talk about how to improve the nation's employment situation, on the same day that the administration
released a report alleging that their $862 billion stimulus has saved roughly three million jobs.
He
came, he saw, he insulted. [Scroll down] But the green economy looks like a lot of
green for the well-connected. The president handed $150 million in stimulus money over to
Korean CEO Peter Bahnsuk Kim of LG Chem. LG Chem is an $11 billion Korean conglomerate that
hardly seems a candidate for the American Recovery Act. No wonder the program is so unpopular. ... Obama
said his benevolence would create 300 jobs in Holland — but that's $500,000 per job.
Real
Joblessness Grimmer Than Gov't Stats. Writing in the New York Times in November 2003, Austan
Goolsbee, then a professor at the University of Chicago, flamboyantly accused the government of "cooking"
the books regarding unemployment. "The situation has grown so dire," he said, "that we can't even tell
whether the job market is recovering. The time has come to correct the official unemployment statistics
to account for those left out." Professor Goolsbee is now a top economic advisor to President Obama.
Would he admit that the official jobless of 9.5% grossly underestimates the pain of job losses in America
and do something to correct the situation?
The
Flight of the Money: Where Has It Gone? If you go to a movie set, you will see perfect-looking
streets, each building front rich in detail, looking as real as real can be. Yet it's only façade.
One thin piece of painted sheetrock propped up. Walk around behind it, there's nothing there. That's
GM. State pension funds in 30-plus states people are counting on, upside down in toto by trillions.
Obama's stimulus. There are signs stuck here or there with his logo on them, proclaiming the dirt
mound or torn up street his "stimulus at work." The sign-maker was stimulated. Who else?
That's this entire economy. A façade.
Update:
Obama Railroading Propaganda Signs.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has dropped its requirement for "stimulus" project propaganda
signage, according to a communiqué from the department's inspector general. As of July 15 the
policy changed, the I.G. says, and signs and plaques promoting the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) at jobsites and on things like "stimulus"-funded railroad cars were "strongly encouraged" in lieu of
the mandate.
Obama's Economic Time-Bomb Set to Explode
in 2011. If you listen to the lies spewing forth from the lips of the Obama Administration,
the US economy is improving, millions of jobs are being "saved or created" and we're well on our way to a
strong recovery. But, the volatility of the numbers that Obama and economists in his pocket use to
try and convince us that our financial situation is improving tell an entirely different story.
Barack Obama's Endless Crises:
Only [Barack] Obama and Joe Biden believe that the job trajectory in America is positive. Everyone
else — those who actually look at data or look for work — are scared witless. Each job
opening has five to six applicants. The average unemployment period now extends to 35 weeks, the
highest since the end of WWII. Last month, more than six hundred thousand Americans gave up
looking for work. The same report revealed that average hourly earnings for those lucky enough
to be working have fallen. Average hours worked also dropped. These figures simply get worse
from month to month. But somehow, all of this deteriorating evidence leads the smartest man
who ever held the office of president (according to historian Michael Beschloss) to proclaim
that we're on the right track.
Stimulating
Unemployment. [Scroll down] But Mr. Obama was nonetheless obliged to concede that,
18 months after his $862 billion stimulus, there are still five job seekers for every job opening
and that 2.5 million Americans will soon run out of unemployment benefits. What happens when the
99 weeks of benefits run out? Will the President demand that they be extended to three years, or
four? Only last week Vice President Joe Biden was hailing the stimulus for "saving or creating" three
million jobs. This week the White House says we need even more stimulus, in the form of jobless
checks, to make up for the jobs his original spending stimulus didn't create.
Are Barack Obama and Gibbs
really this ignorant or are they being dishonest? Last week President Obama did a photo
op at a GM plant. In remarks to the assembled GM workers Obama took credit for saving their jobs.
In fact, he took credit for saving the "American auto industry." The problem with this is that he was
being dishonest or showing his ignorance.
Presidential Self-Adulation
Hits New High. Since mid July, the president and vice president have been on the road crowing
about all the jobs they have "created or saved" — some three million to eight million jobs in
all, depending on who's talking (Biden and the administration's top economist go with the more conservative
three million figure, while the president jacks it up to eight million). Either way, the number is way up
from where it stood when the president appeared before the nation on the Oprah Winfrey show (the administration
was then claiming to have rescued only about a million jobs). Now this is a remarkable accomplishment,
given the fact that the economy (I mean the real economy) has suffered a net loss of 2.35 million
jobs since the passage of the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Obama:
I saved Ford by bailing out its competitors. They didn't take his bailout money, but the president
claims credit all the same.
Jobless Nation:
Heckuva Job, Barack. Earlier this season, Team Obama launched a PR offensive designed to convince
Americans that a real economic recovery was underway. They called it "Recovery Summer!" Note the exclamation
point. They wanted you to really, really get that they believed we were in "recovery." It wasn't just
a "recovery." It was "Recovery Summer!"
Welcome
to the Second Great Depression. Last Tuesday morning, Secretary of the Treasury
Timothy Geithner "welcomed" us to the recovery. ... In fact, the Second Great Depression is just beginning.
And just as during the First Great Depression, economic liberals are declaring that it doesn't exist.
Barack... You're 30% Right, but 100% Wrong!
Like the fuzzy-math Team Obama uses to tell us that so many millions of jobs have been "saved or created" due
to stimulus funds. ... Yes, I understand that his speech on the state of our American economy was geared
towards pumping up unions and union workers so they feel the need to get out there and raise the dead to
vote for more pro-government interventionist ideologues in November, but Mr. Obama can't even complete
a sound analogy (the teleprompter must have froze).
O looks
silly pushing 'creation' myth. I Don't have the heart to break any more bad news to President Obama.
So, if you happen to have his phone number, please deliver this message: Go easy on the upbeat chatter about
the number of jobs being created by private companies. Your information is inaccurate. The
president, I'm sorry to say, is starting to look very foolish.
What's Holding Back The Hiring? Start With Obama's 10 Job Killers.
President Obama claims that he's concerned about "jobs, jobs, jobs," but he has signed laws, issued executive
orders and approved regulations that create incentives for private-sector employers to lay off people or
delay hiring people. It's no wonder high unemployment persists.
Summer of No Recovery.
Against [a long] list of facts, President Obama claims that the economy is getting better. This administration's
ineptness at promoting growth is equaled by its ineptness at spinning facts. The Obama administration
also touts that the stimulus passed in February of 2009 created or saved 3.5 million jobs. Of course,
the president has chosen a standard of measure that is not and has not been tracked before.
New
fairy tales from Obamaland. [Obama, Reid and Pelosi] spun two new fantasies just this week.
The first was that without the latest Obama-Reid-Pelosi government bailout, at least 100,000 teachers would lose
their jobs this fall. ... [But] the vast majority of those dire warnings of 100,000 teachers being laid off
were mostly just hot air. And here's something else to ponder: If it cost $10 billion to save
100,000 teachers' jobs, they are each being paid $100,000 a year. Since the national average teacher salary
is just over $54,000 a year, somebody — federal bureaucrats? — is making a bundle on
overhead.
Jobbed
In America. Obamanomics has done more than just keep unemployment high during a modest recovery.
It may also be keeping high joblessness permanent by raising the costs to businesses of hiring new workers.
July's 9.5% unemployment level was bad enough. But the real problem is that the private-sector jobs machine,
which is usually going full tilt at this point in a recovery, now seems to be broken. To many, it's
becoming clear that if President Obama's radical job-killing agenda stays in place, job growth will be
nonexistent.
Have You Ever Noticed?
The dog days of August have arrived. The "summer of recovery" is evolving into a "winter of discontent"
as virtually anywhere one looks, reality overwhelms the rhetoric of the ruling class.
Stop
Obama's tax-paid propaganda. Recovery.gov, for example, is a tax-paid website that cost $18 million
to create, yet does little more than peddle job-creation data that are discredited almost as soon as they are posted.
The Ride Down. Revised
numbers from the Labor Department show negative job growth during June 2010. For each job opening,
there were five persons looking for work, and 300,000 fewer workers were hired in June than in May.
The ride down continues. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Geithner, erstwhile cheerleader for the Obama
economic team, announces that unemployment rates could rise "for a couple of months."
Obama Job Claims Undercut by Report.
Rep. David Camp (R.-Mich.) revealed Friday that, based on Department of Labor data, 48 of 50 states
have lost jobs despite the administration's prediction that the 2009 stimulus would save or create over
3 million jobs.
Recovery Bummer. [Scroll down]
No matter how well-documented the economic wreckage wrought by progressive "solutions" is, or how many times
Keynesian economic models have failed, we have a Democratically-controlled Congress and an Obama administration
willing to "double down" against history, common sense — and the wishes of most Americans. Ask
yourself how many times in the last year alone you've heard the word "unexpected" attached to an economic report,
as in last Thursday's "unexpected" rise to 500,000 unemployment insurance filings — or the "unexpected"
rise of unemployment to almost ten percent, despite the Obama administration's assurance it wouldn't top eight
percent when American taxpayers were fleeced for $865 billion in a "stimulus" package.
These days, it's best to expect
the 'unexpected'. The national economy is in the tank — unexpectedly. At least
it's "unexpected" by the mainstream media, and professional economists. After all these months, these
pampered pukes remain flummoxed by how clueless their hero Barack Obama has shown himself to be on economic
(and other) issues.
Honey, I Shrunk My
Approval Ratings. In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters, we're now
well over half way through what the White House called "the summer of recovery." And what a recovery it's
been. Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. The unemployment
rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up
looking for a job altogether.
Explaining
'Lives Touched' to the Mainstream Media. In late July, a Government Accountability Office report
circulated which analyzed stimulus funding being spent by the Department of Energy. The main gist of
that report involved the cost of each job being generated by the stimulus bill — a staggering
$194,000. Tucked away in that report was a phrase that was new to most of us, a way to calculate jobs
through a term called 'lives touched'.
Biden
Recovery Tour: Making Stuff Up in Toledo. The White House's "Recovery Summer" tour is
beginning to resemble a jalopy wheezing from town to town, consuming whatever fuel will keep it going.
Throw in Veep Biden, and it is a full-blown farce. Biden dove into Toledo, Ohio, on Monday [8/23/2010]
amid evidence of a stalled economy to once again boast to yet another UAW audience of the president's
"transformed U.S. auto industry."
Cooking the books
on job claims. Administration officials passed around the champagne Tuesday [8/24/2010] as the
Congressional Budget Office reported that the $814 billion spent on the first stimulus bill created
between 1.4 million and 3.3 million new jobs. President Obama's policies "put the country on
a path to recovery by getting Americans back to work quickly," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. crowed.
"We've created 3 million jobs, and we're adding jobs every month." As is obvious to anyone living
outside the Beltway, there's not much cause for celebration in this economy.
How is your "Recovery Summer" going?
Debt, Depression,
Default. America is in Deep Trouble. Consumers are spending less. Small retailers
are closing shop — even cable television subscriptions are seeing a loss in revenue.
A
perfect pitchman. Joe Biden was an inspired choice as spokesman for the "summer of recovery." ... Biden
is still hawking his recovery summer, even as GDP growth slows to a crawl, and he'll still tout the marvels of
the stimulus even if we dip into negative territory again later this year. He makes the late, great
pitchman Billy Mays look restrained and rhetorically scrupulous by comparison.
Lies and prevarication related to Obamacare
We're not buying
it, O. Once again, Barack Obama is a happy pitch man. ... He's still peddling Hope & Change,
although now he calls it health-care reform. He swears his miracle elixir will save your life, your
money and your country. It will do anything you could possibly want — unless you want the
truth.
Obama's
Proposal is the Illusion of 'Reform'. One job of presidents is to educate Americans about
crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you
think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and
distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage."
Obama's medical horror
stories. President Obama believes in government by anecdote. ... Contrary to the bleak picture
Mr. Obama is conjuring up, most Americans are happy with their own health care, including those with serious
health problems. According to a study in Regulation magazine last summer, 92 percent of those with
insurance who were suffering from chronic illness rated their health insurance as excellent or good.
Five
Reasons The CBO Figures Are Phony. The Congressional Budget Office's preliminary "score" says
the health care overhaul will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years, saving $138 billion
over that time. But the CBO must assess legislation as written, rather than whether it will actually
be carried out.
The Future's Shadow.
Often the politicians who talk about health care the most believe in the Hippocratic Oath the least.
Barack Obama falls into this category. He promises that his health care plan will protect the weak and
vulnerable. This would be a little bit more credible if his policies weren't already killing and
exploiting them.
The massive accounting blunder that should sink health care reform.
Democrats had been insisting that bill somehow cut the deficit and strengthened Medicare, but as it turns out
the CBO had to clarify that the savings of the bill were being double counted. ... [T]he bottom line is that
this is a massive, massive blunder and the President and the Senate Democrats need to come clean about it.
They sold the American people, or tried to anyway, on specific promises regarding deficit reduction and preserving
Medicare. Now they can't be sure of either of those promises.
Dependence Day.
Remember the $246 billion that Democrats were going to take out of Medicare to keep the program solvent
as well as help fund their health care reform schemes? Turns out it was just a fantasy. According
to the Congressional Budget Office, the Democrats double-counted funds in their health care plans, drawing
the savings for Medicare and financing for the new medical programs outlined in the Senate bill from the
same source. The legislation, says the nonpartisan CBO, will increase the deficit, not reduce it as
its supporters claimed.
Can Obama Open His Mouth Without
Lying About Health Care? [Scroll down slowly] To sum up: The president said he "didn't
campaign on the public option," but it turns out he did. He said that there wasn't any "gap" between his
campaign promises and the final result, but it turns out there were several, as detectable by the most cursory
Google search. He said "every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill," but it turns
out they're not.
Give
Me Liberty, or Give Me Obamacare. Remember back in June, in President Obama's major address to
the AMA, when he said the following? "No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this
promise. ... If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.
No one will take it away. No matter what." In the six months since, there seems to have been a
change.
We know more about the Obama's marriage than we do about healthcare.
False
transparency: I've given up hope of ever finding out what young Barack actually did at Occidental and
Columbia or even reading a snippet of what he wrote, if anything, for the Harvard Law Review. ... I'm not really
interested in Obama as a man (or as a husband). I'm interested in what he does. And most of that, of late,
he has done in secret. We know more about his marriage than about how the healthcare legislation was
drafted or how its contents are being negotiated.
Chart:
Total 10-Year Cost of Reid Bill is $2.5 Trillion. Senate Republicans have just released an
outstanding chart highlighting the accounting games that Democrats are playing with the costs of their
proposed health-care overhaul. The Democrats assert that their Senate bill would cost $848 billion
over ten years. But Congressional Budget Office projections show that only 1 percent of those
costs would kick in prior to the fifth year of what the Democrats are calling the "first 10 years."
In the bill's true first 10 years (2014 to 2023) — that is, in the first 10 years in
which it would be operational to any meaningful extent — the CBO projects that the bill would
cost $1.8 trillion.
From Awful to
Worse. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats long ago gave up any pretense of
working to rationally reform American health care. The exercise now underway in the Senate is a mad
dash to get to 60 votes, and nothing more. That's why some Democratic senators who had no idea
exactly what is in the "breakthrough deal" announced by majority leader Harry Reid last week immediately
hailed it as a milestone.
46 million mistakes.
Pick a news outlet — almost any news outlet. Chances are they have misreported one
of the key facts in the healthcare debate. One of the basic reasons for the supposed need for
healthcare reform is the huge number of Americans who lack health insurance. The number typically
quoted is 46 million (sometimes inflated to 47 million, 48 million or even
50 million).
Four Tactical Steps That Will Defeat Obamacare.
[#1.] Denounce this bill for the lying fraud scheme it is: Just as an example: The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) "scored" the Pelosi bill to cost $1.055 trillion — far above Barack Obama's $900 billion
ceiling. Pelosi immediately held a press conference and announced her bill would cost $894 billion —
a figure that did not appear in the CBO report and which could be reached only by subtracting projected IRS-administered
penalties from the actual cost.
Obama Admin. Actuary Finds
Unsustainable Status Quo Cheaper than Obamacare. One of President Obama's primary justifications
for pushing health care legislation has been that the status quo is "unsustainable" because of the skyrocketing
cost of medical care in the United States. The way to rein in costs, he argues, is to do adopt the
policies that he and his fellow Democrats are proposing. But a new report by the government actuary at
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Obama administration's Department of Health
and Human Services, has found that the exact opposite is true.
The Onward March
Of ObamaCare. When you make a deal with people whose strategic goals are diametrically opposed
to yours, you must be careful that what you get is not a temporary tactical retreat that can be reversed at
any time, while what you have given is a huge and lasting strategic advantage. That principle had
already been illustrated plainly enough when Olympia Snowe helped to vote the Baucus bill out of committee
because it ruled out the public option, which she opposed. Within days, Harry Reid had put the public
option back in the bill that was now before the full Senate.
Obama's Health Care Rot, Calls For A Massive
Boycott. It's an old propaganda gimmick. If the rhetoric heats up against a government
initiative, they change the name and re-package it. They have been doing it for 100 years or more.
Welcome to the
P.T. Barnum Administration. Now the latest is health care. [Obama] and the Hill Democrats are
pushing through health care reform bills based on numbers that are virtually meaningless. ... The cost estimates
for health care reform aren't worth the paper they are printed on.
Understanding
all the facts about the uninsured. To support his sweeping makeover, Obama and
other liberal Democrats repeatedly point to the 46.3 million uninsured Americans. ... A
careful examination of the data, however, reveals that Obama and his allies are misrepresenting
the problem of the uninsured. Democratic plans would not come close to driving the number
of uninsured to zero. At best, about only 29 million would be covered.
Harry Reid's disingenuousness
on health care reform. The Senate Majority Leader is pulling out all the stops to get health care reform
passed. And the way he is trying to do it is just plain dishonesty.
There's No Free Health
Care. Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of
imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care
costs for our families and our businesses and our government." ... Does he think we're stupid? ... When you offer
more — much, much more in this case — of a good, it's going to cost more. Somebody
has to pay for it. Yet Obama says we'll all be paying less, and that includes businesses and government.
Obama uses fear to sell
health care. President Obama has begun a new phase of his effort to overhaul the nation's health care
system by trying to gird Americans for the perils that await them if his effort fails. In recent speeches,
including his weekly radio address Saturday, the president has begun using stark language to warn Americans that
failure to act on his proposed health care reform could lead more families into bankruptcy and could leave them
stranded when they get sick.
Obama Bill For Illegals
Healthcare. You would never know if from the protestations in his speech last night and in other venues, but
way back in May of 2006 US Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored a bill to federally fund healthcare for illegal aliens.
Liberal Lies About National Health Care.
[Scroll down] Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short,
"The Death Panel") deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started
claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without
ever denying a single medical treatment! Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake
that will actually help you lose weight!
Some of the Democrat's Healthcare Lies
Discussed. For example, the new government run plan will supposedly "compete" with private
companies; however, the bill exposes employers operating group health plans to state law remedies and
private causes of action, but the government run plan can only be sued in federal court.
Obamacare
is losing support for good reason. During a town hall meeting by telephone this week, U.S. Rep. Paul
Hodes discussed his support for a trillion-plus dollar health care reform package with his constituents. "We've
got to lower costs for everybody," he said. Who does he think he's kidding? If we "lower costs for everybody,"
where exactly is the trillion dollars going to come from?
No, you won't be able to keep your insurance if you like it.
Dissecting the Kennedy Health Bill:
Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal "you'll be able to get the same
kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves." On Monday [6/15/2009], President Obama repeated
that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It's not true.
Obama's
Top Five Health Care Lies: President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office with a veritable
halo over his head. In the eyes of his backers, he could say or do no wrong because he had evidently
descended directly from heaven to return celestial order to our fallen world. ... But when it comes to health
care reform, with every passing day, Obama seems less God and more demagogue, uttering not transcendental
truths, but bald-faced lies. Here are the top five lies that His Awesomeness has told — the
first two for no reason other than to get elected and the next three to sell socialized medicine to a
wary nation.
Insurance Is No Answer.
Health care "reformers" keep talking about getting us more health insurance. Then they talk about cutting
costs. This is contradictory nonsense. Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like
Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up.
Let's Go With That
Analogy. President Obama recently drew an analogy between the proposed, government funded,
health care option and the United States Postal Service. He reasoned: a government funded postal
service hasn't put private parcel carriers out of business; therefore a government funded insurer will not put
private insurers out of business. His logic is sound and his facts are truthful, but only in a very
technical sense.
Something "fishy" when Obama's Organizing for America
plays doctor. [Scroll down] Behind the public stage is the staging of Obamacare that really matters.
It's called Organizing for America (OFA), and its main hallmark is deceit. In their own words, this is how OFA is
fighting "insurance companies" and "partisan attack groups" they accuse of "stirring up fear with false rumors about the
President's plan". "
So we've cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office
Visits for Health Reform." That's right. The OFA comes right out an admits to their activists that their Office
Visits for Health Reform are "
cooked up".
Health rationing by other
names. When Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a key presidential health care adviser, told The Washington Times on
Thursday [8/13/2009] that his "thinking has evolved" on the subject of health care rationing, he was making a distinction
without a difference. Even his "evolved" ideas amount to nothing more than government rationing by another name.
Obama's Health
Care Mess. Health care is stalled and insidiously undermining the presidency of Obama precisely
because the public senses he has not leveled with the American people. Of the uninsured, how many millions
are young people who feel no need right now to buy insurance, how many million are illegal aliens, how many
millions chose to use their optional income for things other than a low-cost catastrophic health plan, how
many millions still find care outside the insurance system? Nor do most Americans feel their system
is broken.
Obama Falsely Claims There Are 47 Million
Uninsured Americans. President Obama's inflated claim of the number of uninsured Americans was not
an off-the-cuff remark. It came in the prepared text at the beginning of the president's press conference
[7/22/2009] that should have been checked and vetted by White House staff. The president cited no source
for his claim that there are 47 million uninsured Americans. Since the White House first falsely claimed
in June that there were 46 million uninsured Americans, CNSNews.com has reported on the correct Census Bureau
figure [35.92 million uninsured Americans] on multiple occasions.
Obama's Health Care Fibs.
President Barack Obama has been busy attempting to sell his government takeover of the health care citizen.
In doing so, he contines to be, shall we say, a bit lax with the facts.
Did
someone mention socialized medicine?
Dem. Shill as 'Attendee' in Obama's Healthcare Townhall
Audience. One of Obama's first questions from the audience wasn't from a mere concerned citizen, but from a
former Democratic Party candidate for Congress that wants a socialist, single payer system to be implemented, raising the
suspicion that the administration knew exactly who was going to ask questions and what they were going to ask.
Who's
Funding the Obamacare Campaign? If you believe the White House, there are 30 million
Americans who support a government health care takeover. But if you look at the funding behind the
Obamacare campaign, it's the same few leftist billionaires, union bosses and partisan community organizers
pushing the socialized medicine agenda. Let's connect the dots.
Myths,
Lies and Stupidity About Health Care: President Barack Obama's health care plan, we are told,
will spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years. But since trillion is the new billion, Americans
aren't supposed to worry about that. Obama's health care plan will cause employers to stop providing
private health insurance for millions of employees and instead shift employees to public care. But Obama
says that government is the best arbiter of your health, so Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.
More
about socialized medicine.
Government Won't Allow
Fair Competition. Proponents of socialized medicine learned an important lesson from the 1993
failure of Clinton Care, and recognize that they must hide their agenda in the rhetoric of market competition.
Government is not going to take over insurance, they say; it merely wants to compete.
Healthcare
Crusaders Out To Plunder System. The number of uninsured people is grossly misleading.
