Category Archives: obama

about those corporate jets…

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Jonah Goldberg pretty much decimates Obama’s whole “jet owners – vs – the rest of us” argument:

…Obama’s most recent budget calls for adding $9.5 trillion in new debt over the next decade. If you got rid of the “accelerated depreciation” of corporate jets, Reuters economics columnist James Pethokoukis calculates, it would save a whopping .03 percent of that total.

…No one asked the president why he suddenly cares so much about getting rid of a tax break he himself was for before he was against it. Indeed, no one asked why, if it is such an affront to the liberal conscience, it was part of Obama’s stimulus bill, which was passed without any Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate (which means Nancy Pelosi voted for special tax breaks for corporate jets and the GOP didn’t).

When these are the facts… its kind of hard to take Obama seriously when he NOW comes out against the very thing he signed into law a few years ago.  And hypocrisy aside… Obama is simply being dishonest about the American people about what our choices and options are. His recent challenge to republicans to Republicans went something like this:  “You go talk to your constituents and ask them, ‘Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?’”

You see… in Obama’s world… the ONLY TWO CHOICES AVAILABLE TO US…. are making all kids completely safe (or at least giving willful dupes the impression this is even possible)… or giving some minor .03% tax cut to a business that is creating jobs (something he claims to want to do… something he claims a ‘lazer-like’ focus on…).  But this is simply not true.  No children are going to be ANY SAFER if a corporate depreciation tax schedule is kept in place or depreciated.  This is nothing more than partisan political posturing of the worst sort… the sort that insinuates that one’s political opponents want to harm women and children. Its as bad as the recent TV spot that insinuated that Paul Ryan wanted to push old ladies off of the edge of a cliff.  Where’s the civility Democrats are always begging for?

If anyone is incapable of having a debate… if anyone is incapable of having a rational conversation… if anyone is incapable of compromise… it is President Obama.  What compromise is there to be had with someone who is this out of touch with reality?

via Corporate Jets and Tax Breaks by Jonah Goldberg.

The state of the economy… more than 2 years later

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Lets engage in a thought experiment.  Imagine that there are no such thing as term limits and that Bush actually won the election of 2009.  Fortunately, that’s the hard part of the thought experiment.  Now imagine that everything else remained exactly the same. The same health care bill, the same bailouts, the same massive debt, the same repeated statements about ‘focusing like a laser‘ on the economy followed by more than two years of a 10% unemployment rate, the same “kinetic military action” in Lybia, the same lavish trips to Spain, Rio, The Hamptons, the same 60 rounds of golf, the same ‘transparency‘.  Imagine if everything else that has happened had not changed one bit.

Now ask yourself this question:  can you imagine a media being as forgiving to Bush as they have been to Obama the past 27 months? Can you imagine the media giving Bush a pass on Abu Gharab #2?  Can you imagine them passing on the opportunity to paint the Lybian action as yet another wasteful failure of American power in the Middle East?  Can you imagine their condesention at Bush’s attempt to ‘brand’ the Lybian action as this rather Orwellian-sounding “kinetic military action“?  Can you imagine Bush being given a pass with unemployment still hovering around 10% over 27 months after he passed a trillion dollars in stimulus?  Can you imagine, given their reaction to how much the Iraq war cost, what their reaction would be to the biggest federal debt and deficits in history?  Can you imagine?

If you’ve got a decent imagination, very quickly you would see that there is an incredible double-standard at work, not only in the mainstream media, but in what Liberals find objectionable on any given day.  And what concerns me the most is their utter lack of interest in the economic hardships the American people are facing… and the lack of interest Obama has in doing anything to fix this problem more than a year after it became apparent that his original plans to simulate had failed.

I don’t know about you, but when I read headlines like “Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Rate at 10.0% in March“… I swallow rather hard… because it is quite apparent that we are still in the midst of an economic cricis.  And make no mistake, 2 years of stagnant growth and 10 percent unemployement is a cricis… regardless of how many times the mainstream media tells you were ‘in a recovery’.  If you look at the details, its shocking how bad a position we are in.  Even the unemployment figures don’t tell the whole story:

The percentage of the overall population that is employed in March 2010 was 58.6 percent. One year later, the total percentage of overall population  employed is… 58.5 percent.  Conclusion: In a growing population we have produced fewer jobs than the number that the population grew. (For the record, the number of Civilian non-institutionalized population was 237.2 million in March 2010, and is 239.00 million in March 2011.)