Just because you are uninsured doesn't mean you have no access to medical care. And just because you are
insured under universal systems doesn't mean you will receive care. If you don't think the administration
is parlaying the crisis angle, then you must have missed the feigned urgency in Obama's declarations that
"reform" must be completed this year.
The Mystery of the $2 Trillion
in Health Care Savings. Kathy Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, just held a
conference call with reporters in which I hoped to learn more details about how the health care industry
plans to save $2 trillion in projected health care costs over ten years. ... But when it came time for
questions, she could offer little in the way of details about the so-called savings.
Health Bill Hoax.
Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans
while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable
entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates,
tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade —
would do.
We Pay Them to
Lie to Us. To be deficit-reducers, the health care bills depend on a $200 billion cut in
Medicare. Current law requires cuts in payments to doctors, but let's get real: Those cuts will
never happen. The idea that Congress will "save $200 billion" by reducing payments for groups
as influential as doctors and retirees is laughable.
They
Call It Fiscal Responsibility; We Call It Socialism. As President Barack Obama and his
party conspire to destroy — not reform — the greatest health care system
in the world in their quest to remake America into a full-blown Eurosocialist state, it is
instructive to remember the premise upon which Obama launched this disaster. In July,
Obama said that if we do not control our health care costs, "we will not be able to control our
deficit." ... Those who didn't know this was hogwash in the first place have no excuse not to
see it now.
Obamacare's Ugly
Math. The Office of the Chief Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
estimates that under the House health bill, the percentage of the United States gross domestic product spent
on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent in 2019.
Was
Democrats' Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison? [Scroll down slowly] A friend and I took
turns filming protesters on both sides of the issue. We caught an organizer from the group Health Care for America
Now (HCAN) instructing followers to block dissenting views: "So if they stand up and start asking questions, and
you're in that area, simply stand up, and start chanting... 'Health care now! Health care now!'"
How
Much Will You Pay for Health Care? You'll Pay Plenty. President Obama promised that
"you'll save money" as a result of this bill. That's going to be a hard promise to keep. Most
estimates suggest that the proposed legislation is much more likely to push costs up, not down, for most
Americans.
Socialism by any other name...
Time is ticking for Democrats to claim some kind of victory on health care legislation, as polls show a public increasingly
disillusioned with what is being passed off as "reform." So now Democrats are trying to rename the public
option in the hope no one will notice.
Health Care Reform
Vaporizes Obama Presidency. Obama's continued hard sell, including obvious lies regarding
the bill, revealed him to be nothing more than an unethical salesman attempting to foist a defective product
on what he considered to be a stupid group of customers. The selling of VaporCare cost Obama whatever
credibility he had left. His campaign guise of nobility and omnipotence was revealed as fraudulent when
he used the hard-sell approach of a used car salesman. Messiahs don't sell snake oil.
Spending America Into
Oblivion. [Scroll down] He went on to repeat basically what he had said during his State
of the Union Address earlier in the week, "By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over
$1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the
result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program." Heritage's
Riedl corrected President Obama on Monday, saying, "This is simply not true. The policies mentioned by
President Obama were implemented in the early 2000s. Yet even with all those policies in place, the 2007
budget deficit stood at only $162 billion."
The
Democrats' Orwellian Talking Point. Perhaps the most widely repeated Democratic talking
point in advance of tomorrow's health-care summit is that the Republicans have yet to offer an alternative
plan of their own. The point is not that Republican alternatives are misguided or underdeveloped, mind
you, but that they don't exist. By any and every measure, this is false.
White
House Contradicts CBO, Misleads on Insurance Rate Increases. Obviously it would not help the
cause of Democrats trying to pass this bill if the millions of people who buy insurance directly, and the
millions more who are forced to do so by the insurance mandate, end up paying even higher premiums than they
would under current law. But here's the thing — many of them will. At least according to
the CBO. And the White House is deliberately and irresponsibly misleading the public by claiming otherwise.
Obama's
bipartisan flimflammery. Yesterday [2/22/2010], Obama unveiled a "new" health care proposal.
It costs an eye-popping $950 billion (that's the White House's rosy estimate), and represents nothing more
than a warmed-over version of the 2,500-plus-page Obamacare proposals passed last year by the Senate and House.
Prez's
newest idea: Simply outlaw reality. Included in President Obama's latest stab at health-care
reform released yesterday is one of the more astonishing admissions of political deception
in recent memory. After months of swearing that his health legislation would lower the skyrocketing costs
of insurance premiums, Obama finally acknowledged that actually it would not. So, instead, he has
included a new provision that can simply outlaw premium increases his administration deems "unreasonable
and unjustified."
Obama's 'Putting
Perfume on a Pig'. The President has wrestled control of the health care debate away from Nancy Pelosi
and Harry Reid by finally introducing his own plan. Unfortunately, the White House's proposal includes
everything we found untenable about the old Senate bill — only this one is even more expensive!
Myth Diagnosis:
[In 2009,] When progressive politicians or journalists did address the disadvantages of being uninsured, they often
fell back on the same data [Ezra] Klein had used: a 2008 report from the Urban Institute that estimated that
about 20,000 people were dying every year for lack of health insurance. But when you probe that claim, its
accuracy is open to question.
The lie at the heart of
ObamaCare. Megan McArdle argues persuasively in the Atlantic that lacking health insurance does not
increase mortality rate and the numbers thrown about to suggest otherwise are poppycock.
The
President's Imaginary Health Plan: The president launched a last-ditch effort to pass a
government takeover of American health care yesterday [3/3/2010]. To hear him tell it, his plan would let
every American keep the health insurance he has today if he wants to. And it would reduce premiums,
cut taxes for the middle class, slow the pace of rising costs, reduce the federal budget deficit, and
keep bureaucrats out of health-care decisions too. This latest presidential health-care pitch might
have left some Americans scratching their heads. What plan is he talking about, they might ask
themselves. Because the plan he described doesn't remotely resemble anything the Democrats have
assembled over the past year.
WBHO and WBHO FM in the
Nation's Capital. President Obama said [3/6/2010] he had met with some of the insurance
companies two days earlier and said that "they couldn't give me a straight answer as to why they keep
arbitrarily and massively raising premiums — by as much as 60 percent in states like
Illinois." Sixty percent! Could that be true? Actually it's not...
Desperate
Dems Cling to Human Kiddie Shield. On Monday [3/8/2010], Obama surrounded himself with a
ticketed-only crowd of Arcadia University college students in Pennsylvania (sprinkled with purple-shirted
officials from the Service Employees International Union, natch). The Washington-based commander in
chief traveled outside his Beltway bubble to a campus bubble to trash the political climate, which he leads.
"That's just how Washington is. They can't help it," he pontificated as the idealistic young students
nodded like empty bobbleheads. "They"?
Pelosi
on health care: 'We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it...'. [Quoting Nancy
Pelosi:] "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the
controversy." Americans are precisely worried they will find out, the hard way, "what is in it," after
it's been passed. Whence "the controversy."
Washington, Not The Individual,
Gets Control In President's Plan. On Wednesday [3/10/2010] in Missouri, President Obama delivered
his 37th speech promoting his health reform proposal, despite sustained opposition from inside and outside his
own party. Previous arguments didn't sell. In early 2009, he couldn't convince fiscal conservatives
with his pitch that "health reform is deficit reduction." In late 2009, middle America wasn't persuaded
that 2,000 pages of statutes were necessary to cover pre-existing conditions. Early in 2010, the
president tried the "it's time to get it over with" line — and Scott Brown was elected
senator from Massachusetts.
Health-Care Hell:
The president recently said, "Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody
has said it." But wait. If everything, pro and con, has been said about a subject by everybody, that
means someone isn't telling the truth, right? I mean, if you've said X and not-X, that means you've probably
said something that isn't true.
The Big Lie of Health
Care Reform: One-Sixth of the US Economy is threatened with a takeover by the Federal Government
on the erroneous rationale that "Tens of millions of people in the US are without health care insurance, and
therefore are being denied access to adequate health care." Unjust! Unfair! This is, of course,
an absolute lie. And nor do some large number of people "die every day from lack of health insurance
coverage." That too is a lie.
Health
Care Deception Gets Uglier & Uglier. The finale of the health-care debate couldn't be more
fitting. House Democrats are considering passing an exotic parliamentary rule relieving them of the
burden of voting for the underlying bill, which will be "deemed" passed. So a bill sold under blatantly
false pretenses and passed in the Senate on the strength of indefensible deals would become law in a final
flourish of deceptive high-handedness.
ObamaCare:
An Ugly Process, and It Will Only Get Uglier. Here's what supporters have done (so far) to
advance their legislation: First, supporters hid more than half of the cost of their
legislation. ... Second, supporters changed the rules to suit their partisan purposes.
Obamacare
Increases Unemployment, Insurance Premiums, Deficit, and Debt. President Barack Obama and
congressional leaders claim that the Senate health bill ... will decrease the deficit and bend the cost
curve related to health care spending. However, recent analysis by The Heritage Foundation's Center
for Data Analysis (CDA) shows that this is far from true. Instead, the bill's mandates and numerous
new taxes will have tumultuous effects. Passing Obamacare will come at the expense of the American
people as it would grow the federal debt, increase premiums, and stifle economic growth.
You Lie! MSNBC Lets Dem's False 45,000 'Uninsurance
Deaths' Go Unchallenged. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, for one, does not want blood
on his hands from 45,000 Americans who allegedly die every year due to lack of health
insurance. And MSNBC's Alex Witt, for one, doesn't think it worth questioning the
veracity of that number.
The
Deem-o-crats' Towering Deception: If you cannot trust government's numbers, you cannot trust
government's words. This is the lesson of the House Democrats' desperate promotion of a phony-baloney
Congressional Budget Office analysis of their latest health-care-takeover package. Democratic leaders
leaked a solid-seeming price tag — $940 billion over ten years — before the CBO
released any official comment or report.
Obamacare's
Imaginary Savings. Some Blue Dog Democrats may try to use the latest [CBO] projections as an
excuse to switch their votes from opposition to support of Obamacare. But if they do so, the only people
they will be fooling are themselves — the public long ago saw through the gimmicks and sleight-of-hand
behind the Democratic deficit-cutting claims.
Digging
the Hole Deeper: The greatest of all the many painful ironies in the health-care debate of
the past year may be that the Democrats' closing "argument" is to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility.
Their leaders are doing their best to twist yesterday's [3/18/2010] CBO score of their reconciliation bill to suggest that
their plan will not only solve America's health-care financing problem but reduce the deficit too. It
will do neither, and will make both problems worse.
Truth Is A Casualty Of The Final
Push. Not since the heyday of Bill Clinton have we had a leader play so fast and loose with the facts
as President Obama. And as the health care debate reaches a crescendo, he's been especially reckless.
No,
ObamaCare Is Not Becoming More Popular. Looking at Real Clear Politics' health care
poll average, the spread between opponents and supporters of ObamaCare has shrunk to single
digits — 49.1%-40.4% against. This has led Paul Krugman and pundits at The New Republic
to declare that support for health care reform has been increasing.
CBO Confirms That
Without Accounting Gimmicks, Obamacare Adds to Deficits. Democrats have touted a CBO report
that found that their health care bill would reduce the deficit by $138 billion from 2010 to
2019. But that number assumes that hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts would be
used to pay for the new health care entitlement.
Obama and the Doctors:
One of Barack Obama's favorite stage props lately is a doctor in a lab coat trying to make us believe that
physicians support Obamacare. In keeping with every other Democrat claim about health care "reform," the
truth is something rather different.
A Tyrannical Act.
The day after the House approved the health care bill, a reporter asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs about
the lawsuits some states were threatening against the legislation on the grounds that the provision forcing all
Americans to buy health insurance was unconstitutional. "I think there's pretty longstanding precedent
on the constitutionality of this," Gibbs said, without offering any substantive explanation.
Obamacare:
Another Washington scam. In New Hampshire in October of 2007, candidate Barack Obama said, "We're not
going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy." On Sunday [3/21/2010], his Democratic Party
did exactly that. Like so much else that the President has said about health care reform, that promise
was just talk.
Obamacare
advanced on a series of lies. From the beginning to right now, the Obama-led march toward
health care restructuring has been a lie, starting with the one about how many people had no access to
insurance and continuing with misleading rants about American longevity and treatment outcomes. The
public heard wrong data on insurance company profits and could easily have gotten the impression no insurance
equaled no care. Supposedly alert journalists left out or minimized the patient horrors of the systems
this program wished to imitate and President Obama pretended no one had ever suggested more effective, less
expensive alternatives. He repeatedly asserted the Democratic plan would bring health care costs down
when the economy-wrecking opposite is the case.
We've Crossed the
Rubicon. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively
small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs
like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan. We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from
milking the system for billions. And we don't want to address in any meaningful way the individual's
responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and
chronic health procedures. No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private
sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new
technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we "are leveling the playing field" and have achieved another
Civil Rights landmark law.
Obamacare Violates Obama's Pledge Not to Increase Taxes.
As many as a dozen taxes in the new health care law violate President Barack Obama's campaign pledge not to
raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000. At
least seven of these taxes directly affect health consumers regardless of income, such as the individual
mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate, the tanning tax, and limits and penalties on health savings
accounts.
Why Revenge Is Necessary:
Let us start with all the lies that Barack Obama told or the promises that he broke, each one of which will
damage our way of life as the falsehood is made manifest in law. This president, this sinister creature
of Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky, of Indonesian sojourns and Columbia University radical salons,
campaigned vociferously against Hillary Clinton's call for an individual mandate for health insurance. Now
the individual mandate is the centerpiece of Obamacare. Obama promised that he would never, ever raise taxes
on individuals making under $200,000 or couples under $250,000. This legislation breaks that promise.
Coercive Charity
Destroys the Human Spirit. After the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Senate's health
care bill (without changes because they could not craft and pass a bill of their own), House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi proclaimed that the effort reflected American's founding declaration of "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness." Nothing could be farther [sic] from the truth.
In
Iowa, Obama fibs about his own health bill. In Iowa, President Obama repeated the myth that his bill
forces insurers to cover children with pre-existing conditions.
The Real ObamaCare Fraud. In
the final days before the climactic ObamaCare vote in Congress, one hotly disputed issue was the reliability of the
Congressional Budget Office's projection that the health plan would cost "only" $940 billion over
10 years. Critics charged that this figure was artificially low because it included a projected
21% cut in Medicare payments to physicians that Congress would later restore as a separate $247 billion
"doc fix." In essence, ObamaCare critics charged that supporters were engaged in fraudulent
accounting. The critics are right.
Obamacare
bait & switch. Candidate Obama repeatedly assured the public that his health care plan
would cost between $500 billion and $650 billion. This modest amount was to be covered
entirety by discontinuing the George W. Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year.
Today, we know that Obamacare will cost at least double that amount. The basic price tag is
$940 billion over 10 years, to which one must add the $208 billion "doc fix." ... Mr. Obama
is still trying to hide the extent of the bait-and-switch.
The GOP in the Wake of
ObamaCare: The president has made, repeatedly and on the record, extravagant claims.
He promised the moon and the stars. When those things not only don't come to pass, but when people see
that their lives are worse off thanks to ObamaCare, there will be a very high political price to pay.
We Are Expected to
Believe. [Scroll down slowly] We are expected to believe that Obama's signing rendered
the bill benign. We are expected to believe three thousand pages of shalls and shants, musts and
mandates, have drifted away on the breeze and can no longer come between our doctors and us. We are
expected to believe that a half-trillion in new taxes and a half-trillion in Medicare cuts will suddenly go
unnoticed. We are expected to believe that Enron-style CBO accounting will be transfigured into wondrous
sums for our grandchildren to behold. We are expected to believe that our newly disciplined government
will never let this entitlement break the bank.
Heritage Foundation Hits Obama Claim.
The Heritage Foundation issued a scathing retort Wednesday [3/31/2010] to President Obama's claim that it originated
one of the ideas in the recently enacted healthcare bill.
The ObamaCare
Writedowns — II. So the wave of corporate writedowns — led by AT&T's
$1 billion — isn't caused by ObamaCare after all. The White House claims CEOs are
reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.
Obama tries to mop up the mess he has made.
Obama's
No. 1 focus: It is not jobs. As Obama jets around the country trying to convince Americans that his
health care law is not the disaster it so clearly is, the economy continues to struggle.
Support for
Obamacare still tanking. Americans don't like redistributionist schemes because they know
that when politicians talk about "spreading the wealth" while promising they'll only take from the rich,
the Middle Class always ends up being the ones with their wealth redistributed. The rich take care
of themselves as they always do. This is why Democrats soft pedaled the redistributionist aspects
of Obamacare.
Top 10 Reasons Obamacare is a Disaster:
[#1] The Congressional Budget Office sets the projected cost of the healthcare package from 2010 to 2019
at $940 billion, reducing the deficit by $138 billion. The true cost of the new law will be far
greater. The legislation uses budgetary gimmicks to make it appear cheaper, including omitting cuts to
Medicare provider payment rates, double-counting savings from Medicare and the CLASS Act, indexing benefits
to general inflation rather than medical inflation, and delaying expensive provisions of the bill. When
these costs are accounted for, the new law is likely to cost $2.5 trillion.
Distractions used
to hide Obamacare's failures. It should have been predictable that the reaction to the passage
of the health care bill was to focus on the tone rather than the substance. Racial slurs, veiled and
unveiled threats, a litany of name calling, and the level of hysteria have all been useful tools for the
proponents of the bill who would rather discredit the opposition than face the defects of the bill, the
campaign promises that have been become lies, and the general bribery and sleaze that surrounded the
support of the bill.
Obama's deficit
deception: Barack Obama claims Obamacare is necessary to keep the country solvent. This is
a strange assertion coming from the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history.
Five
things we learned about Obamacare after it passed. [#1] Despite all of Obama's promises
and talking points, Obamacare as passed by Congress does not require insurers to cover children with expensive
pre-existing medical conditions. Immediately, the White House got an assurance from the insurers.
After demonizing them for months as callous profiteers on others' misery (in fact, the entire industry is
barely profitable), Obama now tells Americans that they can trust health insurance companies to do the right
thing out of the goodness of their hearts.
An Off-Budget Office? Under the
headline "Costly Bill Seen as Saving Money," the San Francisco Chronicle last week began a front-page story
with these words: "Many people find it hard to understand how the health care legislation heading for a
decisive vote Sunday can cost $940 billion and cut the horrendous federal deficit at the same time."
It's not hard to understand at all. It is a lie.
Sorry: No bump
for Obamacare. Last September, just as public opinion was beginning to turn against Obamacare in a serious
way, Bill Clinton made a bold prediction. "The minute health care reform passed," he said in a policy forum in New
York City, "President Obama's approval ratings would go up 10 points." Clinton's prediction reflected the
wishful assumption of many wishful liberal-leaning pundits and think tank analysts, as well as the strategy of Obama's
political advisers.
White
House trying to scale back Obama's pledge on taxes. During his election campaign, President Obama
made a very clear and unambiguous promise: If your family makes less than $250,000 per year, then none of
your taxes will be increased — period. But in order to gloss over the tax increases contained in
Obamacare — on the sick, the uninsured, and durable medical equipment — President Obama
is trying to alter that pledge in the middle of his term.
Gaming The Health Insurance
Mandate. Democrats claim their newly passed health insurance reform will eventually provide
health coverage for more than 30 million uninsured people. Don't bet on it.
House
Democrats, Out on a Limb for Obamacare, Hear a Snapping Sound. Endangered House Democrat Brad
Ellsworth of Indiana, now running for the Senate in Indiana, justified his vote for the health-care bill by
declaring: ["]In addition to meeting my pro-life principles, the plan reduces costs, improves access to
affordable insurance options, covers pre-existing conditions, and does not add one penny to the deficit.["]
Now that it has passed, we learn that it doesn't do this at all.
When Does "Spin" Descend
Into Abject Lies? Last evening [3/17/2010], in an interview with FOX News Channel's Bret Baier,
President Obama made several statements that veered from simply untrue to outright bizarre. At one point,
he claimed that everyone "knows" what is in the bill. That is patently untrue. A handful of
favored members of Congress have the details of its contents and they are keeping those details very close to
the vest, as they have throughout this extremely secretive process.
What Lies Beneath: The
economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's
health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers,
had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional
votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the
document before the vote was taken.
Decency Gap. A review of the
Democrats' health care bill, showing that the plan would increase costs, was available before Congress voted on the
measure. The health secretary reportedly sat on it. This is transparency?
Obamacare Costs Hidden From Congress.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had information that Obamacare would raise health expenditures
and drive hospitals into the red prior to the final House healthcare vote, but didn't share it with members of
Congress because the pending report was being internally reviewed.
DeMint: "President Obama Thinks Americans are
Stupid". After Obamacare passed, The President announced that "it will reduce our deficit by over
$100 billion over the next decade and more than $1 trillion the decade after that." However, Rick
Foster, the Actuary for Medicare, predicts the opposite. ... President Obama acts as if the American people are
naïve. Yet Americans know enough about Obamacare and government to understand that a massive expansion of a
new entitlement program won't lower healthcare costs or balance the budget.
CBO Increases
Estimated Cost Of Obamacare by $115 Billion. Hot off the Presses, the Congressional Budget
Office released a revised estimate of Obamacare, adding about $115 billion more in discretionary
spending over ten years than the original cost projections which were already suspect. The additional
spending would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to about $1 trillion.
CBO
Hikes ObamaCare Cost Estimate By $115 Billion. The Congressional Budget Office today [5/11/2010]
released an analysis of discretionary spending in the law, and found that those costs will "probably exceed"
$115 billion over 10 years. At a stroke, that erases almost all of ObamaCare's $143 billion
in budget savings based off rushed, incomplete CBO projections given just before the decisive House vote in
March.
The Truth and Barack Obama:
[Scroll down slowly] There's a certain irony in being instructed by Obama about avoiding arguments that
"don't always rank that high on the truth meter." This instruction, after all, comes from a man who,
throughout the health-care debate, repeatedly made false and misleading arguments about the effects of ObamaCare
on bending the cost curve, on the deficit and debt, on whether people will be forced to leave their employer-based
policies, on whether his plan advocated Medicare cuts, on whether it would subsidize abortions, and much else.
Obamacare's
Cooked Books and the 'Doc Fix'. It is undeniably true that CBO says the legislation,
as
written, would reduce the federal budget deficit by $124 billion over ten years from the
health-related provisions of the new law. But that's not [the] whole story about Obamacare's
budgetary implications — not by a long shot.
Never
Letting a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. [Scroll down] This doctrine similarly was
implemented after the ObamaCare health measure had been all-but-abandoned when Scott Brown surprisingly
defeated Attorney-General Martha Coakley in the race for United State Senator from Massachusetts.
Soon after, unexpectedly, a national pseudo-crisis emerged when Anthem Blue Cross, a California health
insurer, sought to raise its health premiums by as much as 39 percent. The crisis was not
wasted by Washington. Within days, ObamaCare was rushed back onto the House calendar. Forgotten
amid the federal legislative carnage that followed ... is that Anthem Blue Cross ultimately withdrew their
rate-hike request...
President
Pinocchio sells Obamacare. President Obama's nose grows longer every time he talks about Obamacare,
especially when speaking to seniors. Obama told a group of seniors in suburban Maryland last week that
"what you need to know is that the guaranteed Medicare benefits that you've earned will not change, regardless
of whether you receive them through Medicare or Medicare Advantage." As the Wall Street Journal archly
observed last week, "nothing about that sentence is true."
The Bottleneck is Always at the Top.
The more the President flexes his media-enhanced, teleprompter-controlled, highly-reverberated communication
skills the more people don't want what he's selling. Using procedure and manipulation the same 50+1
strategy candidate Obama said should not be used to pass health care was used to pass health care while the
rest of the agenda stands waiting in the wings.
Obama's
tax-funded propaganda campaign isn't swaying seniors on Obamacare. For the 4th straight week,
Americans favor repealing Obamacare by a margin of more than 20 percentage points, according to Rasmussen's
poll of likely voters. This week, 58 percent of Americans favor repeal, while only 36 percent
oppose it. Among seniors, the direct targets of the disinformation campaign, support for repeal is
actually up from last week.
So
Much For 'Keeping Your Plan'. An early draft of regulations written for the health care
overhaul estimates that more than half of U.S. workers will see their medical insurance change. Funny,
that's not the promise we remember.
The Bad News About
ObamaCare Keeps Piling Up. [Scroll down] Take his oft-expressed statement that if you like
the coverage you have, you can keep it. That sounds good — but perverse incentives in
his new law will cause most Americans to lose their existing insurance. This was brought home to me when
I asked the CEO of a major restaurant chain about health reform's effect on his company, which now spends
$25 million a year on employee health insurance. That will jump to at least $90 million a
year once the new law is phased in.
Obama Admin. Argues in
Court That Individual Mandate Is a Tax. In order to protect the new national health care
law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate
represents a tax — even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass
the legislation.
ObamaCare's Mandate Is Not A Tax, Except When It Is.
The Obama administration has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from 20 states opposing ObamaCare's
individual mandate, which requires almost all Americans to purchase health insurance. According to
Obama's Justice Department, the individual mandate is constitutional because "requiring individuals to
buy health insurance is an exercise of Congress' taxing authority."
Obama's
Hard Choices for Other People. Obama could have shelved his expensive healthcare reform in these
tough economic times, focused on real job creation, and tried again in a second term, on the back of a
recovery. Instead, he used a variety of accounting tricks to make his healthcare reform look
affordable and used the brute power of the presidency to push it through. He's currently scolding
private insurance companies for hiking their premiums to account for greater risk — risk caused
by his reforms.
Results not matching Obama
rhetoric. Obama told us his $1 trillion health care overhaul would lower medical costs,
reduce the federal deficit and not threaten Americans happy with their insurance. The Congressional
Budget Office says health care costs will continue to rise and put "tremendous pressure" on the federal
budget. Some companies are calculating that it may be cheaper to pay a fine than to continue
financing employer-provided insurance. And many seniors stand to lose Medicare Advantage coverage.
He's Playing You. The
bamacare socialized medicine takeover legislation doesn't even go into effect until 2014, and he is saying
now in 2010 just 3 or 4 months after its passage, hey, look around, where are all those scary results
they told us about? What I am wondering, actually, is just how stupid does he think we are? He is
thinking that enough of us are too stupid to know that his socialized medicine bill doesn't go into effect until
2014, and that he can play us for fools with this kind of shameful, manipulative, abusive rhetoric.
The
Obamacare Abortion Lie Is Up. [Scroll down] The truth of the matter is that news today
that Maryland was planning on funding abortions in their high-risk pool is but the tip of the iceberg.
Don't be surprised if another story drops. And if it's not a high-risk pool. And the administration
will have to provide a new myth or actually act — as HHS is saying it plans to — to
prohibit that which is not currently prohibited. But don't expect them to admit they've been
lying to us all this time.
Why
the ObamaCare Tax Penalty Is Unconstitutional. The Justice Department announced
last week that it would defend the new federal health-insurance mandate as an exercise of Congress's
"power to lay and collect taxes," even though Barack Obama had insisted before the bill's passage
that it was "absolutely not a tax increase."
Obamacare
and 'Reeducation'. The White House and its allies continue their reeducation campaign about Obamacare,
trying to convince people they should like this massive health-care overhaul after all, and it appears that
their latest tool is deceptively worded opinion polls.
Issa
hits Obama admin for extensive use of 'propaganda' to boost health care. Rep. Darrell Issa,
California Republican, is blasting the Obama administration in a new report, charging the administration has
engaged in an "unprecedented" propaganda effort to sell the president's health care and other policies.
"Under one-party rule in 2009, the White House used the machinery of the Obama campaign to tout the President's
agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives," the report
says.
Media
Nearly Silent as ObamaCare Proponents Drop Deficit, Cost Savings Claims. It has now been five
days since Politico's Ben Smith published a powerpoint presentation created by an amalgamation of powerful
left wing interest groups, conceding that two of the central arguments for passing ObamaCare — that
it will lower the deficit and will reduce health care costs — have failed.
General disingenuousness
Obama's Manufactured Fury. Freedom
lovers the world over, and American patriots in particular, have been living for 18 months with Obama's
"furious". It's the slow burning, destructive kind that takes down business and jobs. They have
watched as Obama resolutely pulls the wings off a country the rest of the world looks up to. ... Obama's fury
about the oil spill disaster is like the rest of him: phony.
Ten Mental Mistakes of Obamatons.
Barack Obama peppers his rhetoric with a veritable buffet of verbal trickery. But why? If Obamatons are
correct, and Barack is one of history's great speakers, why must he use cheap rhetorical tricks to win support?
The answer is Obama offers ideas which, on their face, are either counter-intuitive, or false to the average
listener. Speakers do not mislead unless they sense an inability to otherwise persuade their audience.
Therefore Barack needs extra help to persuade. What other explanation can there be for such incongruent
methods?
The War on Truth: Has Obama
ever seriously searched for truth? His lifelong chums are a gaggle of pseudo-thinkers and strong-arm operatives
who float through college into jobs unconnected with honor. He reads us his soul off a teleprompter whose
digitized letters conform to polling data. The terrifying numbers which his surreal spending has created
mean nothing to him. The threats to our nation are real to him only as they affect his polling numbers.
His indifference to truth is the greatest danger he presents the world.
Obama's Worst Interview Ever.
If Barack Obama had been engaged in an ordinary job interview on Wednesday evening [3/17/2010], he would not
have been hired. Any experienced interviewer would have instantly picked up on his avoidance of straight
answers and body language that revealed deceptive behavior.
The Real Obama. The Obama Myth
rests on three assumptions: (a) Obama is a nonideological pragmatist; (b) Obama is an uncommonly powerful
communicator; and (c) Obama has a gut connection with the people. All three are wrong. Only
the Democrats' fantasy that opposition to their agenda is limited to a lunatic fringe has blinded them
from seeing the president's liabilities. Let's open their eyes.
Obama's Bogus Summits.
Yesterday's [4/26/2010] kick-off of the "Entrepreneurship Summit" in Washington DC, intended, according to
Jake Tapper, "to help deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and entrepreneurs in the United States
and Muslim communities around the world" is the fourth hollow and stage-managed "summit" organized by Barack Obama.
The Editor says...
You may recall the jobs
summit,
*
the fiscal responsibility
summit,
*
and the beer summit.
*
And who could (not) forget the big
Health Care Summit on February 25?
Mr. Obama wants to convey the illusion that he's working, but he has a big problem with overexposure
on television. My impression is that he likes to
preside while other people work, but he
doesn't have any ideas of his own.
Ringmaster-in-Chief.
While we all understand that P. T. Barnum was an exceptional entertainer and showman, his financial
business philosophy was always the same — sell the hoax. ... It becomes more obvious every day that
Barack Obama has turned out to be a far greater pitchman than even P. T. Barnum could have ever
imagined. President — or should I say Pitchman — Obama's understanding of the
gullibility of humanity seems eerily similar to that of P. T. Barnum.
Obama —
Too Little, Too late, Too Cynical. The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion
by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our
national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes 13 months
into this administration — and only after Obama added nearly $1.5 trillion in new borrowing in
2009. And by the time the new deficit commission submits its recommendations at the end of this year, the
current 2010 budget will have put us out another $1.5 trillion.
President
Obama's Official Twitterer Connected To MoveOn.org. The woman that poses as Barack Obama on all his
social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is connected to the far-left organization
MoveOn.org. For those scratching their heads, the President in theory is a member of these websites.
However, he obviously isn't responsible for typing in the little messages that are going out to his followers
almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Obama and the Government
Employees: [Scroll down] While he talks the talk about the deficit and freezing discretionary
spending, Obama engages in a spending binge that would make Imelda Marcos proud. But look what else the
Magician-in-Chief is doing: giving even more money and benefits to government workers, and doing it in
a very
untransparent and sneaky way. Barack Obama is planning a major overhaul of the Federal
government pay system that would boost pay for government workers while loosening scrutiny on how they do
their jobs.
Handling problems the Obama way.
There is a sense of déjà vu in the Obama administration's response to the attempted terrorist
attack on Christmas Day. A by-now familiar pattern has been established for dealing with unexpected
problems. First, White House aides downplay the notion that something may have gone wrong on their part.
The Bizarro President.
72 hours after the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253, Barack Obama finally checked in
with the American people — while still on vacation in Hawaii. ... Meanwhile, the president has managed
to find plenty of time to hit the links and work on his golf game. So when the president uses the phrase
"I or we will not rest" until something is done, does it really mean anything?
Obama's Year of Living Blamelessly.
Barack Obama has figured out what went wrong with Homeland Security this past Christmas: George W.
Bush. ... Here's a prediction: Obama will find that he's gone to the Blame Bush well one too many times.
With the Christmas Day fiasco something has "become clear," alright. But it's not the failings of
George W. Bush.
All the president's mendacity.
[Scroll down] And like with so many issues, Obama adorned his rhetoric with sharp warnings of
calamity should he fail, fabricated consensus to buttress his case and a promise of rapture should
he succeed. You'll remember it was Obama who cautioned that failure to pass the stimulus boondoggle
would "turn a crisis into a catastrophe." He claimed that a failure to act on cap and trade will
lead us to "irreversible catastrophe" and a failure to pass a government-run health care system will
mean "more Americans dying every day."
How
O says he's about to mislead. [Scroll down] For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address
featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes. There was the vague reference
to "those who" question his agenda; the "false choice" they use to deceive the public; the determination to
"be clear" and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as
signals that the president is about to mislead us.
Obama's Game of False
Choices: From war to foreign policy to the economy, Obama is constantly setting up his "false
choices" in order to soundly "reject" the false choice at hand. The gimmick works well to make Obama
appear really smart, as one who thinks outside the box. In the "fallacy of false choices," Christopher
Beam notes that Obama often sets up straw men and appears to create wiser third options in rejecting the
false choices.
Of College, Character And
'Catastrophe'. Dick Morris' new book — "Catastrophe" — is an education
in itself, on politics, on economics and on foreign policy. It is a strong antidote to the pious
rhetoric and spin that come out of Washington and the media. ... In describing Barack Obama's economic
policies, Morris says simply: "Curing the recession was not his end; it was his means to the end.
The end was bigger government." Obama's actions often make no sense if you believe Obama's words, but
they do make sense if you follow Morris' analysis.
Pelosi's hide-and-seek
accounting. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's directive for lawmakers to disclose individual office spending
online for the first time was billed as a victory for transparency. Well, not really. Earlier this month,
the House clerk posted 3,400 pages of expense reports detailing about $300 million in spending on everything
from staff salaries to mail, but the effort was a sham. The new disclosure system hides more than it reveals.
Obama's
Willful Failure of Comprehension. The violence at Fort Hood, President Obama told mourners on
Tuesday [11/10/2009], was "incomprehensible." The "twisted logic that led to the tragedy," he reiterated,
may be "too hard to comprehend." ... What exactly is so hard to comprehend? Fort Hood jihadist Maj. Nidal
Hasan made his means, motives and inspiration all too clear for those willing to see and hear.
Stop the
'jobless recovery' madness! It's time to stop glorifying our economic doldrums with this
"jobless recovery" nonsense. ... So far there is no sign of an employment turnaround — and
without one, and soon, all the other gains could prove fleeting.
President
Obama's jobs summit is a great feast of folly. Obama's goal is to show he's serious about
taking action on the backsliding economy and to convince the electorate that public activity means real
policy action. I'll have to crash Obama's party, because summits are giant publicity stunts where
loads of taxpayer money is spent on fancy backdrops, flower arrangements and so much glad-handing and
back-slapping that the participants leave with calluses and whiplash.
Obama
Reducing the Debt? Dream On. Obama and his party simply will not agree to keep their
grubby government hands off the estimated $200 billion the banks are going to repay under TARP. ... Obama
[has announced] that he intends to intercept a good portion of the debt repayments and spend it on job
creation and assistance to certain debtors. I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember
that his stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for
that purpose.
Obama's Dover Device. Astonishing
though it may be, there are Americans who actually believe that Barack Obama's vist to Dover was an authentic
expression of concern for our troops and empathy for their loved ones. Of all the Obama fabrications,
this has to be one of the more preposterous. The Narcissist in Chief was not showing empathy because
he doesn't have any.
Obama Similes. Obama
is like Oprah. Much like the media queen, Obama can change vernacular faster than you can say
"ebonics." ... He can simultaneously exist in the world of down home commoners and international elites.
For a guy raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, and educated at Columbia and Harvard, we can see through it,
though. ... I'll never understand the need for vernacular shifts, and many could argue that President
Bush's twang became more evident when speaking to particular audiences. But when Bush's voice
slipped to Southern, it was to his natural dialect; Obama's shift is purely for show.
Obama
is Overreaching. So there is President Barack Obama, giving a speech to a bunch of Democrats, and
he is saying "y'all" do this and "y'all" should consider that, and pretty soon I am asking myself, how did he
become habituated to saying "y'all?" In his youth in Indonesia and Hawaii? From his Kansas
grandparents? At Harvard Law School?
The Recoveryless Recovery.
The [National Bureau of Economic Research]'s Business Cycle Dating Committee is the "official" caller of
recessions. It looks for peaks and troughs in economic indicators. ... It might just be coincidence that
of the seven members on the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, one is the husband of Christina Romer, the
Chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. Mrs. Romer herself was a member of the NBER's
board, along with her husband, until just after Obama's election.
Our Lowered Economic
Expectations. The stock market reaches an old milestone and the unemployment rate is below
10%. In Obama's America, that's worthy of celebration.
The
three envelopes. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy,
global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad —
everything but swine flu. It's as if Obama's presidency hasn't really started. He's still taking
inventory of the Bush years.
Record Time to Nowhere. It's
all a lot like his economic stimulus, which somehow never seems to dent the unemployment rate. On the
contrary, joblessness continues to grow in tandem with the deficit. But who cares? This president is
articulate even if he doesn't actually say anything, a great leader even if he isn't actually leading. It's
the talk that counts, don't you see?
Welcome to the World
of Newspeak. [Scroll down] Newspeak usage also crops up in legislation with titles that
are the exact opposite of a bill's intent. With ever-shortening American attention spans and media's
increasing focus on entertainment news, Newspeak is not simply a fictional danger but a real threat to the
practice of democracy in America. Some recent examples include: "The Respect for Marriage Act,"
"The Employee Free Choice Act," "Internet Freedom Preservation Act," "American Clean Energy and Security Act"
and "America's Healthy Future Act." A quick examination of each reveals Newspeak at work.
You Mislead!
It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson's lead. If they yelled out every time
President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.
Excuses wearing thin for Obama,
media pals. [Scroll down] Just a few months ago, the Obama camp ... was under criticism for
the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed
to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice
President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was." They inherited the worst economy since the
Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be
both — unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma.
Unmasking Obama. It is now
abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and
exaggerated. He has worn a series of masks — eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and
literary sensation. All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice.
By hook or crook...
House Approves
Hate-Crimes Measure as Part of Defense Funding. Legislation to punish hate crimes became a flashpoint on
Capitol Hill on Thursday [10/8/2009], as a measure expanding the definition of such crimes was attached to the bill
outlining the Defense Department budget and approved by the House over the strong objections of Republicans.
The monster behind the mask.
Once the bill has been signed (make no mistake, the mask will stop at nothing to accomplish this), then the
mask — the façade of comfort and compassion — can be removed, for then it will be too late to
push the monster back into the dark cave from whence it came. This Halloween, Americans will be treated to the most
sinister — the most evil of all conceptual monsters: A monster of lies and deceit.
Obama's Theorems.
Part of the problem with the president's agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted,
rather than proven. His experts and the elites assure us of a reality that most people in their own more mundane lives
have not found to be true. In short, they may find Obama personally engaging, but they no longer believe what he says.
New Survey on Islam Calls Into Question Population
Figure Used by Obama. A comprehensive new survey of the world's Muslim population finds that
nearly one in four people on the planet is an adherent of Islam, but the number of Muslims it gives for the
United States is significantly smaller than those routinely cited by Islamic organizations — and
used by President Obama in his Cairo speech last June.
What Is
Yosi Sergant? Here's how Obama-era "transparency" works in practice: A government agency
is caught in a scandal. The chairman of the agency issues a statement blaming the scandal on an unnamed
"employee," who, the chairman asserts, "has been relieved of his duties." The statement omits the fact
that the offending employee still works for the same agency, in the same office, as he did before. When
a journalist inquires about this, he is told by a colleague in that very same office — the
communications office! — that she knows nothing about his new assignment. It's hard to
imagine government being more evasive and opaque.
The article above refers
to this scandal.
Obama's Speech: Did It Help Him?
From a policy standpoint, there was nothing new in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress
tonight [9/9/2009]. It can only be assessed, therefore, in political terms. Here are some excerpts
from the speech that I thought were noteworthy: "
Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare
tactics." Then, a few minutes later: "
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we
do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will
close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will
die as a result." By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.
No, Mr. President. In
his
60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight [9/13/2009], President Obama apparently says, "I intend to be president for a while
and once this bill passes, I own it....I'm the one who's going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to
get this right." No, Mr. President. It's not about you. If legislation passes, you don't own it.
We all own it. Any health care bill will become part of the U.S. Code, not simply an item on the Obama White House
web site. We will all feel its effects. We are all responsible for the future of our country. Here the
people rule.
Obama Won't Give Federal Insurance Benefits to Illegal Aliens,
He'll Make Them Legal First. It is true that both the House and Senate health care bills as they are now
drafted would make illegal aliens ineligible for federally funded health care. But President Obama has stated as
recently as last month at a press conference in Mexico that he will seek "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation
that will put illegal aliens on a "pathway to citizenship."
Distortions — or Truths? Does the House bill
fund abortions? No. However, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee at first voted to exclude abortions
from "essential" services, to the howls of NOW, Chairman Henry Waxman conducted a second vote, to drop the anti-abortion
amendment. That vote carried. In short, funding for abortions remains an open question. ... Obama is a
pro-abortion absolutist. And if abortion-funding is not in the final health care bill, does anyone doubt that
Democrats will move swiftly to incorporate it in future legislation?
Kill
Grandma or Terrorists Win. Remember when George W. Bush was pushing his plan for partial
privatization of Social Security, and he warned that if Congress didn't pass it, it would weaken his
presidency, with dire results for the war on terror? Neither do we. He never said any such
thing. As best we remember, no one thought to make such a ludicrous argument. Add that to the
list of things that have changed in the age of Obama.
An American Socrates and Other Myths.
It is not enough for Obama to repeat his false claims, day after day, speech after speech. No, he must also
portray himself as America's Socrates, our voice of reason amidst the angry mob, an intrepid truth teller, a singularly
unifying and visionary figure, and a man astonishingly free from the ideological baggage that defines his critics.
He views himself as the adult in a world of children. This is all quite silly. Obama is, in almost every
respect, the opposite of what he portrays himself to be. He is a divisive, polarizing figure, among the most
divisive and polarizing we have ever seen.
Obama as the Wizard of Oz.
Even as
Science magazine is hastily backing off on the media fraud of "global warming," Obama's Medi-Scare Campaign
is using precisely the same fear tactics perfected by climate fraud peddlers to take over American medical care. ... But
neither climate fraud nor Medi-Scare do anything to fix the dire "emergency" they are trying to scare us about.
There is no emergency: There is no global warming doom coming up, and there no crisis in American medicine.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.
Obama
and the Permanent Campaign. The administration's rhetorical tricks extend to issues beyond health
care. The economy continues shedding jobs, yet the administration keeps saying the president's policies save
jobs. ... What Team Obama says not only runs counter to the experience of ordinary Americans, it's causing many to
conclude that their White House is misleading them.
One of several T-shirts and bumper stickers
at
Cafe Press.
Reclaiming Popular Sovereignty: The
deceptions and contradictions are astounding. [Obama's] premises for policy change are consistently
duplicitous. He's embarked on a course to deliberately bankrupt the nation; he is at war with
mainstream American values; he is undermining our national security during wartime (prosecuting our
protectors — and otherwise); and he's pursuing unprecedented government control of the private
sector. Just look at his handling of Obamacare. His stated goals aren't arguably fraudulent, but
verifiably so.
ACES Up Her Sleeve. Well before
Barack Obama brought hope to the White House, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was adamant that something new and different and
wonderful had arrived. In 2006, the incoming Speaker pledged that hers would be the "most honest, most open, and most
ethical Congress in history." At the time, we were skeptical — to say the least. Our refusal to accept
her rhetoric was roundly vindicated last week. That was when Madam-Speaker used every dirty trick at her
disposal to coldly ram a 1,500 page global warming bill through the House of Representatives.
Relentless Cuts Net 0.0025% In Savings.
The administration has fulfilled a promise to cut spending by trimming $100 million from the 2009 budget. That's
right — $100 million with an "m," an imponderably small slice of this year's expenditures.
Preparing
for War: Boning Up on the Left's Health Care Myths. [President Obama] enjoys
saying — incorrectly — Americans pay $6,000 more per year on health care than people
of other advanced nations for no better care. The statement is abominably false. Just
as Obama is manipulating the cost and benefit numbers to enlist popular and Blue Dog support for
his socialized medicine conspiracy, he distorts statistics to make the specious claim that our
health care system isn't far superior to all others.
Destroying Jobs in Order to Save Them.
President Barack Obama is very insistent on the need to "save American jobs." ... But instead of saving
American jobs, Obama's new corporate tax is apt to worsen what is already the highest unemployment since 1983
and make America's companies even less competitive in the global marketplace.
White House 'Reality Check' Web Site Claims.
A new Web site launched Monday [8/10/2009] by the Obama administration to rebut alleged disinformation about the
administration's efforts to reform the health care system claims that reform "would not add one penny to the
deficit" — despite the fact that the two health care reform bills that have been analyzed by the
Congressional Budget Office are predicted by the CBO to increase the national debt by $239 billion and
$1.042 trillion respectively. The administration, meanwhile, has not produced any health-care reform
legislation that has been independently determined to be deficit-neutral.
Obama's punctured
gravitas: Barack Obama's political glass jaw is the illusion of gravitas that was successfully
sold to enough Americans to get him elected. His stentorian deep voice persuades many, never mind the
pablum of vague clichés he dishes out. Rush Limbaugh brilliant punctures the illusion by speeding
up the tape and raising Obama's register when he plays excerpts of the president speaking. Minus the deep
voice, with an altered rhythm no longer hypnotically caressing the listener, the banality of the actual words
becomes clear.
Make way for Obama the Bogeyman.
The World Health Organization (WHO) — helping the Obama administration stir the pot on panicking
the public into believing a deadly viral pandemic is headed our way this Fall — is getting a big
leg up from the Discovery Channel. It's been a summer of Internet warnings "the pandemic is coming", and
now the Discovery Channel will telecast the definitive Viral Pandemic Survival Show. News of the coming
scare show is available courtesy of Kurt Nimmo at Infowars, those folk challenged by mainstream media as
"conspiracy theory advocates".
That sounds to me
like an example of Low-level environmental terrorism.
Some economists warn Barack Obama's economic
predictions too optimistic. President Barack Obama's economic forecasts for long-term growth are
too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher
than the administration is now acknowledging. The White House will be forced to confront the disconnect
between its original, upbeat predictions and the mainstream consensus about how the economy is likely to
perform in a new budget forecast to be unveiled next month.