The number of people who were “not in the labor force” In March 2010 was 83,264,000 (seasonally adjusted). In March 2011, it was 85,594,000 (seasonally adjusted). If you want to know how unemployment dropped a point, look no further than this statistic.

Bottom line… overall REAL unemployment hasn’t changed one bit… regardless of what statistics the Office of Labor releases.  The only thing that has been keeping the unemployement figures as low as they have been… has been due to some rather arbitrary accounting — magically rounding the overall workforce number down to make the same number of unemployed seem like a lower percentage.

Furthermore, we find ourselves in this position even after spending trillions of dollars of debt-spending on ‘stimulus’.  I don’t know about you, but for a trillion dollars… I expected the streets to be paved with gold…. not barely paved.

What has become clear to me is that Obama has no clue what causes economic growth… and has doubled down on  a failed Keynesian ideology despite the overwhelming evidence of its ineffectiveness.

And to make matters worse, as the recent ballooning budget crisis hit state governments, we have slowly begun to realize that all that money that was promised to simulate ‘main street’ mom-and-pop stores… actually was spent protecting union members and federal workers from the pain of economic downturn.  Look at the breakdown on the Business Insider website:

  • $36.9 billion for Aid to People Affected by Economic Downturn (YAY!)
  • $48.4 billion for Education (Think teachers unions)
  • $324 million for Accountability (Think federal employees)
  • $58.4 billion for Aid to State and Local Governments (Think public sector state unions)
  • $41.4 billion for Energy
  • $13.1 billion for Science and Technology including $2.5 billion to National Science Foundation research and $4.7 billion to National Telecommunications and Information Administration… 400 million to NASA (think federal employees)
  • $18.8 billion for Health Care (almost half of which went to federal agencies)
  • $870 million for Business ($646 of which went to Small business loans)
  • $98.3 billion for Transportation and Infrastructure (think Union jobs)
  • $48.3 billion for Infrastructure (Jobs for Main Street Act, the purpose of which was “To poach previously allocated TARP funding and funnel the money into creating jobs in targeted sectors of the US economy [including] mass transit, schools, public housing, and clean water initiatives while adding jobs in these fields.
  • $26.7 billion for Public Service Jobs (ironically titled “Jobs for Main Street Act”)
  • $79 billion for Emergency Relief for Families (good, but hardly ‘stimulus’)
  • $34 billion for the Extension of Unemployment Benefits

Just look at the mysterious lack of anything beneficial for the 80% of the country that is a) not unionized or b) not a federal worker!  Oh, and any ‘stimulus’ that DID go to the the non-unionized private sector was in the form of government LOANS… all of which are to be paid back… basically creating a wash in dollar terms.

I mean seriously, did anyone really expect any of this to work??!!  Can we all agree that whatever this was… it was NOTHING a true stimulus should have been?!  What DID go to the private sector in ‘free’ money was only to help people WITHOUT jobs manage… not help the businesses they work at CREATE NEW ONES. To all my friends on the left: do you not see the sad reality here… the lack of any real solution for most of the middle class in this country… despite Obama’s “laser-like-focus” on jobs!!!??? Doesn’t anyone notice this?  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

And then I read this article by Stephen Moore explaining that its worse:

Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million).

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

And while some of this discrepancy has happened because of real productivity gains in manufacturing…  the government sector has grown by multiples… and has shown decreasing productivity:

Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.

We are spending twice as much on education… and getting worse results.   GREAT.

This is a real disaster we are experiencing…  lets hope the next president can fix things before its too late.

wikileaks just keeps getting more interesting…

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Yet another of the Obama administration’s WTF moments:

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

We’re not going to win any favors stabbing our allies in the back.

via WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets – Telegraph.

What I’m reading…

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1.  The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates – By Jim Geraghty [Or, as I would put it: "The complete list of the lies Obama told the American people during his campaign."]