Cap and Trade; a Solution to a Non-existent
Problem with Devastating Consequences. D.H. Lawrence said, "
Never trust the teller. Trust
the tale." But what happens if the tale is wrong? What happens if the teller knows or should
know the tale is wrong? The key word is trust. A relationship must have trust. A society can
only exist with trust. Political leaders can only succeed with trust. Trust cannot exist when an
unnecessary end is reached by false means, which is happening with the US climate and energy policies.
Did
someone mention Cap and Trade?
The U.S. Government's
Climate Con-job. Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations
with computer simulations and hired PR flacks to promote its new "wonder drug." News stories, congressional
hearings and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow. And rightly
so. But the standards change when "climate catastrophe" is involved.
Overheated White House
Environmental Campaigns. [President Obama] has said on global warming, "The science is beyond
dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen
record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."
Fortunately for the world, not a single one of those claims is accurate.
Obama Revisionism.
During his 4th of July message to the United States, Barack Obama engaged in another round of historical revisionism.
Many have probably not heard the speech ... but the message Obama attempted to sell was a clear distortion of the founding
principles of the United States. Uneducated or undereducated Americans, the products of liberal, politically correct
"instruction" in most public schools, probably would not be able to challenge his slick, deceitful incorporation of the
founding generation into a speech about big government.
Still Decoding Obama.
I recently devoted a piece to trying to decode President Obama. In reading more of his comments, I've
noticed a tendency that now almost qualifies as a reflex: the more strongly the president denies
something — and especially, the more he mocks his critics and feigns amusement at what they
say — the greater the odds are that he will do what he denies.
Imagine what he thinks of
cigarettes. This gem just in from Tuesday's press conference: Obama: "At a time of
great fiscal challenges, this legislation [Waxman-Markey bill coming to the House floor Friday] is paid for
by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and
pollute the air we breathe."
The Editor says...
Even Obama's speech writers and teleprompter operators can't possibly believe that carbon dioxide
pollutes "the water we drink" and "the air we breathe." When you turn on your garden hose,
if carbonated water comes out of it, you'll have the greenest grass in town. Simply stated,
carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
Understanding the Age
of Obama. Are you confused by all that has changed since President Barack Obama took office in
January? If so, you're not alone. ... Wanting to cut $17 billion from the budget, as President
Obama has promised, is proof of financial responsibility. Borrowing $1.84 trillion this year for
new programs is "stimulus." The old phrase "out-of-control spending" is inoperative.
Obama: America
"One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World". As we noted earlier, and as ABC now confirms, Obama's
speech in Cairo will focus on his Muslim roots and the unique perspective it provides him. Obama also teased the
contents of the speech in an interview with a French television station: "...Now, the flip side is I think that the
United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points
I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim
countries in the world."
Obama's
Muslim comment sparks debate. President Obama's assertion that the United States is one of the world's
biggest Muslim countries has sparked debate about the comment's accuracy and how far the president will extend himself
to the Muslim world. "If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim
countries in the world," the president told French television station Canal Plus on Monday [6/1/2009], the eve of
his five-day, overseas trip with stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The Not So Golden Mean.
The best way to view President Obama's speech in Cairo is to understand the way Obama views himself and the
rhetorical devices he employs. In this case, the key to unlocking Obama's speech may be Aristotle's golden
mean, the search for a mid-point between extremes. Obama's rhetorical template is an increasingly familiar
one: he gives voice to one side of a dispute and then the other.
Sorry Barack, but there were no Muslims on the
Mayflower. Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama said that
Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions Muslims have made to the history and development
of the United States. "I know that Islam has always been a part of America's story," Mr. Obama told the
throng of unenlightened Muslims.
More
about Obama's speech in Cairo, June 4, 2009.
Obama pretends to be frugal as we sink deeper in
debt. Remember President Obama's New Era of Responsibility? It got off to an inauspicious
start, with a $787 billion economic stimulus package, a $410 billion appropriations bill, and a
record $1.8 trillion budget deficit. But now Obama wants to signal that he's getting serious
about cutting the federal budget. Unfortunately, his plan hinges on the assumption that Americans
do not know how to calculate percentages.
Biden Claims Stimulus Spending
Has Created 150,000 Jobs. Vice President Joe Biden last week claimed that the federal stimulus
spending program has created or saved 150,000 jobs since February, when President Barack Obama signed the
stimulus bill into law. ... However, the basis for his claim is elusive at best.
Relief is too
slow. President Obama's claim that his economic stimulus plan has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs
is all but meaningless, given a 9.4 percent unemployment rate. Nobody can measure plausibly a "saved"
job. ... But Democrats are touting the phony concept of "saved" jobs because they know it's impossible to
disprove, too. It's a lame attempt to spin criticism that the federal recession-fighting plan isn't
fighting the recession very effectively so far.
Untangling the Spaghetti. A couple
of years back, I happened to catch an intriguing headline up north. "The Canadian economy is picking up
steam," reported the CBC. Statistics Canada had just announced that "the economy added 56,100 new jobs,
two-thirds of them full time." ... But I was interested to know just what sectors these jobs had been created
in. And, upon investigation, it emerged that, of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 were self-employed, 8,900
were in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 were on the public payroll. "The economy" hadn't
added those jobs; the government had: that's why they call it "creating" jobs.
Mission Accomplished?
Eight years after war was declared on the US and the most heinous attack on the USA was launched on American soil,
the war has been won (according to President Obama). Done. Over. Does not exist. No
need to call it the war on terror, so says Obama. Now it is merely an "overseas contingency operation".
The Politics of Stupidity: Crazy Word Games from Team
Obama. It looks like the "intelligence" in the Obama administration isn't too intellectual.
Instead of using the word "terrorism" to describe things such as the terrorist attack on 9/11, Janet Napolitano,
head of Obama's Department of Homeland Security, says we're now supposed to use the words "man-caused disasters."
That sounds like a wreck at the Indy 500. ... That change to nicer wording puts Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the
9/11 hijackings and the suspected pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, in the same
boat as those folks who shipped the contaminated peanut butter from that plant in Blakely, Ga. Both
produced "man-caused disasters."
The Half-Penny Solution.
President Obama unveiled a budget Thursday with a 2010 price tag of $3.5 trillion financed with
$1.2 trillion of new debt. For domestic agencies, that's a 9.3% spending hike over last year.
Mr. Obama and his advisers know the public won't accept gigantic governmental expansions without at least some
effort to pare the waste in Washington. So they scrubbed "line by line" through this historically huge
budget and identified $16.7 billion of budget savings. This is less than a penny, about 0.47 cents,
of savings out of every dollar Uncle Sam will spend this year.
Rephrasing
Obama's lexicon. In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away
from "cap and trade." Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic
pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late. Now when Obama talks
about forcing companies to bid at auction for the right to emit greenhouse gases, he is more apt to mention
"market-based" proposals and "clean energy jobs," hinting at a rich new employment source.
Obama At the Plate.
It's been clear for some time that Barack Obama knows every technique in the debater's handbook, and he must have used most
of them during the course of that first White House press conference: There was the dubious revisionist history rolled
out ever so casually, as if it were accepted fact (tax cuts don't work); the assumption that any fault lies not in us but
elsewhere ... The man can say the most unbelievable things in the most matter-of-fact way, for example, his claim that
there's "not a single pet project" in his stimulus bill.
We don't have a moment to spare, but evidently we
have $1 trillion. Last October, while campaigning in Toledo, Barack Obama called for "a new
ethic of responsibility." The nation's economic troubles, he said, occurred partly because "everyone
was living beyond their means," including politicians who "spent money they didn't have." In his
inaugural address last month, Obama regretted "our collective failure to make hard choices" and heralded "a
new era of responsibility." Now President Obama, as one of his first priorities, is pushing a gargantuan
"stimulus" plan that will add around $1 trillion to the national debt and cannot possibly work as
advertised. Welcome to the new era of responsibility.
The Bread and Circuses Presidency.
Call it the Bread and Circuses Presidency, or better yet the Bailouts and Reality TV Presidency. Forget
expecting results or ethics from the occupant of the White House. Just join an organization or a cause
and stick your hand out for your share of of misappropriated taxpayer money, and get ready to vote online for
which puppy the Obamas should adopt.
Obama
is a Great Pretender. To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician —
more honest, more courageous — please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do,
you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect.
He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget
deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.
Michelle Obama serves food
to D.C. poor and homeless, but... First Lady Michelle Obama showed up Thursday as a surprise
and welcome volunteer at Miriam's Kitchen, a soup kitchen for homeless poor people not far from the White
House. She brought with her some food donated by White House staff. ... [But] If this unidentified meal
recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone? And if he is homeless, where
do they send the cellphone bills?
Obama's
Diversionary Tactics: Stickers and Straw Men. From unveiling new emblems to attacking
Rush Limbaugh, Obama sure knows how to change the subject from a tanking economy.
Obama: Pro-Israel
talk, anti-Israel walk. Barely a month into the presidency of Barack Obama, a profound
realization is spreading among the pro-Israel community: we do not have an ally in the White
House. ... So how exactly did this get by most Jewish voters during last year's election?
Ostracized by Obama.
President Obama has used events such as community discussion groups and last week's summit to foster the
impression that he is soliciting opinions from all angles of the health care debate, but the reality is a
lot different. Obscured by the Administration's theatrics is the fact that it has kept at bay those
who advocate free-market solutions rather than government-run health care.
Who's
Obama Kidding? In 2007, the federal budget deficit was $162 billion (1.2% of gross domestic
product). For 2009, the budget deficit is projected to be 11 times larger: $1.752 trillion.
... Nonetheless, contrary to the spin of big-government types, these deficits are not just temporary.
In fact, the Obama administration uses every trick in the book to convert an understandable and potentially
temporary budget lapse this year into a structural lack of fiscal responsibility.
No More of Obama's Talk,
Tone, or Temperament. Another "means into end" abuse of Obama's lies with the word "bipartisan."
Obama has used the word to suggest he is uniquely blessed with the skills to bring people who otherwise would
find it difficult to "come together" to satisfying compromises. Without the approval of both sides,
obviously, a result would not be bipartisan. So "bipartisan" as used by Obama is suggestive of a skill
and process in which he is skilled. Yet "bipartisan" has developed into an end in itself. ... The
process of actively engaging Republicans and incorporating their positions has turned into an end signified
by simple physical participation in photo opportunities.
Tim Geithner's
Black Hole. Pity Barack Obama's economic advisers. The blogs are now demanding their
scalps, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his colleagues face a nasty dilemma: There are no
solutions to the banking crisis without extraordinary political and financial risks. Thus, they have
adopted a three-pronged approach, delay, delay, delay, in the hope that somebody comes up with a breakthrough.
The President Politicizes Stem-Cell
Research. Yesterday President Barack Obama issued an executive order that authorizes expanded
federal funding for research using stem cells produced by destroying human embryos. The announcement
was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel
of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being "divisive" and even "politicizing
science."
Obama's $80 Billion Exaggeration.
The basis for the president's proposal is a theoretical study published in 2005 by the RAND Corporation, funded
by companies including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox that stand to financially benefit from such an electronic
system. And, as the RAND policy analysts readily admit in their report, there was no compelling evidence
at the time to support their theoretical claims. Moreover, in the four years since the report,
considerable data have been obtained that undermine their claims. The RAND study and the Obama
proposal it spawned appear to be an elegant exercise in wishful thinking.
The Obama Rosetta Stone:
[Scroll down slowly] One of the first technical examinations of the Romer-Bernstein projections has
been released by Hoover Institution economists John Cogan and John Taylor, and German economists Tobias Cwik
and Volker Wieland. They conclude that the growth and jobs stimulus will be only one-sixth what the
administration predicts. In part, this is because people anticipate that the spending burst will have
to be financed by higher taxes and so will spend less than anticipated.
Obama has it both ways on pork.
President Barack Obama had it both ways Monday when he promoted his stimulus plan in Indiana. He bragged
about getting Congress to produce a package with no pork, yet boasted it will do good things for a Hoosier
highway and a downtown overpass, just the kind of local projects lawmakers lard into big spending bills.
Obama's sales pitch on the enormous package he wants Congress to make law has sizzle as well as steak.
He's projecting job creation numbers that may be impossible to verify and glossing over some ethical problems
that bedeviled his team.
The more things change. Barack Obama
is already finding things more complicated as commander-in-chief than when he only aspired to that
title. ... It was always easy, for instance, to fire up the fruitcake left by promising a quick withdrawal
from Iraq, but now, with responsibility for American security, which also means responsibility for security
in Iraq, rapid withdrawal suddenly becomes unfeasible.
Limbaugh Responds to
Obama. "If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits
of the trillion dollar debacle. One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties
to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's
Rules for Radicals: 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.'"
Obama
wields pen at historic pace. Looking to move quickly on his campaign promises, President Obama
has turned to the one tool that he has to ignore Congress and take unilateral action — he signed
eight executive orders in his first 11 days in office, making him by far the most activist new president
in modern history on that score.
Suddenly Obama has Muslim roots. During the U.S
presidential campaign, Barack Obama's handlers vigorously pointed out his Christian faith whenever the
misconception arose he may be Muslim (even though the politically correct response should have been his
religion doesn't matter). ... Once elected, however, he personally insisted on his middle name being spoken
at his swearing-in ceremony. And now — in a gesture to the Muslim world — he has
not only granted the first sit-down interview of his presidency to a pan-Arab television network, but uses the
occasion to gush about his Muslim ties.
Obama: A Profile in Cowardice.
Meet Barack Hussein Obama. The man who turned his own middle name into a no-go zone during the election,
only to bring it out of the closet when he trotted down to a Muslim country. The man whose associates
labeled talk about his Muslim background as racist, only to proclaim his Muslim background loudly and proudly
from the podium of a Muslim country. There's a word for a man like that. Coward.
Good Morning, Suckers.
Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are playing the voters for fools with the so-called stimulus package.
The massive $825 billion package is not even targeted on programs to stimulate the economy. Instead,
it is laced with runaway government spending for increased welfare, overgrown bureaucracy, pork, political
payoffs, and other waste.
Did someone mention
the so-called stimulus bill?
Obama's
Collectivist Nationalism. Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only
the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an
effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous. And it is working.
Four Safe Bets about Obama.
[Scroll down (obviously)] Second, we will hear more and more from Obama and his supporters about the severe difficulty
of the situation they face. The days of healing the planet and reversing the ocean tide are gone. Indeed, the
notion that we can expect any progress in 2009, we will be told, is utterly fanciful; just write it off. In fact, have
you noticed how everything seems harder now that Obama is president?
Obama's Administration of
Grand Gestures. In its first week the Obama administration revealed itself to be infatuated
with dramatic gestures and sweeping pronouncements: Guantanamo is going to be closed, enhanced
interrogation ended, Middle East peace re-established, Iraq to be "left" to the Iraqis, and bipartisanship
restored. But the reality is quite different, leaving open the question as to whether President Obama
really believes his own rhetoric or is slyly wielding symbolism to conceal the very familiar contours of his
not-so-groundbreaking policies.
Obama
runs into trouble with lobbying rules. President Obama's new lobbying rules that intended to close
the revolving door on lobbyists-turned-government officials have run into immediate complications. Obama
has granted some of his nominees waivers when it comes to their lobbyist past — an action that has
resulted in criticism from government watchdog groups.
The rules apply only when they are convenient.
Geithner names ex-lobbyist as
Treasury chief of staff. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs
lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in
agency decisions. Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner's chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the
government's $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of
that money.
Obama's Ethics Reform Promise
Faces Early Test. During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the
demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his
Inaugural Address a "new era of responsibility." What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.
The exceptions that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not pay all of their taxes.
Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who is now slated to become the No. 2 official in the
Pentagon. And there are the others brought into government from the influence industry even if not
formally registered as lobbyists.
Obama's exec
orders have loopholes. President Obama's first moves earned him triumphant headlines:
"Obama Freezes Pay, Toughens Ethics and Lobbying Rules," and "Obama sets new course." But some of his
biggest accomplishments are twinned with the word "but": Lobbyists are banned, but exceptions can and
will be made; orders on ending torture and secret prisons contain loopholes and provisos. Call it the
fine print, an exception, a waiver, but there have been caveats to many of Mr. Obama's first actions.
The Editor says...
Loopholes, indeed. Sounds like
equivocation to me.
Watch out
Greens! Here Comes The Bus. Will Obama's environmental constituency get thrown under the
bus to make this pig of a stimulus bill fly? The only way large scale infrastructure projects will
stimulate in the near term is if all environmental regulations are bypassed and litigation resulting from
any construction collateral damage is squashed in advance.
Pentagon pick shows challenges of Obama's
ethics rules. The man President Obama nominated to become the No. 2 manager at the
Pentagon isn't the first person for that job to come from the defense industry. But Mr. Obama's own
executive order on ethics has now become a stumbling block as the White House seeks to push the former
lobbyist through confirmation.
Hope He Can Change.
[President Obama should] drop all the talk about the best, the most, the greatest ethical, moral, legal etc.
Just keep quiet and call in Senate leaders of both parties and show them the names of nominees and ask for
pre-hearing advice. I think Geithner cannot now stay: not when Obama confesses that Daschle had to
go to avoid two tax laws for elites and mass. But Geithner's sin was far worse, since he was the nominal
head of the IRS itself. He should step down, and Obama should likewise distance himself from Rangel.
Advice: Keep quiet and carry a big ethical stick.
Obama spokesman defends ethics
standards. Despite the tax problems faced by high-level nominees, and the exceptions made to
the no-lobbyists pledge, President Barack Obama's spokesman is defending the administration's ethical
standards. Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday [2/3/2009], "The bar that we set is the highest
that any administration in the country has ever set."
No Consensus on "Stimulus"
Bill. President Barack Obama has done more in the first three weeks of his presidency to validate the suspicions
of his critics than I thought possible. But of all his objectionable actions, nothing compares to his falsely labeled
"stimulus" bill, which he is trying to force upon us with fear and deception.
Obama's
Un-Nourishing Prayer Breakfast: No one wants to stir up controversy regarding an annual gathering meant
to unify religious believers, so it's understandable that press and pundits largely ignored President Obama's profoundly
peculiar remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th. Nevertheless, his brief prepared talk (the
White House released a text of his comments before he spoke) February 5th in the nation's capital contained so many
provocations, contradictions and flat-footed misstatements that they deserve more serious attention than they've received.
Obama's Doomsday Scenario Doesn't Add
Up. In Elkhart, Ind., on Monday, President Obama spoke as if America were approaching a doomsday
that only a massive increase in government could avert. ... Do we really face the possibility of an irreversible
crisis? Well, yes. Not the one Obama describes, but the one he may cause.
Obama's Failed and Tired Ideas From the
Past. The entire U.S. GDP is roughly $14 trillion. The government currently spends roughly
$3.5 trillion of that. In his stimulus plan, Obama proposes effectively to borrow another $1 trillion from
the private economy to add to $1 trillion in still further government spending. How exactly is that supposed to
stimulate economic growth and recovery? Is America's economic growth and prosperity produced by increased government
spending, deficits, and debt? I don't think so. The American people don't either.
Our Clever President.
[Scroll down] Along with a fair amount of blarney, Joe Biden also makes more honest and candid observations in an
afternoon than many politicians make in a lifetime. One comes away from a conversation with Biden with at least one
truthful nugget. The same cannot be said for President Obama. Both Monday night and usually, the president
offers his audience one of the finest verisimilitudes of sincerity and manly vigor this side of an old Laurence Olivier
performance of "Henry V."
Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics: In his
inaugural address, President Barack Obama said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or
too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford,
a retirement that is dignified." ... Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not true. Mr. Obama's economic policy is
following not what has been proven to work but liberal ideology. The best way to understand this is to compare
what's being proposed now with what Ronald Reagan accomplished.
Doomsday scenario doesn't add
up. Do we really face the possibility of an irreversible crisis? Well, yes. Not the one Mr.Obama
describes, but the one he may cause. Forget, for a moment, the economic weathermen forecasting the economic
equivalent of global warming. Look instead at the historical data. Claims Mr. Obama, "We have inherited an
economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression." But the historical figures for the gross
domestic product (GDP), calculated by the U.S.Bureau Economic Analysis, say something else.
Failure To Launch. Even
before winning the election, [Obama] began assembling a much-vaunted "team of rivals" to guide U.S. foreign and domestic
policy. ... We were assured that the Obama administration would be ready on "day one." Apparently, that's not the case.
Fiscal
Stimulus Is a Ruse Absent Fed Pixie Dust. It's a jobs-creation program. No, it's
investment in our future. It's a tax-relief plan. Wait, it provides assistance to consumers
hardest hit by the economic recession. It's legislation to jump-start the economy. No, it's a
recovery program. It's a life raft for state and local governments. It's a spending bill.
Which is it? Fiscal stimulus is all things to all people. In other words, it represents the
triumph of faith over reason.
Dukes of Moral Hazard.
[Scroll down] In part to avoid putting an astronomical price tag on this plan, the Administration doesn't
necessarily fix loans for the long term. In fact, the program encourages mortgage servicers to keep the
payments low only for five years, after which rates will rise. During the housing bubble, these were
called "teaser" rates. ... What investors, businesses and working Americans want to hear is a President with
ideas to spur economic recovery. What they've been getting are plans for a long national Chapter 11
workout.
Bogus Bipartisanship.
A timely front page article in the February 4th Washington Post provided desperately needed insight into the most
misunderstood term in Washington today. Of course, I refer to the term "bipartisan." The media
demands it. The political pundits love it. It polls extremely well — almost as high as
"change." It is antithetical to its ugly twin — "partisan." ... So, what
does it
mean?
Picking
Winners and Losers by Executive Fiat. [Scroll down] Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this particularly
noxious stealth provision of the stimulus scheme is not what's in it, but how it — and other such free
market-destroying provisions — were rushed through under deliberate cover of darkness. McCaughey attributes
this strategy to Daschle, as well. A year ago, McCaughey tells us, Daschle warned that the next president should not
make the same mistake the Clintons made with Hillary Care, which was to allow debate. Daschle wrote: "If that
means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it. The issue is too important to be stalled by
Senate protocol." So much for "liberal" democracy. So much for transparency. So much for a new era of
hope and change.
Obama
administration lobbyist count increases. Washington lobbyist Christine Varney is poised to take her
third pass through the revolving door of lobbying and government with her nomination by President Barack Obama to
be his administration's top antitrust enforcer. Also, on Thursday, Obama nominated Derek
Douglas, a former lobbyist for the O'Melveny & Myers law firm and Center for American Progress, as special
assistant on urban affairs.
Obama's First Month:
Obama may not be eloquent, but he is glib and clever and at times persuasive. One of his favorite rhetorical devices
is setting up a straw man, then knocking it down. He invoked this classic ploy subtly in his inaugural address,
crudely in his press conference. "We will restore science to its rightful place," Obama said at his inauguration.
Really? Where had science been? "We are ready to lead once more," he said, as if we —
America — hadn't been. He may have disapproved of the prior administration's policies in the world, but that
doesn't mean it wasn't leading. Also in his inaugural speech, Obama said, "we can no longer afford indifference to
suffering outside our borders." When we were indifferent? Not in Obama's lifetime.
Orwell Knew. After a month in
complete control of the federal government, Democrats in Congress and the White House have quickly dispensed with any notion
that we have entered into a new post-partisan era of governance. Their campaign claims of wanting to govern inclusively
were greeted with optimism by the more gullible among us. However, their recent actions leave no doubt as to their
true intentions. They will push through whatever they want whenever they want. The minority party need not
participate.
'Absurd' Understates Obama
Plan. Many are in favor of the Obama Housing Plan that was announced on Wednesday, February 18, 2009.
It was touted as the first plan designed to help struggling homeowners who were unable to refinance because they owe more than
their homes are worth. ... The plan isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are several issues on both the homeowner
and investor side as well as the lender and builder side that make this plan problematic in the long term.
Fuzzy
Green Math: There's something odd in what the administration is telling the press.
According to Greenwire: "The climate program would generate nearly $650 billion between 2012 and
2019, according to Obama's proposal. About $80 billion of the climate revenues would go toward
Obama's proposed middle-class tax cut each year beginning in 2012, the draft says, and the government
would spend $15 billion per year on 'clean' energy technologies." This is absurd on its face, of
course: $650 billion taken in over 8 years, used in part to fund $640 billion over
the same period to help ease the pain it causes, and the ... er, remaining ... $120 billion going for
green pork, leaving us a balance of
minus $110 billion.
Common sense missing in Obama
bailout. There's a reason that English is the most widely spoken language on the planet:
It's the most highly adaptable, capable of evolving to meet new needs in the blink of an eye. For
example: Just last year, offering mortgages at a cheaper-than-market teaser interest rate with little
or no money down was known as "predatory lending." But conditions changed — specifically,
the party occupying the White House — and now we call that style of lending "national policy."
Obama's
trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending. Pelosi and Reid called Bush's budgets "dangerous"
and "unpatriotic," but with Obama, they've changed their tune.
Read Obama's Lips.
Obama seems intent on running a permanent campaign, and he's still making the kind of over-the-top promises
that campaigns toss around like Monopoly money. In this speech he promised cap and trade and health care
reform this year. He promised universal college education. He promised a cure for cancer.
Obama also promised that he, too, would "sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no
dollars." ... It's only been a few weeks, but so far all the American people have to show for Obama's
election is $1 trillion in new debt and a thousand point drop in the Dow.
Obama's 2% Illusion.
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to
do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax
breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't
see their taxes increased by "one single dime." This is going to be some trick. Even the most
basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and
capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new
spending ambitions.
Judging Obama:
Obama promises to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs, but if the unemployment rate is unchanged in four
years, do we credit Obama for saving 3.5 million jobs that would have been lost? If new jobs are
created, should stimulus get the credit? If the gain is in the government sector or in areas fed by
taxpayer money, how do we know that the job creation didn't crowd out the creation of more and more productive
jobs?
The Obama
Way: Hit the Ground Promising. One of President Obama's first actions on his first
full day in office was to announce a pay freeze for White House staff. ... The original
intent to
freeze salaries was announced to the press, dutifully reported by the press, put in writing and made
available on the White House's web site. The actual "report" was an oral one, given in private,
with no known details, and we know this only from an unnamed spokesman. And still no pay freeze.
This is worth noting only in respect to the insight it gives us into how business is conducted in the Obama
White House. Announce something good-sounding, follow it up with nothing real, and no one's the wiser.
President's Inner Circle Has
Earmarks in Omnibus. Funny how items show up in spending bills without any notice —
like an earmark for a president who promised not to seek any. President Obama, who took a no-earmark
pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the
fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday. But not for long. On Thursday,
Rob Blumenthal, a spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee said the one earmark in the bill that
carries Obama's name will be edited. The committee will attribute that earmark to other senators on
the list of that provision's supporters, but not Obama.
The Difference Between Change
and Reform. Republican candidates now have talking points about Democrats: The party that talks
about ethical government but hires tax cheats; The party that talks about open government but practices lobbyist-friendly
government; The party that talks about stimulus but enacts "porkulus." Above all the Democratic Party is the
party that takes care of its special interests before it steps up to fix the credit system, a party that reverses welfare
reform without even a public hearing, a party that criticized a president's defense policies for eight years and then
turned around and continued them.
Obama's Phony
Pullout: Forcefully delivered, his speech to the Marines served up more waffles than the International
House of Pancakes. Consider his big sound bite: "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31,
2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." What does
that mean? Will the 50,000 troops he intends
to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to
hang out?
Obama Dons the Presidential Cloak. The
White House no longer uses the phrase "stimulus package." They always say "recovery plan." Stimulus is
yesterday. When you say it, they give you a wonderfully blank-eyed look and two sentences later weave in the
phrase "recovery program."
The Power Of Life And Death Is
In Our Words. Words can shield the most blatant reality. Legislation to take away workers'
rights to a secret ballot, when deciding whether or not they want to be represented by a labor union, is
called the "Employee Free Choice Act." The merits or demerits of this legislation have seldom been
debated. Who could be against "freedom of choice"? The Obama administration's new budget, with
deficits that make previous irresponsible deficits look like child's play, has a cover that says "A New Era
of Responsibility." You want responsibility? He'll give you the word "responsibility." Why
not? It costs nothing.
Congress to Erase Obama's Name From
Earmark. Congress will scrub President Obama's name from a list of earmark cosponsors in the $410 billion
omnibus spending bill. The reason: Whether Obama cosponsored the earmark depends on what the definition of
earmark is and when an earmark becomes an earmark, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The
provision itself is still considered an earmark, and it's staying in the bill (HR 1105) — but it's
losing the Obama brand.
The Return of Big
Government. Twice last week, [President Obama] insisted he doesn't favor "big government." Then he
proposed a budget that would vastly expand the size and reach of the federal government, add $600 billion to the
deficit, and produce a one-year shortfall of $1.2 trillion (or more). This prompted House Republican leader
John Boehner to proclaim, quite accurately, that the "era of big government is back."
The word is subterfuge.
How Obama's team gets his
messages out while you're not looking. Here's how President Obama's team is using his vast donor
e-mailing list to circumvent any intermediaries and get his pure political message out to millions of supporters
to marshal support for whatever he wants, in this case support for his budget: They send out an e-mail to
an estimated 12 million or 13 million names with a short text message from David Plouffe, the political
campaign's manager and now the campaign manager for "Obama for America."
He'll Only Break Your
Heart. Remember when he told you he would have the most transparent government in history?
He vowed to have a "clean break from business as usual" and said he would protect you from the undue
influence of lobbyists. And what has happened since he made this promise? How many have been
granted an exception? If he respected you, would he make a promise that he knew he would break?
If he cared about you, would he walk all over you?
More on earmarks: Obama's chief of
staff has some in bill. Even though President Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to ban
congressional earmarks, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has 16 such projects, worth about
$8.5 million, in the bill the Senate is scheduled to begin debating Tuesday. The earmarks
include funds for a Chicago planetarium and a Chicago suburb. Obama has been relentless in
criticizing the use of earmarks; in his address to a joint session of Congress last week, he
boasted how the economic stimulus package was "free of earmarks."
The Never-ending
Surge. It turns out that $1.6 trillion of the "savings" Obama is anticipating are based
on the surge in Iraq continuing for 10 more years — even though Obama has already
announced all combat troops will be out of Iraq by 2010 and the Status of Forces Agreement is set
for 2011.
It's
Not the Economy, Stupid — It's Limbaugh. As the tax-and-spend policies of the Obama
administration extend and deepen the recession, the new administration's strategy to deal with the fallout
becomes clearer and clearer. Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The Magic of Barack
Obama. [Scroll down] Obama shamelessly says his trillion-dollar "stimulus" plan from
which taxpayers will be enslaved for generations, will cut the taxes of the 95%. "That's insane," you
might exclaim. Well, yes, if words retain their customary meaning. When Obama said in 2004 that
people don't want their tax money wasted, the meaning of the word "wasted" is the key to understanding
The One. Obama believes that "reinvesting" tax money into the welfare system is a responsible use
of government-forced contributions from the "wealthy." When Obama speaks of tax cuts, often he is
actually speaking of redistributing tax money. In Obama's world, government spending can actually
mean cutting taxes. Words take on new meaning when Obama the Great performs his magic.
Barack
Obama's most troubling tendency. There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama —
the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market — but these
are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn't been talked about so much and, of all the
things he does, it makes me the most queasy.
The Stupid
Party. The economy is nowhere near recovery. The banks remain plagued with toxic
assets. The markets are engaged in a limbo contest. Congress is about to take up a budget
that will increase the national debt and decrease the chances for long-term growth. But don't
worry! Lucky for us, the Obama administration, its allies in the Democratic party, and the media
have decided to lead the country in a debate over who the leader of the Republican party is.
Deception at
Core of Obama Plans. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just
to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing
financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering
on fear-itself panic — for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health
care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
The Big Tent in the
Wilderness: Would parents wish success for a math teacher who taught their children that
two plus two equals five? No, they would hope for the teacher's failure and firing. A president
who proposes policies based on falsehoods deserves no less. ... At this moment in American history,
"bipartisanship" is just another complacent name for tyranny.
The Obama Double Tax
Whammy: President Obama's proposal to provide only a 28 percent benefit for charitable
contributions by top-bracket taxpayers is part of a double whammy, since he proposes at the same time to
raise the top bracket from 35 to 39.6 percent. The double-barreled increase/decrease reflects
a two-part strategy that is much more than a simple tax increase. Less civil society and more government
power is the result.
Unbelievable, Isn't It?
Wasn't it Obama's political hit men who cooked up the scheme to Limbaugh-ize the GOP? Wasn't it Gibbs and
Rahm Emanuel who egged on reporters? It is not the Republicans who are claiming Limbaugh should be
crowned head of the party. To the contrary the GOP's elected leaders have been imploring the media to get
back to the economy, the grotesque omnibus spending bill, and, frankly, the president's cluelessness about the
market crash.
Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.
Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices
who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in
his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways
that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.
Obama's Political
Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. The country cared little that much of FDR's "New Deal" policies
had been originated by Hoover, or that Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust" viewed the Country's dire situation as
chance to experiment. Action was called for and what mattered most was
change. FDR (Obama)
appeared to be so caring and attentive, few suspected any wrongdoing. Just as in the case of the abusive
parent, FDR (Obama) was jovial, cool, and unusually calm in the face of serious adversity. In both
versions of MPS, blame is typically placed on a previous caregiver as part of the deception and to provide a
scapegoat. ... The denial of reality is crucial.
Present at the
creation. President Obama, who repeatedly criticized earmarks while campaigning last year, is
supposedly not happy with the 9,000 projects individual legislators tacked onto the $410 billion spending
bill, but his boss will sign the bill anyway, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says. It's hard to
believe Mr. Obama is really unhappy with earmarks, which date back to last year when the bill was starting its
trek through Congress.
Anatomy of
Vero Possumus. It is odd that after five weeks we can pretty much see the next four years. ... We
will get utopian rhetoric about a new ethical bar, followed by the nominations of serial tax dodgers, lobbyists,
and DC insiders. We will hear sermons about a new bipartisanship, followed by comical attacks on talk
radio, and deeming "unpatriotic" any who resent the ramming through of the largest increase in debt in
a half-century.
The
Orwellian Presidential Bully Pulpit. The president brazenly sermonizes against scientifically
challenged conservatives while triggering federal funding of research that is scientifically controversial and
preparing to impose cap and trade penalties on corporate America in deference to global warming junk science.
While you won't hear much about this in the mainstream media, there is a meeting currently taking place in
New York City that serves as an ironic backdrop for Obama's embryonic stem cell order.
Obama
grants two more lobbyists waivers. President Obama has issued waivers allowing two appointees
who were formerly registered lobbyists to work for his administration. The waivers ensure the two
appointees can work for the administration under his executive order on ethics, which was intended to
reform the revolving door between K Street and the government.
Obama's New 'Council on Women' Seen As
Vehicle to Promote Feminist Agenda. President Barack Obama on Wednesday created a new bureaucracy to
deal with women's health, domestic violence and economic security. But some conservatives fear the new council will
actively promote the feminist agenda in the government. ... Although the president did not say exactly what issues
the council would address, the group is likely to promote feminist causes such as expanded litigation and the abortion
rights, said Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group.
Obama's
Impractical Pragmatism. The Obama administration is nothing if not pragmatic, we're told.
Obama is not guided by ideology, according to his hagiographers in the press, but is instead simply committed
to doing what works. And that may be true, if you understand that to mean what works politically for
Obama. It's pragmatism, true enough, but pragmatism in the cause of satisfying Democratic interest
groups.
Wrong Move: Obama's
Liberal Agenda. Obama's proposed budget shows all the vision, restraint and grace of a grasping committee
chairman, using the cover of a still-unresolved banking crisis to push through a broad liberal wish list before anyone
notices its costs and complications. The pledge of "responsibility" has become the massive expansion of debt, the
constant allocation of blame to others and the childish cultivation of controversy with conservative media figures to
favorably polarize the electorate. The pledge of "honesty" and "sacrifice" has become the deceptive guarantee of
apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few.
Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty
a 'National Security' Secret. President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of
openness. But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the
controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.
Copyright treaty is classified for 'national security'.
Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated
by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes
copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying
in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are
"classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."
From Catastrophe to Not
so Bad? Talk of the Great Depression was necessary to enact a massive spending bill with a $1.6 trillion
deficit; then, once the European-like spending was in place, it was important to flip, drop the gloom and doom, and talk
up the economy for the midterm elections to come.
Please Get Serious, Mr. President.
[Scroll down] Optimism and patience were not on offer just a few weeks ago, when the president was telling us
we were on the verge of CATASTROPHE!!!! unless Congress immediately authorized the spending of some $800 billion.
Obama is asking us to believe that the so-called stimulus was both necessary and sufficient to turn things around in less
than a month. He is straining the limits of our credulity and testing the limits of his own credibility.
The Obama
3-Step. Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a
politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism. First: Denounce your presidential predecessor
for a given policy, energizing your party's base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second:
Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third:
Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it's the only way to govern responsibly or believing doing otherwise
is too difficult.
Global gun control: There
may good reasons for deploying the National Guard along the U.S.-Mexican border, but illegal firearms isn't one of them.
The administration recently launched a study to examine whether soldiers should patrol the Southern border to staunch the
flow of firearms headed for drug dealers in Latin America. The silence you hear is the concern about armed drug gangs
headed here. In short, the administration seems more concerned about the guns going south than the non-citizens
streaming north.
Obama,
Kruschev, and Limbaugh. Today, I heard the latest pronouncement from our glorious leader, the
great and powerful Oz. He said he didn't want Americans whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news,
and that he was highly optimistic about our economic future. Oddly enough, yesterday he announced that
this was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. So the way I figure it, in order to avoid
being whipsawed, the secret is to only listen to Obama on either odd or even days of the week.
Electing a Child to be President.
[Obama] had, on taking office, already written two autobiographical memoirs, but people are slowly becoming aware
of the fact that there is virtually no paper trail by which to measure him. His birth certificate and legal
standing to be President are in dispute. Records from his college days are hidden from view. His
record as a one-term Illinois legislator is replete with "present" votes that revealed little about his political
positions. He did not even wait to complete a full term as a U.S. Senator before almost immediately beginning
to run for the highest office in the land. In terms of political leadership, he is a child among grownups
and a petulant one at that.
March Madness: How the White House Plays
Defense. Part of the Obama mystique — one his own aides work hard to promote — is
that he and his team are sublimely calm and collected, too cool to care about Washington chatter, too disciplined
to be thrown off message by the uproar du jour. The reality is that the Obama team can be every bit as
reactive and improvisational as any other political operation.
The Banality of Obama:
Pundits have been critiquing the new administration for its socialism, for its willful ignorance of foreign policy,
for its puerile missteps, but the salient fact of the Obama Presidency is its banality. He who promised
change has dredged up the failed nostrums of the past as if they were something new and fresh. In fact,
the ordinariness, the dullness, the lifelessness of the Obama Administration is obvious.
Mr. President: War Is Not
A 'Struggle' Or 'Situation'. First, President Obama jettisoned the admittedly empty and useless
phrase "war on terror," a label which pleased pretty much no one, primarily because it didn't specify an
enemy; it's often been pointed out that the phrase was like calling World War II a "war on blitzkrieg."
Next, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano avoided even mentioning the word "terrorism" in her first
congressional testimony. Now the Department of Justice has announced it is dropping the legal designation
"enemy combatants," which referred to suspected terrorist detainees. The aim of all this muting of the
language in the War with No Name is twofold: for the Obama administration to distance itself from George W.
Bush's "politics of fear," and to whitewash a plain fact that liberals are suicidally reluctant to
acknowledge — that we are at war with radical Islam.
Obama's rhetoric and reality clash.
Barack Obama's optimistic campaign rhetoric has crashed headlong into the stark reality of governing. In office
two months, he has backpedaled on an array of issues, shifting positions as circumstances dictate while ducking for
political cover to avoid undercutting his credibility and authority. That's happened on the Iraq troop withdrawal
timeline, on lobbyists in his administration and on money for lawmakers' pet projects.
The "Depression" for
Us Idiots. I feel like Winston Smith in Oceania, confused about all the doublethink coming out of Washington.
Great Depression — no Great Depression. Recession for years; its end at the end of this year. Signing
statements bad; signing statements good. Fundamentals hardly strong; fundamentals really sound. Earmarks terrible;
8,000 wonderful. Bush's $500 billion deficit reckless; Obama's $1.7 [trillion] sober and judicious; Iraq
horrific and the worst whatever; Iraq suddenly quiet, democratic, and hopeful; highest ethical bar in an administration
ever — Richardson, Daschle, Killefer, Solis, etc. cannot meet the lowest; ... Obama not to be blamed for
massive collapse of stock prices since November; Obama to be praised for modest gains last week. At some point,
someone in the media must be getting embarrassed that they are all working at the Ministry of Truth.
Obama toils as communicator. Before
he took office, White House aides told us Obama would spend his first months telling hard truths about the complexity
of the economic problems and the complexity of the solutions. There's been very little of that. ... One reason
is that White House officials aren't anxious to explain the depths of the problems. They tell us they
anticipate unemployment to exceed 10 percent next year...
The Myth of the 46 Million:
Whether it's in political speeches, commentary, newspaper features, or hard news stories, the statistic of 46 million
uninsured is one of the most-widely cited numbers in the health care debate. It promotes the idea that nearly one out
of every six Americans does not have access to health care and it plays into the arguments of those calling for massive
expansion of government to fix the problem. Yet the ubiquitous figure is highly misleading.
New Obama lOgO for RecOvery.gOv.
Guess what it lOOks like? [It has] gears to represent the American automobile industry that's on its way
out and the manufacturing sector that's already vanished from the land. It has eight stars to represent, uh, some
of the 13 original Colonies. It's got the "website number" that Vice President Biden couldn't remember on TV.
And the new logo has poison ivy leaves to represent the green revolution that hasn't quite caught on yet because few
people can afford the extra costs that come with it and the ones that can are gonna get taxed extra because they can
afford it and didn't vote for the winner anyway.
Obama: Editor in chief? At
4:52 p.m., the White House sent out embargoed excerpts from President Obama's planned remarks
tonight. ... But then at 5:16 p.m., the White House sent out revised — and now
unembargoed — excerpts from the president's comments. But there were two changes in wording
between the two versions that were an indication that the White House was continuing to tinker with the
language even as airtime approached.
The butler did it. It was the mystery
of the week in Washington: Who stuck that language into the stimulus bill allowing $165 billion in
bonuses to the very executives at AIG (Americans Into Government, Inc.) who had just about ruined that
financial insurance company and a good part of the American economy with it?
Obama's Prime Time Pitch. President Obama
sometimes strayed from the facts or made dubious claims during his hour-long evening news conference
March 24. He said his budget projections are based on economic assumptions that "are perfectly
consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying." Not true. ... He said he is reducing
"nondefense discretionary spending" to less than it was under the past four presidents. Not true.
Barack Obama's delivery
of no news is quite smooth. Obama created real problems in his first national news conference
by promising Geithner would deliver too much the next day. And when the inarticulate bureaucrat didn't,
the markets plummeted. But this news conference seemed anticlimactic. At times the president
appeared to be mailing in his delivery. He made no notable news and did so quite smoothly. Unless
sticking by his guns over cutting charitable deductions is news.
Obama
Scraps 'Global War on Terror' for 'Overseas Contingency Operation'. The Obama administration has
ordered an end to use of the phrase "Global War on Terror," a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly
after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. In a memo sent this
week from the Defense Department's office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, "this
administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use
'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"
Homeland Linguistics.
The Obama administration has made great changes in the way we handle national security. And judging by
its actions so far, it seems that the most important failing of the previous administration has been in
semantics. The changes started with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano deciding that the
word "terrorism" was too harsh. She has made a point of not using it, opting instead for "man-caused
disasters." That was merely phase one.
Transparent
Obfuscation. One problem with the Obama financial rescue plan is that it is almost as
complicated and obscure as the problem it is designed to solve. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,
testifying yesterday [3/26/2009] on Capitol Hill, called for greater simplicity in financial regulation.
Good luck with that.
FCC Won't Allow 'Diversity' Chief Mark Lloyd to be Interviewed
about Public Policy Views. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) won't allow its Chief Diversity
Officer Mark Lloyd to be interviewed by the news media about his views and past statements on federal communications
policy. Lloyd, who cites the radical author Saul Alinsky as an inspiration, has argued that public broadcasting
outlets in the United States should be funded on a level equal to the funding of private broadcasting companies —
with the money coming from licensing fees levied on private broadcasters by the government.
Obama, Charity, and
Fairness. Leave it to Barack Obama to justify a tax proposal that would significantly reduce
the amounts going to charity — on grounds the proposal is necessary for "fairness."
Taking Debt To The Next
Frontier. In his budget message, the president says "the time has come to usher in a new era
of responsibility." But a new report shows the only thing his budget delivers is an unprecedented era
of deficits and debt.
Congressman Wants to Know Why
Geithner Contradicted Congressional Testimony in 24 Hours. Geithner told Congress under oath
Tuesday [3/24/2009] that he wouldn't consider China's proposal to shift away from the U.S. dollar toward a world
currency — then the following day said the U.S. would "be open" to the idea. Rep. John
Shadegg (R.-Ariz.) thinks the Treasury secretary's swift about face demands an explanation.
It's Not the Economy, Stupid. If the
multi-trillion-dollar credit card, massive redistribution schemes, and behemoth budget seem so zany, why is anyone
continuing to think of any of this is economic policy at all? Why don't we think of it as, well,
politics? Shrewd and well-played politics at that. For if we do, everything the current leadership
is doing makes perfect sense.
1984 in 2009. Last
week President Obama announced that we would no longer call enemy combatants "Enemy Combatants." Yesterday
[3/26/2009] the Office of Management and Budget sent a memo instructing people who are fighting the Global War
on Terror that it was no longer Global, nor a War, nor had anything to do with Terror.
Hiding
a Mountain Of Debt. With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush
administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat
to America's economic future. That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for
the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last
week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin.
Obama's
War on English. In an age when a waiter is a server, an actress is a female actor, and a
dubiously-competent socialist cult leader is an American president, it was only a matter of time before
the "Global War on Terror" became an "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO). Thus Spoke Zarathustra
this week via a memo sent to the Pentagon and select speech writers, officially establishing Team Obama's
redesigned terminology. The War is over, long live the Operation! ... Victory through euphemism!
Speaking Obama.
In order for us morons on the right to understand the newspeak of the Obama administration I offer this
glossary of terms before and after being "Obamized." Feel free to add to my list while you are still
able.
What
Do You Mean 'If We Ever Want to Leave' Afghanistan? Beware, America. You are about to be duped
by an alliance of Obama-niks and Bush-ites who, together, are laying the groundwork for nation-building in
Afghanistan — nation-building in Iraq having worked out so well (insert acid shot of sarcasm here).