STATEMENT: “We’ve got a philosophical difference, which we’ve debated repeatedly, and that is that Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it. And my belief is, the reason that people don’t have it is not because they don’t want it but because they can’t afford it.” Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate, February 21, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the individual mandate into law.

HEALTH-CARE NEGOTIATIONS ON C-SPAN

STATEMENT: “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made.” January 20, 2008, and seven other times.

EXPIRATION DATE: Throughout the summer, fall, and winter of 2009 and 2010; when John McCain asked about it during the health-care summit February 26, Obama dismissed the issue by declaring, “the campaign is over, John.”

RAISING TAXES

STATEMENT: “No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.” (multiple times on the campaign trail)

EXPIRATION DATE: Broken multiple times, including the raised taxes on tobacco, a new tax on indoor tanning salons, but most prominently on February 11, 2010: “President Barack Obama said he is ‘agnostic’ about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.”

RECESS APPOINTMENTS

STATEMENT: Then-senator Obama declared that a recess appointment is “damaged goods” and has “less credibility” than a normal appointment. August 25, 2005.

EXPIRATION DATE: March 27, 2010: “If, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”

It goes on for another 10 pages like this…

Redeemer vs Leader

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Sigh… I had so much commentary written about this article but it was all lost with a botched form submission.  At any rate: here is a very compelling “profile” of the modern Liberal; I’d be interested to hear how accurate everyone thinks it is:

Among today’s liberal elite, bad faith in America is a sophistication, a kind of hipness. More importantly, it is the perfect formula for political and governmental power. It rationalizes power in the name of intervening against evil—I will use the government to intervene against the evil tendencies of American life (economic inequality, structural racism and sexism, corporate greed, neglect of the environment and so on), so I need your vote.

“Hope and Change” positioned Mr. Obama as a conduit between an old America worn down by its evil inclinations and a new America redeemed of those inclinations. There was no vision of the future in “Hope and Change.” It is an expression of bad faith in America, but its great ingenuity was to turn that bad faith into political motivation, into votes.

But there is a limit to bad faith as power, and Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party may have now reached that limit. The great weakness of bad faith is that it disallows American exceptionalism as a rationale for power. It puts Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a fallen nation, rather than leading a great nation. They bet on America’s characterological evil and not on her sense of fairness, generosity or ingenuity.

When bad faith is your framework (Michelle Obama never being proud of her country until it supported her husband), then you become more a national scold than a real leader. You lead out of a feeling that your opposition is really only the latest incarnation of that old characterological evil that you always knew was there. Thus the tea party—despite all the evidence to the contrary—is seen as racist and bigoted.

But isn’t the tea party, on some level, a reaction to a president who seems not to fully trust the fundamental decency of the American people? Doesn’t the tea party fill a void left open by Mr. Obama’s ethos of bad faith? Aren’t tea partiers, and their many fellow travelers, simply saying that American exceptionalism isn’t racism? And if the mainstream media see tea partiers as bumpkins and racists, isn’t this just more bad faith—characterizing people as ignorant or evil so as to dismiss them?

via Shelby Steele: A Referendum on the Redeemer – WSJ.com.

lies and liars

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It is no surprise to find out that politicians have been known (on occasion) to stretch the truth just a bit.  During his election campaign, President H. W. Bush famously told the American people there would be “No New Taxes”… and later reneged on that promise.  Shortly thereafter Bill Clinton with the most serious of faces told American People “I did not have sex with that woman”.  That later turned out to be untrue… but it was by no means the first time a politician had lied to save his career.  Bush 41 paid a political price for his misstatement; Clinton, aside from losing his law license, emerged from his “misstatement” with a political legacy largely intact.

President Obama has recently been caught in his own mis-statement.  During the long campaign for heath care reform, Obama clearly explained to the American people that health care reform (and the fees associated with it) were not taxes.  In fact, Obama told George Sephanopoulos in an interview “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.”  When Stephanopoulos pointed to a dictionary to explain that a fee charged by the government met the definition of a tax, Obama replied by saying, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

But that was when Obama was willing to say or do anything to get the American people on his side (incidentally, the American people sided against Obamacare by significant margins… cries which fell on deaf ears in Congress).  Now that the law is in place, the administration’s tune has changed.  In a recent brief by the Justice department defending the constitutionality of the health care law, Eric Holder (Obama’s Attorney General) is arguing that the provisions requiring people to pay fines is “a valid exercise” of Congress’ taxing power.