Only they are not going to call it "nation-building." Worse, they are forging ahead without heeding the
remedial lesson of Iraq: No matter how many American dollars spent, no matter how many American lives lost,
it's not possible to transform an Islamic republic that enshrines Islamic law (Sharia) into an ally against Islamic
jihad ... .
The Three (Ways of Making Us)
Stooges: Fans of Barack Obama are impressed with his ability to do two or three things at one time,
as am I. Here is a classic twofer: he succeeded in exposing both the intellectual inadequacy and the
moral bankruptcy of his worldview in one terse statement. As a bonus he threw in an example of his
deceitful manipulativeness.
Obama's
Childish Vision of Politics: Despite his "hard choices" rhetoric, Barack Obama's favorite political
tactic is to claim that no choices need be made at all; all political differences of opinion, he says, can be chalked
up to misunderstanding rather than conflicting fundamental values. All choices are "false choices" if we just
think deeply enough. Or rather, if Obama thinks deeply enough. And so Obama claimed in the Chicago Tribune
that Americans "need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy."
That choice, he said, is a "false choice." It is a false choice as he phrases it — capitalism isn't
chaotic and unforgiving.
The Master of
Misdirection. President Obama is the master of misdirection. His skill in using this
tactic is a key to his success as a candidate and to his popularity as president. He is a great
salesman, marketing his product — the liberal agenda, plus a few add-ons — in a manner
that disguises what he's really up to. Misdirection isn't the same as exaggeration. Everyone
understands that politicians inflate their accomplishments. So their self-puffery is discounted.
Misdirection is different. It is meant to deceive.
What
Does the President's 'Meaningful Coverage' Mean for Health Care? Upon taking office, President
Obama hit the ground running on comprehensive healthcare reform that he originally referred to as "universal
health care" but now calls "meaningful coverage." What is "meaningful coverage," and what do the few
specifics we've been given concerning it portend for our future physical health and the viability of our
nation as a whole?
Misrepresenting Mexican Gun Origins. Fox
News has completely blown apart the mantra being chanted by politicians and the news media that 90 percent of
the guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the United States. Fact is, says Fox News, only about 17 percent
are trickling in from north of the border, and some of those legally. Why such a disparity in the numbers?
The Price of Extremism. [Scroll
down] One school of thought suggests that Obama is deep down a far-left ideologue and would rather achieve his
agenda than build a lasting coalition. He has to hurry to beat the clock to the 2010 election and wants to do
everything he can to tick off the items on the liberal wish list. In this scenario, his moderate language and
bipartisan themes, as central as they were to his campaign, were essentially deceptive. He's not a centrist
and has no interest in governing as one.
A
Bogus 'Anti-Cigarette' Bill. A law ordering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes is
moving through Congress — but is it truly good for public health? Hint: Cigarette maker
Altria (formerly Philip Morris) is one of the bill's strongest supporters. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has
already gotten the measure passed in the House; Sen. Ted Kennedy is on track to get it through the Senate soon.
Obama's Unreality Tour. Barack
Obama vowed to turn to the U.N. Security Council for strong action following North Korea's weekend missile launch.
He would have done better by turning to Dr. Phil. So, as the good doctor likes to say: Get real.
Get real about North Korea. Get real about the U.N. Get real, also, about NATO, arms control,
Russia, the global financial system, and every other item headlining the president's unreality tour through
the capitals of Europe.
Transparency
Killer at HUD: Another Disastrous Obama Nominee. If you need a shining example of the utter
disingenuousness of Barack Obama's commitment to government transparency, I have two words for you:
Ron Sims. This lifelong political hack is to transparency what sunlight is to Dracula, what salt is to a
slug, what kryptonite is to Superman, what "The View" is to intelligent debate.
Deception is the Root Cause of
America's Ills. In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies signed the Master
Settlement Agreement. The major tobacco companies agreed, among other things, to give states $240 billion
over 25 years to provide for smoking cessation programs and cover the health costs associated with using
their product. ... Of the $80 billion extorted so far, states have spent about 30% on health, not all
tobacco-related, and less than 6% on smoking cessation programs. Instead, state legislatures spent the
bulk of their tobacco money for items such as museum building, tax relief, rainy-day funds and other expenditures
having nothing to do with tobacco or health.
Mr
Obama's Traveling Circus. While the United States writhes in the agony of seeking a way out of the current
financial mess, President Obama, his wife and a cast of 500 aides and hangers-on took the show on the road, crisscrossing
the old world well-equipped with a supply of the trusty teleprompters needed to render him eloquent. ... It was like a
sideshow featuring never-before-seen characters that the rubes couldn't wait to observe — as they might flock
to see the bearded lady. The Obamas took all this attention as an indication that what was really curiosity was,
in fact, adoration.
How Democrats Make Millionaires.
Even in these hard economic times, Democrats across the nation are working on plans that will turn some of you into
instant millionaires. There's only one catch. You're not actually going to be bringing in a million-dollar
income. ... To pay this ["millionaires'"] tax, you won't have to make anywhere near a million dollars. If
you make even $300,000 a year, the cash-strapped Empire State will consider you a millionaire.
A Fool And Your Money. Once
again we have stubborn liberals who refuse to admit that their strategy is wrong and will not work, and instead not only
give credence to their agenda with this scheme, but do so under the guise of "fairness". Massachusetts Democrats
recently advocated voting rights for illegal immigrants because it is an issue of "fairness". President Obama aims
to change the social fabric of this country because as is the system lacks "fairness".
Earmarks:
Online hide and go seek. Scores of House members are hiding their earmark requests in obscure corners
of their official websites — sticking to the letter of their new rule while shunning its spirit. The
lawmakers are interpreting an ambiguous rule liberally, disclosing their requests as required on their official
congressional webpages but avoiding any prominent display.
Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in
Christian wool? Obama wants it both ways, has always wanted it both ways. Black and
white, Indonesian and American, Muslim and Christian. He loves playing one off the other, using
one to hide the other even as the traces of the truth may be assembled to reveal the whole cloth of
deception and self-promotion he has been weaving so skillfully since his childhood. No wonder
he is a man of change. He IS a changeling, a veritable chameleon, adapting and amending his
life story to fit the circumstances.
Back to the Future on
Cuba. The repeal of a largely symbolic policy is more than Obama is ready to contemplate. The
administration portrays his new approach as a "major" shift. The Washington Post said he is "breaking from
policies first imposed by the Kennedy administration." As if. He's doing little more than dropping
a few extra restrictions imposed by George W. Bush, leaving the basic embargo encased in rock, like the fossil
it is.
Obama
continues to send mixed messages on economy. President Barack Obama on Tuesday [4/14/2009] shifted
focus back to the economy, but continued offering a mixed message on where things stand and prospects for a
turnaround. "There is no doubt that times are still tough," Obama told an audience at Georgetown
University. "By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the
very first time, we're beginning to see glimmers of hope."
Obama's Dodge:
In a speech at Georgetown University yesterday [4/14/2009], Pres. Barack Obama tried to explain how his economic
policies "fit together in a single, overarching strategy." The only constant we could discern, however, was
the president's desire to use the financial crisis to justify enormous expansions of government power.
Obama's code of secrecy.
Government secrecy has become the norm under this administration, particularly when it comes to the financial bailout.
Exhibit A is a gag order preventing banks from divulging how they performed on the Treasury Department's financial
"stress tests." These tests were instituted Feb. 25 to gauge the liquidity of the country's 19 biggest banks and
determine whether they could survive another dramatic economic downturn. Federal officials told the bankers to keep
mum about how stressed out the tests say their institutions are.
Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in
Bank Loans in 'Secrecy,' Suit Says. U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserve's
$2 trillion in lending to financial institutions because the public is now an "involuntary investor" in the nation's
banks, according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP. The Fed refuses to name the borrowers, the amounts of loans or
assets banks put up as collateral under 11 programs, arguing that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle
shareholders.
King Barack? You might think
the repeated conservative complaint about Obama's egregious lack of transparency is, by now, a tired talking point.
But we're not just referring to minor procedural matters that are substantively inconsequential. He hasn't just
breached his promise to make his legislation available for public preview. He and his congressional cohorts are
burying very important matters in legislation.
What
Obama's hiding and the media are ignoring. It is no accident that history and literature are
replete with rocky tales of doubtful succession, of the maladjustment brought on by pretenders to thrones.
There is something in human nature that yearns for the rightful leader. And there is something in our
Constitution that requires it. So why won't this president, who, after all, promised the American people
an unprecedented level of transparency, reveal his original long-form birth certificate?
Where's Obama's Birth Certificate?
[Scroll down slowly] I am suspicious when a candidate for president has virtually no paper trail
of documents. ... Here's a list of documentation that, as of 2008, was "unavailable":
1. Occidental College records -- Not released
2. Columbia College records -- Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper -- "Not available"
4. Harvard College records -- Not released
5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released
6. Medical records -- Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- "Not available"
8. Law practice client list -- Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate -- Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth -- Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None
What does anyone REALLY know about Obama?
Obama: American Demagogue. All
during the long campaign leading to his election and inauguration, the media kept telling us what a genius Barack
Obama was. He was a lecturer on the Constitution at the University of Chicago. He was in the Illinois
State legislature. He had graduated from Harvard Law School and, before that, Columbia University.
Curiously, throughout all that time, few of his fellow students or faculty had any recall of him. No records
from those days exist or are available. He was (and is) a cipher.
You Might Be a Birther
if... [Scroll down] I might be able to get past the whole long-form birth certificate
issue if this president had released the whole host of other life documentation, generally required for
high-level job applications. To whit, (sic) what is in the following documents that might diminish
the Obama "narrative," as sold to the public by marketing guru, David Axelrod, and a strangely incurious
media?
• Panahou Academy school records, 5th through 12th grades
• Occidental College records, including financial aid information.
• Columbia University records, including the missing senior thesis and financial aid information.
• Harvard University records, including information on how a student who never wrote anything (that
can be found) was elected president of the prestigious law review, and including information on how
Harvard Law School was afforded by humble community agitator, Barack Obama.
• Obama's Illinois state senate records and papers, mysteriously lost.
Obama Used 'Invest' or
'Investment' 18 Times in Press Conference to Describe Government Deficit Spending. When
the government engages in deficit spending it has to borrow money — part of it from foreign
sources — and then charge future taxpayers to pay the interest on the borrowed
money. As long as the government's loans are not paid off, the taxpayers must continue
paying interest on the debt year after year — just as an individual citizen would
need to pay interest year after year on a credit card whose principal is never paid down.
Passive Opaqueness.
The president went to Langely for some damage repair today, telling the CIA employees he knows "the last few
days have been difficult." Here is a tip: when a speaker uses the passive voice he is hiding something.
If the president had been more candid, he would have said "I made your jobs more difficult in the last few
days."
Obama's
Rounding Error: Did President Obama leave off a few zeroes when he ordered federal agencies to trim
$100 million from their budgets? ... Make no mistake: Obama's not asking for cuts of $100 mil from
each department — which would also be negligible. He's looking at a cumulative $100 million —
across the entire federal budget. And this, after he signed one piece of legislation for $787 billion and
another for $410 billion — and then introduced a record $3.6 trillion federal budget.
Will Obama Seize the Radio Stations
Next? Obama started his Administration repeating the mantra that he only cares about what works, not about
ideology. That was meant to draw attention away from the fact that Obama is all about extremist ideology, not
pragmatism. That is why he is so intent on sharply raising tax rates on savings and capital and top income
earners. Nothing practical about that in promoting the economy. Just the opposite. Obama's proposed
severe global warming regulation serves extremist environmental ideology, not practical economics. Misdirection
rhetoric is another trick Obama learned from Saul Alinsky.
Crazy
Times — Crazier Times to Follow. Bill Clinton balanced his last budgets but
raised taxes. George Bush increased deficits but cut taxes. But now taxes, spending, and
deficits soar all at once. We are lectured that prior reckless federal spending and borrowing
got us into this mess — but now are told that even more federal spending and borrowing will
get us out of it. ... In our Orwellian world, borrowing to spend what we don't have has been renamed
"stimulus." Those who pay no federal income taxes — almost half of
Americans — can somehow be promised an income tax "cut."
It's Not Easy Being Green.
In Barack Obama's America, there are no costs and benefits. There are only "false choices" that must be
avoided lest we fall into the dangerous trap of old thinking. We can increase deficit spending and
improve budgetary discipline, expand health care funding and reduce costs, and pay for social programs
unimagined by LBJ with the tax rates of Bill Clinton. ... Unfortunately, the laws of economics cannot
simply be repealed and benefits still do come at a cost.
Energy
Bill, Energy Tax, or Government Hand-Out?. The 648-page energy bill just penned by Democratic Reps.
Henry Waxman and Edward Markey is ostensibly designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money. But
conservatives contend that the bill is nothing more than a tax, adding costs to energy producers and distributors
for unproven methods of greenhouse gas emissions. These costs would be passed on to consumers to the tune
of $3,900 per year, per household.
Obama Outsources His Presidency.
The first 100 days can reveal a pattern of behavior that comes to characterize a presidency. In this
respect, there are two emerging habits of Team Obama worth watching. One is the gap between what Mr. Obama
said he would do and what he is doing. His administration is emphasizing in its official 100 days
talking points steps he has taken to "deliver on the change he promised." During the campaign, Mr. Obama
denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye
can see." But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years.
What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?
Obama strays from some facts, or
spins. [Scroll down]
— He told a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24 that "we import more oil today than ever before." That's
untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are lower today.
— He claimed in the same speech that his mortgage aid plan would help "responsible" buyers but not those who borrowed
beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program in his administration concede that foolish borrowers
will be aided, too.
— He said in an address on March 10 that the high school dropout rate has "tripled in the past 30 years."
But according to the Department of Education, it actually has declined by a third.
When the Obama Backlash Comes.
The contradictions between Obama's words and actions are many. He opposes big government, and then he vastly expands
it. He says he favors bipartisanship, but doesn't practice it. He says he is against earmarks, and then signs
the largest pork package in history. And that is just to name a few. Such inconsistencies are contributing to
a lack of confidence in Obama and his economic policies.
Good news!
First 100 days more talk than action.
What has the Obama White House really achieved in its first 100 days? Well, he did pass a stimulus bill that
was largely negotiated and completed before he got into office. ... He appointed a treasury secretary who didn't pay his
taxes, he tried to appoint a Health and Human Services secretary who didn't pay his taxes, and he decided not to appoint
a government accountability czar who didn't pay her taxes. He also visited with Jay Leno. He did very well on
his NCAA college basketball pool. He fired the CEO of General Motors. He appeared on "60 Minutes" a
couple of times. He went to a Bulls-Wizards game. He got a dog. His wife planted a garden.
Confessions of a Contrarian.
I followed the Obama senatorial campaign and even his early career in Chicago, and confess I was not impressed. I
think on any occasion he announces a moral standard it is reactive — not proactive — and we can
be sure it serves as cover for something of questionable morality. So when he says he won't do something,
it usually means he already has.
Obama the Sophist.
I have heard "there are those who say..." from this President quite a bit in the last three months. I think
it's time he start naming names. Who are these people who hold such backward-looking, unacceptable positions?
If they are elected members of the government, shouldn't the President tell us who they are so we can vote them out?
If they are unelected, how is it they have such power? Or maybe there are no such people, at least not of such
relevance they deserve specific mention by the President. Maybe this is just a rhetorical trick designed to
make Mr. Obama's position seem like the only one allowed by common sense.
"Never Again," Obama
Style. No president in modern times has managed to conceal so much of his biography as this
one. The journalists assigned to the Obama beat seem to have lost their traditional avidity for digging
out the missing details. We do not have a medical report, or a college transcript from Columbia, or a
notion of how well he did in Harvard Law School. These things are not automatically significant, but
they can be.
The 100-Day
Assault on America. Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic
media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling
leap into collectivism. ... Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" —
whatever that means — from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters
who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses. Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on
"creating or saving" — whatever that means — 4 million, 3.5 million or
2.5 million jobs. Pick a number.
Reality Knocks. Saying
unsupported piffle is the stuff of campaigns, but the current occupants of the White House seem unaware of their
higher obligation to provide complete and unspun information to the American people. While they may be
determined to throw out whatever hits them as an available political counterattack, neither their own intelligence
officials or the previous ones support the view that a single American was harmed because of interrogation
tactics. The available information suggests the contrary is true.
Doublethink is Truth. Of
course, the term "Global War on Terror" left something to be desired since it was really a Global War on
Radical Islam. Doesn't anyone in the political world believe in plain speaking and clear understanding?
Not exactly. Mostly they believe in "doublethink," the Orwellian concept of holding two contradictory
beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Let's
Declassify Obama's Birth Certificate Along With the 'Torture' Memos. As long as we're creating a
paper trail a mile long and a mile wide, Obama might want to keep the momentum going and release that long form
birth certificate we keep hearing so much about. ... Hey, if it's no problem to release classified documents,
the birth certificate should be an easy call, as to my knowledge it's not classified. Neither are his
undergraduate records. If he's as brilliant as everyone keeps saying he is, why not prove it by showing
off his stellar grades? What articles did he write while editor of the vaunted Harvard Law Review?
Inquiring minds want to know. Speaking of Harvard, how did he pay for his high priced law degree?
Let's not forget that trip during college to Pakistan in 1981...
Barack Obama aglow after 100-day honeymoon — just like
Carter. [Scroll down] The day has been seized as another opportunity to hone the Obama
image, which was carefully crafted and protected during a campaign in which his persona and life story,
rather than his policies, led to triumph. Advisers who publicly mock the theme of 100 days have
been discreetly parcelling out made-to-order anecdotes to the press, each one designed to show how
decisive, far-thinking or cool under pressure he is.
To Seem, Rather Than To
Be. To the conspiracy-minded, it could all be deliberate — an endless series of
dumb stunts and public flubs and embarrassing incidents serving as bright, shiny diversions
from the real work of the Obama administration. While we all point and laugh (or point and
howl) at these moves, they quietly go forward with their agenda — bringing the banks under
direct federal control, bringing the auto industry under direct federal control, "reforming"
healthcare insurance to bring that under direct federal control, going after the credit card
companies...
The Stimulus Saved or
Created 150,000 Jobs? Where? "We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already
saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95% of all working families," the president
said Wednesday night [4/29/2009]. We wondered where the president got that from, given that the
Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that more than 1.3 million jobs were lost in February and
March, with dismal April numbers to come.
Obama Again Uses the Word 'Investment' to
Describe the Deficit Spending He Plans. When President Barack Obama gave a primetime press conference on
March 19, he used the terms "invest" and "investment" 18 times to describe the deficit spending he wants the
federal government to pursue under his budget plan. In another primetime press conference last night, Obama again
used the term "investment" three times to describe the deficit spending while almost in the same breath decrying
"overleveraged banks" and those who "maxed-out on credit cards."
The Green Wind Of Destruction.
To say we're skeptical of the administration's claim that green jobs will bolster economic recovery is putting it
mildly. It's much easier to believe that needless environmental rules will cause widespread job losses.
Green
Job Efforts Kill 2.2 for Every One Created. The Spanish government's renewable energy initiatives
have destroyed 2.2 jobs for every new "green" job created, concludes a new study by economics professor
Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Calzada says American jobs will suffer the
same fate if the United States similarly attempts to promote renewable energy at the expense of conventional
energy sources.
The Audacity of Socialism. Barack Obama
has styled himself a centrist, but does his record support that claim? In this series, we examine Senator
Obama's past, his voting record and the people who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years.
We'll show how the facts of Obama's actions and associations reveal a far more left-leaning tilt to his
background — and to his politics.
The News That
Didn't Happen. When the president of the United States spoke at Notre Dame the other Sunday, he
didn't so much speak about abortion as around it. ... There's no way to disagree with a stand not taken.
And yet what he said seemed to strike a chord. Never underestimate the power of the platitudinous.
Unpleasant
surprises buried in cap and trade. If cap and trade is an energy and global warming bill, why is
a three-year package of unemployment benefits, job training and relocation expenses buried deep within its fine
print? And why is a federally subsidized "job bank" needed if laid-off workers would quickly be rehired
for higher paying "green" jobs? The fact that generous unemployment benefits are buried in the bill
means that "green jobs are bunk," the conservative Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman told The Examiner.
The Buck Stops
Elsewhere. President Obama wants you to know that nothing is ever his fault. He gave a
speech on national-security matters Thursday [5/21/2009] the gist of which was: George W. Bush left
me a mess, and I'm doing the best I can to clean it up. A more forthright theme would have been:
Radical Islam has thrust the United States into a defensive war, and it's now my duty to protect the
nation — despite legal complications created by left-wing lawyers, many of whom are now working in
my administration.
First Round Knockout.
Proof is defined as confirmation of fact by
evidence. The concept of evidence escapes present-day
Obama because he believes so strongly in his gift: a commanding voice that delivers his ideological rhetoric
with overbearing force. The President actually expects us to believe his word should suffice
sans
evidence.
Obama, Hubris and Cheney. President
Obama's Thursday [5/21/2009] speech was simply breathtaking. ... Standing in the hall of the National Archives,
Obama began by claiming the Constitution as his ancestor. His sophistry soared, claiming that it was our
values that had defeated our enemies throughout history, their soldiers surrendering to ours because they knew we
would treat them better than their own governments.
O So Above It
All. Put Barack Obama in front of a TelePrompTer and one thing is certain — he'll make himself
appear the most reasonable person in the room. Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually
surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can't get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations
to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace. This is how Obama, whose position on abortion is
indistinguishable from NARAL's, can speechify on abortion at Notre Dame and come away sounding like a
pitch-perfect centrist.
Still Politicizing
Our Security. Never has a sitting president been as obsessed with scapegoating the policies of the preceding
administration as Barack Obama. We are four months into his administration, folks, and he is still sneering
at — and blaming — Bush and Cheney for our economic woes and national security policies.
You-Won't-Get-A-Credit-Card-Unless-You're-Rich
Bill is Now Law. Amidst the anti-market frenzy in Washington, D.C., President Obama today [5/22/2009] signed
into law a bill that will drive up interest rates on credit cards and force people with good credit to pay more to
subsidize people with bad credit.
Obama's
Credit Card Reform is a Fraud. Congress explicitly rejected any limitation on the interest rate credit
card companies can charge. It remains perfectly legal for them to charge rates that would make a loan shark
blush. ... Competition can do nothing to force down rates since 90% of the credit cards are issued by a handful of
companies. And states are paralyzed when it comes to regulating rates. It is up to Congress to act.
Yet the credit card companies' massive campaign donations succeeded in buying off enough Democrats and virtually all
the Republicans to kill any limits on interest rates.
Where Are the Cries of 'Obama
Lied, Jobs Died'? In mid-February, I identified several clear fibs and pathetic straw-man arguments that
Barack Obama and his teleprompters (not necessarily in that order) employed in four statements he made at his first
presidential briefing and at an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana, earlier that day. It is now painfully clear that
Obama and his apparatchiks have entered an arena many thought Bill Clinton and his crew had all to themselves.
The Myth of Ever
Increasing Fuel Economy. By proposing a set limit for economy on all classes of passenger
vehicles, Barack Obama has basically said one of two things: In 2016, he wants only economy cars
to be sold in the US or he is instructing car companies to squeeze gas from a stone. Since he cannot
change the laws of physics, I envision the date those proposed standards take effect will either be repealed
by the next administration, or continually be delayed. This is just another dictate similar to all
the rest of Obama's plans: not based in reality, but wishful thinking.
More
about Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.
Hope and Change's
Shelf Life. Rather than explaining the bleak choices before us and explaining why his preferences have
the best chance of succeeding, Obama has so far reduced his presidency to two themes: "Bush did it" and "I'm
not your normal white male President." If he keeps this monotony up, at some point even the comedians are
going to notice the predictability.
Obama Blames 7 Straw Men for
Being 'out of money'. The deficit today is not due to Medicaid and Medicare, or even Social Security, all
failed government programs. It is due, in part, to the explosion in entitlements over decades. By shifting the
conversation away from the deficits today onto long-range problems, he creates Straw Man #4 and #5 —
Medicaid and Medicare.
I Feel Your Pain. Not Theirs. Yours. Concerned
that Sotomayor's famed "empathy" might not shine through in cases such as
Ricci v. DeStefano, the Democrats are
claiming — as Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said on MSNBC — that she was merely applying "precedent"
to decide the case. You know, just like conservatives say judges should. This was an interesting claim, in the
sense that it was the exact polar opposite of the truth.
Sotomayor: "Empathy" in
Action. "Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law" — the motto
over the entrance to the Supreme Court — only with smooth words. But not in reality. President
Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities.
'We Are Out of Money'. President
Barack Obama handed his political opponents a bludgeon the size of Thor's hammer Saturday [5/23/2009]. In a story
played up by the Drudge Report but virtually ignored by the
New York Times and
Washington Post, C-SPAN's
Steve Scully pointed to the massive financial obligations taken on by his administration and to America's generally lousy
financial forecast. He asked Obama, "At what point do we run out of money?" "Well?" the U.S. president began
with his practiced nod to the unhurried, unflappable style of Ronald Reagan. Then he said it: "We are out of
money now."
Federal Deficit Becomes Nearly
Indecipherable. Did you miss the "good news" on May 12? The Treasury Department, led by tax cheat
Tim Geithner, retroactively reduced the deficit through March 31, the first six months of Uncle Sam's fiscal year, by
over $175 billion.
Obama's vanishing gray hair.
Steve Gilbert assembles the evidence, and it is conclusive. Either President Obama is dying his hair, or it has
miraculously gone from graying to solid black since he took office. At one point in the campaign, as a young and
inexperienced candidate, a little gray was a good thing. But now that he is energetically grabbing control of the
economy, a more youthful look is important.
Obama and the Amazing Trillion
Dollar Dreamcoat. Obama is amazing, a miracle worker in fact. So much so that he has decreed an end to
arithmetic. No way can he spend a trillion here and a trillion there without it adding up. But the O administration
is not very good at addition. Or subtraction.
The
Myth of 5 Million Green Jobs. [Scroll down] The central finding of the study is that —
treating the data optimistically — for every renewable-energy job that the government finances, "Spain's
experience reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least
2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created." Despite expensive and extensive
green-job policies, a surprisingly low number of jobs were created. And about two-thirds of those "green" jobs
were just to set up the energy source, in construction, fabrication, installation, marketing and administration.
Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable sources
of energy.
Thousands of New Jobs 'Created' by Obama's
Stimulus Are Summer Jobs for Teens. At least 12,000 jobs "created" by President Obama's stimulus package
are summer jobs for young people, according to a White House report issued on May 27, 100 days after passage
of the $787-billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The White House report, "100 Days, 100 Projects,"
summarizes various projects on infrastructure, renewable energy and "jobs and job training."
Magician-in-chief.
Barack Obama's political magic is based on an ever-growing bag of tricks, relying on illusion, misdirection,
and the media's willingness to believe. Behind the stage presence of openness, bipartisanship, sincerity,
transparency, and geniality are tricks learned from the hardball politics of Chicago. Every magician
needs his stage assistants. Barack Obama has two key people helping to smooth his way: Rahm
Emanuel and David Axelrod. Each knows plenty of tricks of his own.
Transparent nonsense.
The administration repeatedly has stiff-armed Congress, the media, outside organizations and even a prestigious
independent government commission. It has raised "none of your business" from an adolescent rejoinder to
a public policy — to keep the public in the dark. Before examining examples of this alarming
trend, let's remember what newly inaugurated President Obama said in a big press conference on Jan. 21, his
first full day in office. His words and tone could not have been more clear...
"My
Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in
Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of
transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our
democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."
— Barack Obama
Sources:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
The Obama
Infatuation. Obama's rhetoric brims with inconsistencies. In the campaign, he claimed he
would de-emphasize partisanship — and also enact a highly-partisan agenda; both couldn't be true.
He got a pass. Now, he claims he will control health care spending even though he proposes more
government spending. He promotes "fiscal responsibility" when projections show huge and continuous budget
deficits. Journalists seem to take his pronouncements at face value even when many are two-faced.
Obama Motors.
President Obama claims to "have no interest" in running General Motors. He does so with a straight
face — and the same monotonous cadence that he employs whether condemning North Korea for nuclear
explosions or joking with Jay Leno. But his actions, as well as his words, betray him. ... Which is
more absurd — his implication that he is the embodiment of the U.S. government or that a former
community organizer, part-time lawyer, part-time lecturer, part-time author, and fulltime politician knows
beans about running the nation's largest automaker?
Double Standard.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The alleged
gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military
and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable acts of domestic terrorism. The disparate treatment of the two
brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
Obama's wrong numbers.
Appearing with executives of six industry groups on May 11, Mr. Obama announced what he called a "historic" and
"unprecedented commitment" by the medical care industry to "cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by
1.5 percentage points each year" that would yield $2 trillion in savings over 10 years. The story
got front-page play and nightly news coverage across the country. However, after American Hospital Association
President Richard J. Umbdenstock returned to his office, he was besieged by calls from AHA members opposing such
large cuts in spending. Days later, during a conference call with 230 members, he told them the
1.5-percent-a-year savings touted by Mr. Obama was a gross exaggeration.
Obama's Voodoo Health Economics. On
Monday [6/1/2009] President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers released a report called "The Economic Case for Health Care
Reform." The report argues that Americans must curb their consumption of medical care in order to avoid soaring
federal deficits, unsustainable burdens on family budgets, and damage to the economy. All of these claims are untrue.
Obama's
Health Care Reform "Paints the Roses Red". President Obama has correctly identified that Americans spend a
great deal more on health care than any other developed nation. According to the Administration's website, the U.S.
spent over "$2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person — nearly twice the average of other
developed nations". But, if Americans are spending too much for health care as the Administration contends,
why does the President's health care reform set aside an additional $634 billion over 10 years, over half
of which will come from tax increases? Apparently, as the Cheshire Cat might say, the new Wonderland logic
means that you lower costs by spending more.
Obama's Health Cost Illusion.
The main White House argument for health-care reform goes something like this: If we spend now on a hugely
expensive new insurance program for the middle class, we can save later by reducing overall U.S. health
spending. ... What if this particular theory turns out to be a political illusion? What if the speculative
cost savings never report for duty, while the federal balance sheet is still swamped with new social obligations
that will be impossible to repeal? The only possible outcome will be the nationalization of U.S. health
markets, which will mean that almost all care will be rationed by politics.
What
Happened While Barack Was 'Saving and Creating'. [Scroll down] And, as if "saved or
created" wasn't a fatuous enough standard to begin with, Obama continues to claim that he's "saved or created"
150,000 jobs during the same time the economy has lost 1.6 million. He could at least drop the
"created" half of the canard. Then, I guess, "Hey, if we hadn't gone $700 billion further into debt
in the last three months, we would have lost 1.75 million jobs" isn't an argument he wants to make.
Sure, the jobs news isn't great, but Obama has to start showing some bang for the buck he's "investing" in
"recovery," according to the newest Gallup numbers, which show his approval ratings slipping on spending and
handling of the deficit.
To
stimulate the economy, let it be free. Lobbying is about the only sector of the economy experiencing
a boom right now. This is a predictable effect of the tax-and-spend stimulus model favored by both major
political parties. Taking money out of the economy, wasting some of it on bureaucracy, and then putting it
back in is not going to spark economic growth. About the only thing that has been sparked is a lobbying
feeding frenzy over stimulus funding.
The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims.
"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing
for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus
had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs — and announced he was ramping up some
of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers
come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million
jobs over the next two years."
Obama's economic
spin machine. The Obama administration was out in full force defending the stimulus this
weekend. The mantra is that the economy is getting better but Americans need to be patient to see
progress. The problem is that, so far, there hasn't been any economic progress.
Obama
quotes verse 5:32, omits 5:33. The supposedly noble sentiments of the first verse, taken from a Jewish
source, are entirely undercut by the second verse, which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews.
(And as an aside the Muslim sources estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns against them). Far
from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Muslim prophet will be killed, or
crucified, mutilated, and banished.
Health Care Huckster. The biggest
obstacle President Obama faces in selling his health care agenda could be the albatross of his own economic stimulus
package. During its last major sales push, the Obama administration promised the $787 billion stimulus
legislation would create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years, serve as a model of transparency, and be free of
earmarks. But those claims haven't held up so well.
The smothering
embrace of nanny government. When President Barack Obama tells you he's "reforming" health care
to "control costs," the point to remember is that the only way to "control costs" in health care is to have
less of it. In a government system, the doctor, the nurse, the janitor and the Assistant Deputy Associate
Director of Cost-Control System Management all have to be paid every Friday, so the sole means of "controlling
costs" is to restrict the patient's access to treatment.
Why
the suddenly shy press corps? The administration is trying to muddy the waters by its constant use
of the meaningless metric "jobs saved or created" -- as President Obama did yet again when he said that
the stimulus bill would result in 600,000 jobs "saved or created this summer." But the May
unemployment numbers put the lie to this slippery formulation. The administration told us that with
the stimulus bill we would have 8 percent unemployment and without it we would have 8.7 percent
unemployment. In reality, we have 9.4 percent unemployment. How did the stimulus manage
to "save" jobs when there are a million less jobs today than there would have been if Congress hadn't
passed it?
Watching How Hopenchange is Made:
It seems clear that, if the public knew what is in this [Waxman-Markey] bill, and how much it may cost them,
they would concur with this analysis: it is a "disaster." But the Democrats plan to ram it through
without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text. The same legislative process that brought
us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet
again. Why so fast? Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a need to make room for the next bill
to be railroaded through on a fast track by a one-party Congress.
What
is going on with the Cap and Trade bill?. The bill is only available online at the House Rules
Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced." Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454,
that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees,
there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer -- but it's still being considered
as H.R. 2454.
Did
someone mention Cap and Trade?
Democrats
are relying on deception again. Support for any Democratic policy initiative requires dishonesty, and
the health plan being pushed by President Barack Obama is no exception. Let's examine what the proponents of
government health care are saying. First, there are 46 million uninsured people in the United States.
Even though this may be literally true, it is deliberately misleading. And, it is often stated as "46 million
without health care," which is not just misleading, it's an outright lie.
Gibbs-erish. Such is the lot of
the White House press secretary that he will stick to the White House line, no matter how dumb it sounds. Robbert
Gibbs was up at bat on Thursday [7/2/2009] and went down swinging. In the process he pointed out just how untenable
the White House spin is.
The Empirical President.
Instead of data, the president offers humbug. The great genius of American ingenuity, he suggests, after
receiving billions in government "investments," will create new technologies for extracting usable and cheap
energy from wind, solar, and geothermal sources. But if those technologies are just a wish away, why have
they not been discovered already by businesses hoping to undersell oil and gas? Note that nuclear power,
the one "green" source that is empirically proven to provide relatively inexpensive power without producing
greenhouse gases, is not even on the president's agenda.
40 Acres and a President.
During the election, despite having been portrayed as America's first post-racial candidate, Barack Obama actually
represented the complete opposite. With astonishing cunning and guile, a type that his opponents could
have never imagined possible, Obama and his campaign unabashedly and tenaciously used race to goad Americans
into believing that voting for him would right the wrongs of America's racial history.
Obama's
Economic Incoherence. As the unemployment rate climbs beyond the administration's projections,
Vice President Joe Biden informs us that the administration "misread how bad the economy was." Apparently,
we were going to experience a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis comparable to the Great Depression without a
particularly high unemployment rate. This was the promise of the Obama administration, which indulged in
hair-raisingly alarmist economic rhetoric while pumping out unduly hopeful economic projections.
Spread Freedom?
Not So Much. The Obama Doctrine is finally coming into focus. ... Obama himself insists that he's
guided by nothing other than a cool-headed pragmatism. Indeed, Obama has a grating habit of describing any
position not his own as "ideological," as if his is the only sober, practical understanding of the problems we
face. ... This attitude has allowed him to dismiss opponents of socialized medicine and the government takeover
of various industries as "ideologues," and critics of trillions in debt-fueled spending as small-minded
cranks.
'Put
nothing in writing,' Browner told auto execs on secret White House CAFE talks. Carol Browner, former
Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to
put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase
federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a
congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent
new CAFE standards."
Stuttering Stimulus. Those who
pushed through this year's $787 billion fiscal "stimulus" seem to be counting on the American people's short memory.
Wasn't it just last year that we were told, repeatedly and with stark emphasis, that this economy was the "worst" since the
Great Depression? That was the pretense for not only the stimulus, but for the federal takeover of the U.S. auto
industry and the quasi-takeover of the U.S. financial industry. ... If the stimulus passed, the White House vowed,
unemployment would peak at 8%. Today, it's 9.5% — and rising. "The truth is, we and everyone else misread
the economy," said Biden. He used that phrase — "the truth is," or something similar — at
least three times in a talk with ABC's George Stephanopolous. But the "truth is" something quite different.
Obama's Op-Ed,
Annotated. At a press conference a few weeks ago, when confronted with the disparity between his
administration's projected unemployment figures under the stimulus (8 percent) and the real unemployment figures
(9.7 percent), Obama said, "Keep in mind the stimulus package was the first thing we did... If you recall, it was
only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked." So Obama took office amid the
most severe downturn since the Great Depression, at a time when the country was hemorrhaging jobs and the financial
system was on the brink of collapse. He said as much a week before signing the stimulus into law. But
don't blame him for overselling the impact the stimulus would have — his administration was totally
blindsided by a sudden report that the economy had tanked!
Obama Can't Be Trusted With Numbers.
The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with
it because the media haven't asked many pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.
The Audacity of Conceit. It
is a common mistake of intellectuals to confuse IQ with common sense and verbal fluency with leadership qualities. ... Nobody
would deny that the members of Obama's circle of economic advisors are indeed academically adept, well-spoken men and
women. But have any of them ever run a lemonade stand, much less a bona fide business? Have they ever met a
payroll? ... So what do they bring to the administration other than long resumes and fearsome reputations as intellectual
polemicists? All these brilliant academics have been brought on board for the sole purpose of lending an intellectual
veneer to Obama's political schemes and validate his power grab.
Hoyer Says Small Businesses Don't Make
$280,000 Per Year So They Won't Be Hurt. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that job growth
and economic recovery would not be harmed by a Democratic plan to increase income taxes by $540 billion to pay
for their health-care reform proposal because the tax hikes would not affect small businesses.
The President Moves the Economic Goalposts.
So what's a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If
you're Barack Obama, you redefine your goals and act as if America won't remember what you said originally. That's
a neat trick if you can get away with it, but Mr. Obama won't. His words are a matter of public record and he will
be held to them.
Numbers Don't
Lie — Except When They're Fabricated. Anyone who remembers his campaign pronouncement that
a Kansas tornado had left "ten thousand dead" and "an entire town destroyed" (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve
people) knows that President Obama hasn't been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.
However, Mr. Obama's dogged refusal to deviate from his "150,000 jobs created or saved" by the $787,000,000,000.00
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching.
Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now.
Obama wags the dog. President
Obama's political strategy has finally crystallized: When all else fails, blame Bush-Cheney. And make no mistake
about it — all else has failed. ... Congressional Democrats and Obama seem to be disturbingly comfortable
with placing partisanship before national security and are not above manufacturing a scandal as a means to
achieve their objective.
Obama's Ethics: There was
an overwhelmingly fictional quality to President Obama's press conference last night from his opening remarks
on. Promoting his notional health care reform plan, whatever it is, he endlessly asserts a set of talking
points that would be demonstrably false if we had the text of a plan to check it against, such as the House's
thousand-page monstrosity. When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a
tell-tale sign. He prefaces it with "let me be clear" or "understand this." Last night [7/22/2009]
he achieved such "clarity" twice in his opening remarks.
IG-Gate: Connecting the
SIGTARP Dots. The Obama administration's promises of "transparency" are being revealed as lies
on the magnitude of "The check's in the mail" ... Avoiding public scrutiny of reckless misappropriation of
taxpayer dollars is at least one possible motive for the legislation sponsored by Rep. John Larson
(D-Conn.) ... that would give President Obama power to fire and replace five IGs at federal financial
oversight agencies.
Did someone mention
the Walpin scandal?
"Miss
Information". [Linda Douglass] makes no attempt whatsoever to prove her assertion that Obama's
comments were out of context or irrelevant. And that's what's sort of interesting to me. Her rebuttal
technique is truly Obamaesque, in that she does what Obama himself does: Quotes Obama as proof that
Obama is always right.
Obamacare Meltdown. The revelation
last week that a majority of Americans may actually disagree with the President was something for which his
team was clearly not prepared. Their attempt to marginalize citizens across the country who dared to
speak out against a government-takeover of health care is shameful, arrogant, and desperately sad. With
the American people growing increasingly unhappy with the President's health care plan, Democrats in Congress
are working feverishly to cast those who are concerned as radical props to the special interests. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a sign of bold leadership, last week told reporters that protests of
government-run health care were "phony" and "staged."
Barry, Barry,
Quite Contrary. I want to express my deep disappointment with your continued refusal to address
my questions about the new health care reform bill currently being pushed through Congress. A few days
ago, I sent you several dozen questions about the bill. You did not answer a single one of them.
Instead, you keep sending me form emails.
White House Acknowledges Unsolicited
E-Mails on Health Care. The White House for the first time Sunday [8/16/2009] somewhat acknowledged
that people across the country received unsolicited e-mails last week on health care from the administration,
suggesting the problem on third-party groups it claimed placed the recipients' names on the distribution list.
In a written statement released exclusively to FOX News, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the White House
hopes those who received the e-mails without signing up for them were not "inconvenienced" by the messages.
The Editor says...
The White House explanation was, in so many words, that their web site was hacked, and some malicious third
party loaded up the White House computer with email addresses. It's the old "somebody else did it"
excuse. If the White House story is true, then the people in charge of the White House web site are
incompetent. If the story is not true, then the White House is being run by liars. Take your
pick: they are incompetent or they are dishonest.
White
House Blames E-Mail Controversy on 'Sinister Conspiracy Theories' . The White House is blaming
the controversy over its Web site and mass e-mails on viral rumors, "fear-mongering" and "sinister conspiracy
theories" even as it acknowledges problems with its online practices. After confirming to FOX News over
the weekend that third-party groups could be responsible for official White House e-mails that have been sent
to people who never signed up for them, President Obama's new media director took to the official White House
blog to "clear up" the confusion.
Meet the new
crop of White House Fellows. Now I am sure all these people are fine people. But the
White House Fellows are supposed to be chosen on a strictly non-partisan basis. Do you think this crew
of community organizers, activists, and environmentalists were evenly split along partisan lines — as
is the nation is as a whole?
Who's Running the
Show? Is Eric Holder running the administration, or is the president disingenuous
when he denies responsibility for reactivating the investigation of CIA detainee-interrogation
cases? ... Either Obama is lying about his objectives at Justice or his attorney general is
seriously off the reservation. At the next prime-time press conference, someone might
ask Obama who is running the show.
Overcoming 'Remote-Control'
Government. The elaborate shell game local politicians play with our money is the biggest
threat to our freedom.
Senate Cloaks Obamacare. You can't read the bill
because they refuse to put it in writing. And you'd better not oppose it because the government will try to muzzle
you. President Obama has consistently refused to put his details into legislative language, and now the U.S. Senate
is doing the same thing. Rather than respecting public demands for transparency, they're figuratively spitting in
the public's face.
Obama's
foreign policy vision not so new age. President Obama's speeches often claim "the time has
come" for something, or "the days" of this or that "are over." It's as if his presidency has introduced
a new epoch. I used to think that invoking the vision of a new age was merely a rhetorical device to
distinguish him from George W. Bush. Now I think it is something more — a way to make
a very old philosophy sound new and failed policies of the past seem fresh and exciting.
Will the Real Barack
Obama Please Stand Up? In a clever twist on the 1960's quiz show, the President of the United
States is playing all three figures himself, all professing to be the real Barack Obama. The centrist
is a leftist, the post-racial plays the race card, the post-partisan is anything but. He supports free
markets, then nationalizes one after another. He swears to "preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution," but says it is defective and walks all over it. He denies being a socialist or a
fascist, but who is he really. Wright and Ayres were just a pastor and a guy in the neighborhood,
but seem to be more. Obama is an American, but seems to loathe America. Obama is the
chameleon in the White House.
The Un-Bama. [Scroll down] Obama
will frequently answer a tough question by saying "on the one hand we want X, while on the other we
certainly must be concerned with Y." He will avoid a clear answer, inviting the audience to
trust to him on the presumption that, because he could mention something of value to both sides, he
must be best suited to work out the optimal compromise. The liberal media fell completely for
this simple and cheap trick. Meanwhile, Obama, the hustler, never intended to solve any problem
with any solution other than one from the far left.
Beware Our Rousseauian
Imaginer-in-Chief. When the president talks about the America he wants to create, he envisions
some futuristic ideal community in which all good things exist, but only if the people — in John
Lennon-esque fashion — first imagine it will be so and then act to make it happen regardless of
whether it is possible. This kind of utopian thinking is not merely political hyperbole, but the main
sales routine for the president's political program.
Obama's First Year. Why
have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast? We must, I think, begin before the beginning.
The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud.
Obama: Ruling a blow to democracy.
President Barack Obama used his weekly address Saturday to attack this week's Supreme Court ruling that the government
cannot ban campaign contributions by corporations, saying it is a blow to his efforts to rein in special interests in
Washington. "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," Obama said.
When Is a Person Not a Person?
Socialists have the most incredible lack of intellectual ability, and they lack the most basic tenets of
morality. Why is this? It is because their lives are predicated on political philosophy rather
than on facts and truth. That is how the Kenyan, Obama, came to be the Great Pretender in the White
House. In essence, he spoke well, but didn't have an ounce of truth about him. Yet, people
voted for him, to the astonishment of more rigorous minds.
Obvious Opacity.
Nancy Pelosi insisting on defining clandestine conferences as transparency brings clarity to what America
deals with every time Obama speaks. Since January of 2009, black is white, right is wrong, and open
is shut. Overarching debt is economic stimulus, job loss is growth, socialists are capitalists,
enemies are friends, and despair and despotism are defined as hope and change.
Triangulation makes a comeback.
President Barack Obama's proposal to cap certain government spending in his 2011 federal budget immediately
brought an old term back into the Washington conversation: triangulation.
President
Obama's Lexicon of Rhetorical Devices: Obama is addicted to utilizing language that he has
carefully tailored or perverted to obfuscate the truth. In other words, he uses double talk on a routine
basis. In order to understand what Obama truly tells us when he speaks to us, it is necessary to grab our
Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring and decipher precisely what he means when he uses his pet phrases.
As Predictable as Clockwork — the
Obama three-step. In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first
throws under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday's Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year's Rahm Emanuel,
Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopts the no more red state/blue state, "bipartisan," "there
is only one America" rhetoric.
Obama's 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade
revenue. A trade publication is reporting this afternoon [1/29/10] that President
Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated
from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.
Obama's
Secret Slush Fund. President Obama and Budget Director Peter Orszag have thrown transparency out
the window and created a black box for taxes and spending on climate change hidden inside the administration's
2011 budget. ... A secret budget-within-the-budget. Talk about a lack of transparency. The blank
line is labeled: "Allowance for climate policy."