Furthermore, in order to get enough votes to pass the bill, Obama ‘promised’… in the form of an executive order… that the health care plan would not fund abortions… an order which has now been violated by his own administration in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico.  I can hear a bunch of liberals reading this begin to whine: ”But that wasn’t really a promise… it was just an executive order that can be rescinded at any time“… REALLY.  That’s your argument?  In the real world… a piece of paper saying your legislation won’t fund abortions is a promise it won’t fund abortions… and Obama has just lied to the American people about it.

Jeffery Kuhner in the Washington Times actually makes a great point about what Obama is doing to the country with this renege on abortion funding:  bottom line… it’s an ugly thing:

Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens. Traditionalists – evangelicals, Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, Orthodox Jews – have been made complicit in an abomination that goes against their deepest religious values. As the law is implemented (as in Pennsylvania) the consequences of the abortion provisions will become increasingly apparent. The result will be a cultural civil war. Pro-lifers will become deeply alienated from society; among many, a secession of the heart is taking place.

And this is from the president who was supposed to UNITE the country.  Yet another lie told us by a fawning media.

Now, what affect will these lies have on the Obama administration?  Well, if history is any indicator, I think it reasonable to say that the American people don’t like to be tricked into supporting a politician or piece of legislation.  They don’t like to feel like they were used… feel like their vote or support valued so cheaply by politicians wanting to make a quick political “buck”.  Its one thing if a politician lies about his personal life… it is quite another when he lies about his policies.  If you look at the Bush41 comparison, Obama’s re-election chances are not good.  Given his record not just on the economy… but on the basis of his own standards of performance… he deserves to loose.

via Changing Tune, Administration Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax – NYTimes.com.

projecting prejudice

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Obama must really have a distain for the average Israeli citizen.  In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when asked why he thought so many Israeli’s felt anxiety toward him, he responded, “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

Now, what does this tell us about Obama?  Well, it tells us that his impressions of concerned Israeli citizens are of a bunch of people who’s entire impression of him extends no farther than some loose association his middle name has with Israel’s enemies.  To put it slightly differently, Obama supposes Israeli’s negative impressions of him are born out of some underlying Israeli racism or prejudice towards Muslim Middle-Easterners.  This rather simplistic conclusion shouldn’t at all be surprising to those of us who have been following Obama regularly;  in fact, this it is quite reminicent of when Obama posited that Americans might not support him because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”  In other words, Obama’s practice of projecting prejudice on those who oppose him is ingrained in Obama’s logic… its how he views those who disagree with him.

Never does it occur to Obama that Israelis might feel anxious because of his own policies toward israel and his failures to support their sovereignty and security.   Maybe it was Obama’s strong criticism of their settlement policy that caused Israeli concern. Maybe it was candidate Obama’s delusional insistence to negotiate with Iran without any preconditions that made Israelis anxious… Or his weak efforts to prevent Iran from developing Nuclear weapons after insisting during his campaign that a nuclear iran would be “unacceptable”.  Maybe it was the way he humiliated Israeli President Netanyahu at their most recent meeting in the White House.  Any of these reasons would be sufficient for a typical Israeli citizen to feel some anxiety towards Obama… but somehow Obama remains oblivious.

Maybe Obama should try looking beyond his own prejudices in order to understand those who oppose him instead of fabricating the prejudices of his opponents.


racial double standards

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I found out something interesting over the weekend.  From the Washington Times:

It turns out that Harry Reid using the ‘N’ word in reference to Obama’s dialect (or lack thereof) is actually a statement “[I]n the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama” — according to Tim Kaine, DNC Chair.

Um… O.K.

So as long as we are using the N word in a *positive* context… and you are a Democrat… you are cool.  Everybody forgives you.  The Media accepts your apology and moves on.  Grace is extended to you and explanations of how you “really meant to say it in a positive context” are proffered from Liberal leadership.  If, on the other hand, you are Trent Lott, and you tell an old congressman that you are proud of him for his accomplishments… you are unquestionably a racist…  no apologies or excuses could possibly suffice.

Harry Reid should resign… Immediately.