Americans finally
starting to see through the president's prevarications. The fact that this duplicitous non-achiever
was elected in the first place proves his ability to fool nearly all of the people some of the time. Despite
a near total lack of credentials, a voting record vacillating between rad-lib and "present," and a passel of
communists, terrrorists, anti-Semites and criminials in his close circle of friends, Obama rather easily fooled
nearly all of the people in our great land. Especially those who went to journalism school.
Obama's Bipartisanship Scam: When
the Republican House leadership surprised its members with their invitation to President Obama to speak at the
Republican retreat in Baltimore, many conservatives were dismayed. As the event played out on January 29th,
their concerns appeared justified. ... Throughout, Obama pushed his bipartisanship scam. But he made it
clear that it's a roach motel he's built for the Republicans willing to enter it: they'll go in and
never come out without adopting his ideas wholesale.
Obama Parts Company With Reality.
In his budget announcement today [2/1/2010], Obama said: "[O]ur government is deeply in debt after what
can only be described as a decade of profligacy." So he proposes to put the country far more deeply in
debt through profligacy of a sort that was undreamed of just a few years ago.
Politicians in
Wonderland. There was a recent flap because three different members of the Obama administration,
on three different Sunday television talk shows, gave three widely differing estimates of how many jobs the
president has created. That should not have been surprising, except as a sign of political sloppiness
in not getting their stories together beforehand. They were simply doing what Barack Obama himself
does — namely, just pulling numbers out of thin air.
An
Unusually Bad Prevaricator, Unusually Bad. Obama said in his State of the Union speech (and
similar statements several times since): "By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of
over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was
the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top
of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I
walked in the door." Though it's true that the deficit for President George W. Bush's final year in
office was close to $1.3 trillion, it must be noted that Obama and his fellow Democratic-controlled
Congress members approved the TARP bailouts and are largely responsible for the other budget expenditures
leading to that record deficit.
Presidential Promises and
Pretenses. If you accept responsibility for something bad, aren't you accepting blame by
definition? Not if you're Barack Obama, who has a talent for accepting responsibility while
minimizing and deflecting it.
Paygo Paygo. Barack Obama's
rhetoric about the economy in recent days has been a blizzard of excuses, euphemisms, denials, and
scapegoating attacks. Notice that Democrats are more upset that he is caricaturing Las Vegas
than Wall Street. By telling people not to "blow" their money in casinos, Obama is killing
business there, they say. But what about demonizing and discrediting bankers and "fat cat"
employers?
Pay-go gets
passed, then it gets bypassed. The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats
are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda.
The Political Masters Of Propaganda and
Their Well-Intentioned Disasters: "Pay as you go" -- it's the new code phrase for raising taxes
even more to pay for the inefficient and in many cases unsound, failure-prone government programs pushed relentlessly
by progressives. Great-sounding slogans. Great-sounding promises, claims and speeches. But now it's
OK to say one thing while cleverly concealing and delivering something different -- something most
Americans in survey after survey clearly say they do not want.
The Paygo
Fraud: When a White House statement refers to a "bedrock principle," it means something
slushy and soft and not really a principle at all, but a gimmick, still one more fraud to fool the
public, a joke of the kind that must keep presidential aides rolling on the floor in laughter at
all the fools who cheer them on.
The Paygo Con:
Pay-as-you-go, or paygo, rules require that new entitlement spending and new tax cuts must be paid for dollar-for-dollar
with entitlement spending cuts or tax increases. As Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget
Committee has noted, the Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi "have violated pay-as-you-go rules by nearly
$1 trillion" over the past three years. And they're not done.
Failure Writ Small. [Scroll
down] What Obama did in New Hampshire is the same as he has done for the past year, and on the campaign
trail before that. He presented a façade of an argument to justify actions Americans would not
possibly support were he to state their real motives. It's exactly how he tried to sell health care
reform (it's vital to economic recovery!), his massive transfer of wealth from private producers to
government employee unions (it's shovel-ready stimulus!), and his cap-and-trade bill (it will create
green jobs!).
Rigging the
Numbers: [Scroll down] "We need to develop a greater resiliency in this country on
security issues," Sarah E. Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the
New York Times. "The administration needs to remind the American public that we have convicted
195 international terrorists in federal courts since 2001." That 195 number is making the rounds.
It is both false and an exercise in hypocrisy.
Who
are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons? [Scroll down] But there's one serious factual
debate going on about Holder's letter, and that concerns those "300 individuals." Just who are they?
It turns out some lawmakers have been trying for months to get an answer. They're not saying the claim is
false — they just want to see what it's based on. But so far they haven't been able to find out.
Obama's
Three Hundred Imaginary Terrorists: In justifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's civilian trial, the
Obama administration is fond of citing a seemingly slam-dunk factoid: 300 other terrorists are currently
sitting in federal prisons after being tried in civilian court. One problem: that number seems
to have come out of nowhere.
190 Terror
Convictions in Civilian Trials, Mr. President? How About Fewer Than a Dozen? A new study
should finally put to rest the nonsense claim by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and others in the
administration that "hundreds" of terrorists akin to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad were convicted in the civilian
justice system during the Bush administration. The number thrown around by the administration has
varied widely from 300 to 190 to assorted spots in between.
If
you think our debt's bad now ... On day one of his vow to take "meaningful steps to rein in our debt," Barack
Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. ... On Day Two, taking a break from the rigors
of austerity, he was in Tampa, Fla., promising $8 billion for high-speed rail projects there and in a dozen other
places. Four days later, he released a $3.8 trillion fiscal year 2011 budget that would add another
$1.3 trillion to the national debt.
Obama vs. Einstein: According to the
Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama's senior advisor, said that the president worked with "[Harvard
professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity." I've
read that paper, "The Curvature of Constitutional Space." It's complete nonsense. It shows no
understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity, or of the relationship between relativity theory and
Newton's theory.
Who Are the
Gitmo 9? The Obama administration, and Holder's Justice Department in particular, have a knack
for making a bad thing worse. Their typical scandal pattern is: (a) make bold pronouncements
about unprecedented transparency, (b) show a little leg, and then (c) stonewall, after which (d) White
House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel assures some friendly journalist that everything would have been different if
only they'd have listened to him. The result is the the trifecta: The administration ends up looking
hypocritical, sinister, and incompetent.
Obama Administration Using Accounting Gimmicks That Would
Make Enron 'Blush'. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says the Obama administration is using an accounting
"gimmick" in its budget by not including the debt owed by mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Senate
Staffers Warned to Stay Clear of Drudge Report. The Senate's official gatekeeper, said the
Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator, and whitepages.com "are responsible for the many viruses
popping up throughout the Senate," according to an e-mail to the Environment and Public Works Committee.
A
little secret about Obama's transparency: The current administration, challenged by the
president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.
Executive
Order Hijinks. I know we tire of the hypocrisy, but I really think this is remarkable.
We spent the eight years through January 19, 2009, listening to Democrats complain that President Bush
had purportedly caused a constitutional crisis by issuing signing statements when he signed bills into
law. ... But now Democrats are going to abide not a mere signing statement but an
executive order that
purports to have the effect of legislation — in fact, has the effect of nullifying legislation that
Congress is simultaneously enacting?
Education
Lessons Are Lost on Obama. I can't pinpoint the moment when the Obama administration went wrong
on the subject of education. But I can pinpoint the moment when it demonstrated that it can't be taken
seriously. It happened on Monday, March 15, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan was expounding to
reporters about revising the No Child Left Behind law. The new policy, he asserted, "is going to
revolutionize education in our country." No, it's not.
Changing its name isn't going to fool anybody.
White House: "Cap and Trade"
is Out. At the same time the White House is opening up to offshore oil and natural gas drilling,
the Obama administration is backing away from "cap and trade," a market-based plan to limit the nation's carbon
output — or at least that particular language used to describe the plan. "I think the term
'cap and trade' is not in the lexicon anymore," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said this morning on CNBC.
Obama's
Drilling Deception: If this were a sincere change of heart and an honest, stand-alone effort to
wean America off foreign oil, it would be worth heralding. But as always with this administration, there's
a catch...
Pence
calls president's drilling announcement a 'smokescreen'. Congressman Mike Pence, an Indiana
Republican, said in a statement today [3/31/2010]: ..."As usual the devil is in the details. Only
in Washington, D.C., can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of
your new leases and claim you're going to increase production." "The President's announcement today
is a smokescreen. It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and
include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.
Not exactly terrorists.
Holder compares Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to a mink rescuer.
Stall, Baby,
Stall. The administration's sudden interest in offshore drilling is little more than political
posturing designed to gain support for job-killing energy legislation soon to come down the pike. I'm
confident that GOP senators will not take the bait.
Wonder where
the next 'crisis' will be manufactured. The Democrat political template is very predictable
and depends on a complicit liberal Mainstream Media (MSM) to cover up and obfuscate for shortcomings in policy
execution. The Democrat political strategy to inundate, exaggerate, obfuscate, and inoculate policies is
evident in domestic policy initiatives as well as foreign policy efforts. The process begins with a
classic Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the public with "crisis" after "crisis" that only Democrats can
successfully address.
Note
to Doctors: Now I'm "Entitled" To Your Services. Vice President Joe Biden did it again.
He reiterated what was once a central theme of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and what has been a central
tenet of our government since Mr. Obama became President. And the idea is, simply, this: when government
takes wealth away from certain individuals and groups, and gives it to certain other individuals and groups, such
actions are NOT to be called "economic re-distribution." Such actions are to be described as "fairness."
Even
Obama's Fans Notice He's a Phony In How He Writes, Talks, and Even Walks. How phony is Barack
Obama? PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill reviewed New Yorker editor David Remnick's new Obama book
The Bridge in the Washington Post Outlook section Sunday [4/4/2010], and she kept finding Obama is a
Slick Barry, a "shape shifter." Obama even admitted to rhetoric what should be obvious — how
he changes "dialects" depending on the audience he's talking to.
The Empty Vessel President.
Although African-American in appearance, he was raised by whites and educated in the most elite Eastern liberal
tradition, with only a thin veneer of calculated street cred imbued by his time in the south side of Chicago.
Although swept to office as the recipient of the gift of soaring rhetoric, he has been found to be as heavily
dependent on a teleprompter as any beginning mass communications student, and prone to stammering and
self-contradiction in its absence. So what's left?
Obama Swings And Misses When Asked To Name Favorite White Sox.
When it comes to being a die-hard White Sox fan, the president's pin-striped jersey appears to be as empty as
his business suit.
The Tax Formerly Known as the
Medicare Tax. As we continue to find out what is contained in ObamaCare (now that it's been
enacted), it is worth noting a last-minute change in nomenclature, made just before the House vote —
a disingenuous revision that exemplifies the bill's legislative process. The name of the new 3.8 percent
"Medicare Tax" on investment income (imposed on people in the upper two tax brackets) was changed the day before
the House vote. Its official name in the law signed by President Obama last week is not the "Medicare
Tax" (the name in the text released 72 hours before the vote) but rather the "Medicare Contribution."
What The Trustees Will Say About Social Security: It's
not surprising that the Obama administration has delayed the annual report from the Social Security and Medicare
trustees to reflect the impact of health care legislation. ObamaCare will show an immediate improvement
in the finances of both programs — at least on paper. How real that improvement turns out to
be is another question.
Searching for Core
Beliefs. For those who have not heard, beginning July 1, student loans will no longer be
administered by banks. Instead, they will be issued directly by the federal government via the U.S.
Department of Education. Tellingly, Obama used the same line of argument when pushing for health care
reform. There, too, he argued that government takeover will save money. Such assertions are
obviously absurd. To see why, we need only to ask this question: When has any government-run
program saved money?
Obama's false START.
[Scroll down] The administration is also hyping the "historic" scope of the arms reductions, ignoring the
more substantial efforts it inherited from the previous administration. Under President George W. Bush,
the United States retired 4,000 nuclear warheads, while the new agreement commits the country to retiring only
550. Mr. Bush moved significantly closer to Mr. Obama's fantasy-land vision of a nuclear-free world than
Mr. Obama will.
Prez Throws
Like Girl, Not Koufax, Media Cheers Anyway. Everywhere we look, we are surrounded by phonies, people
who say they are one thing but in actuality are something else entirely. ... Therefore when the president of the
United States, who in one short year has smoothly gone back on his word about many things — transparency,
democracy, earmarks, war — stepped out on the baseball mound on opening day to throw out the first pitch
for the Washington Nationals, we learned a bit about his authentic self.
Obama's useful idiocy: A look back.
Sarah Palin attacked President Obama's announcement of a new strategy on nuclear weapons that foreswears development of new
weapons and promises not to respond to chemical or biological attacks with nukes. Asked about Palin's comments by
George Stephanopolous, Obama responded: "Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."
Is Obama himself an "expert on nuclear issues"?
Behavioral economics — the
governing theory of Obama's nanny state. Just as Obama is a liberal Democrat who, his admirers
insist, isn't really a liberal Democrat, behavioral economics proposes government regulation that, behavioral
economists insist, isn't really regulation.
Expansion of the welfare state disguised
as environmentalism.
Earth Day: An Assault
on Man. [Scroll down] The American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House proposes
green economic schemes that should frighten us greatly. For example, buried on pages 1014-1016 of the
bill is the "Monthly Energy Refund." According to this trick, for those with a gross income that "does
not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line ... a direct deposit" of an undisclosed amount of money will be
sent "into the eligible household's designated bank account[.]" On pages 502-503 we find the "Low Income
Community Energy Efficiency Program," whereby grants will be issued "to increase the flow of capital and
benefits to low income communities, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses and entrepreneurs[.]"
Obama Now Pushing Sneaky Wall Street Bailout.
Talk about taking another giant leap in the wrong direction. Fresh off his successful (for now) effort
to ram through an unpopular healthcare "reform" law, President Barack Obama is now fighting for legislation
on Capitol Hill that would set up a permanent fund to bail out companies in the financial sector. Of
course, that's not how his team is spinning things.
Obama's credibility
crisis: Hard on the heels of that shocking Pew Research Center survey finding that four out of five
Americans don't trust government comes a blitz of new revelations about the Obama administration that amount to a
full-fledged credibility crisis. The latest disclosures are especially damaging because they concern President
Obama's possible misrepresentation of his relationships with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and convicted felon
Tony Rezko, his administration's misleading statements about Obamacare costs, and questions about improper
manipulation of government-owned General Motors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
O, Such Sad Deception.
[Scroll down] Like the Jews of Goray, those people who voted for Obama are going to have their world turn over
180 degrees. I fear for their faith in Obama. He is not an honest broker. He misleads and uses
the ancient Roman trick of "bread and circuses." Interesting is the fact that this allegedly transparent leader
has not held a press conference in months. Obama's angry and contemptible behavior against allies is revealing.
His mercurial nature has Americans spinning; it takes incredible energy to keep up with his poisonous prevarications.
How Does Obama Keep A
Straight Face? Barack Obama seems to believe that Unions are not "special interest" groups.
Either that, or he really believes we're just too stupid to understand what he says and pay attention — over
time — to what he actually does.
Another Fine
Mess. The Obama Administration has tirelessly pushed the line that it has employed every
available tool to fight the Gulf oil spill from "Day One." Well, it's certainly true that every media
resource is being deployed to squelch comparisons with the slow-footed 2005 Bush administration response to
Hurricane Katrina. But as for having actual oil-spill fighting technology on hand before the crisis,
as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires, the administration was clearly caught unprepared.
The President's Trick Or Tweet.
President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of
democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At
Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet
and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on
democracy. We are not making this up.
The Editor says...
Hmmm... The internet puts a strain on democracy, he says. Is that why he's trying
to
take control of the internet?
You
Want Us to Believe You Can't You Use An iPod, Mr. President? [President Obama] thinks that new
technology is dangerous, especially if it means you will pay less attention to official news. Yup, this
is the same Barack Obama who, in 2008, was the high-tech candidate of cool, whose campaign built a list of
13 million people, many of whom were "Friends of Barack" on Facebook and other cutting-edge websites.
Last Year He Said He Had All Michael Jackson's Music on His
iPod. President Barack Obama told Hampton University's graduating class on Sunday that he does
not "know how to work" an iPod. Last July, however, after pop-star Michael Jackson's death, Obama told
the Associated Press that he had Jackson's music on his iPod.
Obama campaigns against Bush —
again. President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular
politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington. It doesn't matter that George W. Bush left
office 16 months ago. The White House's mid-term election strategy is becoming clear —
pit the Democrats of 2010 against the Republicans circa 2006, 2008 and 2009, including Bush.
Border
Charade. There's something disingenuous about the president's plan to deploy 1,200 National
Guard troops to the Arizona border to help the Border Patrol catch illegal aliens. His director of
immigration and customs enforcement, John Morton, has said he might not enforce immigration crimes reported by
Arizona officials, though the state's new law merely copies federal law.
We need a leader, not a
politician. We have become accustomed to [Obama's] management style — target a
scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance
executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from
the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the
deepening and lengthening downturn, he blames Wall Street and George W. Bush.
Drilling Bits of
Fiction. The Obama Administration is under political pressure to reverse its ill-considered deep
water drilling moratorium, and the latest blowback comes from seven angry experts from the National Academy of
Engineering who say their views were distorted to justify the ban.
Obama: If I had tried to prevent it, which I didn't, they would have stopped me.
In an interview with Politico's Roger Simon, President Obama says Republicans share blame for the Gulf oil spill
because they would have objected if, months ago, before the spill, Obama had tried to take steps to prevent such
a disaster. Of course, Obama did not attempt to take those steps, but the president says he would have been
stopped from doing so if he had. Therefore, the GOP is to blame.
Barack Obama's Body
Language. [Scroll down] Recall, for example, his claim, "I am not an ideologue."
It is reminiscent of Emerson's famous quote, "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted
our spoons." If you have to say it, maybe it's because it isn't so. Mr. Obama loves to talk
tough. He likes to make threats, demands, and promises. However, as Mary Matalin has observed,
"Obama talks like John Wayne but acts like Peewee Herman."
Obama's
9/11 envy. President Obama doesn't like the fact that the Gulf oil spill reminds people of
Hurricane Katrina, since the public response to that catastrophe hastened the decline of his predecessor's
standing. He'd prefer that the American people be reminded of something else — something
that rallied people around their president. And so he told Politico over the weekend that the oil
spill has "echoes of 9/11."
The bogey man.
[Scroll down] In an effort to defend his boss, a White House spokesman argued that Obama's recent golf
outing "probably does us all good as American citizens" because it gives him an opportunity to "clear his
mind." How, in the middle of a national disaster, is this President — or any President —
not working a good thing? If my apartment were on fire and I took time out to get a pedicure, it would seem
absurd. Why would the President believe the visual of a triple bogey while the Gulf of Mexico is being
destroyed is any better?
Obama's
Coffee House Loophole. President Obama is finally uniting the left and the right —
in joint opposition to his administration's chronic sabotage of transparency and public disclosure rules. ... K Street
influence peddlers told The New York Times last week that they've met routinely with Team Obama officials
over the past 18 months to discuss policy matters — at Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, even on a
side lawn — with the express purpose of circumventing the public's right to know.
The War
On Coal. President Obama journeyed to Wisconsin last Wednesday ostensibly to tout the success
of his failed stimulus package(s). On the same day, the Ex-Im Bank announced it was reconsidering a denied
loan guarantee affecting a Milwaukee-based company that sought to export coal-mining equipment to India. A
coincidence? We think not. Wisconsin is in play in November and so is the Senate seat held by
incumbent Russ Feingold.
A Hapless Administration.
Last week was extraordinary. ... Nancy Pelosi, known for her innovative solutions such as passing major pieces
of legislation without voting on them, announced that the best way to create jobs was to extend unemployment
insurance beyond 99 weeks. The President himself simply reminded the American people that it's all
George Bush's fault, and it will take "some time" before things get better. That should boost the
public's confidence in the economy.
Are
Overdue Reports Concealing ObamaCare Impact On Medicare?. Every year, the Annual Report of
the Social Security Board of Trustees comes out between mid-April and mid-May. Now it's July, and
there's no sign of this year's report. What is the Obama administration hiding?
The
endless hypocrisy of Eric Holder. Attorney General Eric Holder has developed a bad habit of
accusing others of acting in bad faith while doing so himself. Take the issue of Guantanamo Bay.
In Aspen, Colo., last week, Holder accused Congress of playing politics in preventing President Obama from
closing the Gitmo detention center — as Obama had promised to do within a year of his inauguration.
But this accusation is disingenuous for a variety of reasons.
Amnesty bill to be blurred with Gay marriage
and 'freedom rights'. A leak, who is very reliable, has revealed from behind closed doors the
intentions from this progressive congress and Obama. There is a Bill in the Works that will blur the
controversial, gay marriage issue with illegal alien rights and amnesty. This administration and congress
plans to hide behind 'freedom' and are obtaining huge support from the gay community, naturally in the name of
freedom regarding this soon to be exposed Bill. You and I have just gotten a sneak peak as to the
next 'Rules for Radicals trick' as it is unfolding.
The
Blame Game. The White House has gotten into the habit of blaming everything on Republicans.
Nowhere is that more evident — or mistaken — than in the debate over the extension of
jobless benefits.
Joe
Biden's merry band of lobbyists. Vice President Biden's latest fundraising e-mail asks for
help battling "corporate interests." "By spending an unprecedented amount of cash to support Republicans,"
Biden writes, "they're doing their best to buy their way back into power." This is the style of Obama's
White House: Never grant that your opponents disagree in good faith and always accuse them of corruption.
Beyond being unfair, it's dishonest, because it ignores the White House's coziness with corporate lobbyists.
Mission Accomplished II.
[Scroll down] Obama and many other congressional Democrats were similarly wrong about the war.
Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid famously said the war was "lost" and Senator Joe Biden said the only
solution to Iraq was to carve up the country into separate states. Now Biden credits, not President
Bush, but himself and President Obama with "success." This is political shoplifting.
How Many "Top Priority" Issues Does
Obama Have? After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday [8/12/2010],
President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been "a top priority" since
he took office. But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single "top priority," you'd be wrong.
He's got a load of them.
Obama Continues Pushing
Absurd College Agenda. [Scroll down] Obama and his education establishment allies note
that on average, people who have college degrees earn a lot more than people who don't. True, but
irrelevant. Individuals can't make decisions based on what the
average person has experienced;
they must make decisions based on
what they expect will happen to them.
Obama
Demagogues Private Enterprise. Many Americans fear privatizing anything they've come to view as
government work. They object to privately managed roads, independent charter schools, private prisons,
etc., despite private companies' repeated success at providing better service while lowering costs.
Private retirement accounts seem particularly threatening.
The Crisis President Finds
No Issues with Social Security. President Obama, if nothing else, is a prolific discoverer of
crises. In the short space of nineteen months, we have had a health care crisis, economic crisis, swine
flu crisis, housing crisis, banking crisis, auto industry crisis, financial regulatory crisis, global warming
climate change crisis, Gulf oil spill crisis, mortgage crisis, deep-water drilling crisis, teacher layoff
crisis, and of course, the lack-of-freshly-paved-roads crisis, aptly addressed by the Stimulus bill. ... But
the president assures us that "Social Security is not in crisis," thus guaranteeing that the situation will
worsen at least as long as he occupies the Oval Office.
Social Security
Bait and Switch. Democrats are trying to keep control of Congress by scaring the wig off grandma
with a phantom GOP plot against Social Security. That is not news. Social Security scare tactics
have been regular campaign themes since FDR. President Obama's unique contribution is to do this even as
he's begging Republicans to help him reduce the deficit and reform entitlement spending.
The Obama team manipulates the news media
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located
here.
Flip-flops and broken promises
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Bait and switch
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"Spontaneous" events and "randomly selected" people
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Outright hypocrisy
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What's the rush?
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