When the AP notices that the emperor has no clothes the BS bus has hit a real speed bump

Obama threw around a bit more hope and alot more BS in this latest speech. Campaigning is over President Obama it's time to govern. Everyone knows this bill is a democrat's 8 year wish list come true and literally hundreds of pet projects were rammed through with no debate.

All under the guise of "rebuilding America". Unfortunately it will end up being our kids and grandkids who will have to do the rebuilding while their standard of living plummets in the years to come.

Jourtegrity Lost Loser of the Week 022509

Jourtegrity Lost loser of the week........dumb roll please.............AP correspondent Jennifer Loven. Jennifer, Obama shill during the campaign and vicious attack dog against McCain and Palin decided she would submit her story (it got leaked accidently) on last night's Obama speech at 3:22PM EST - 5 hours and 38 minutes before it was to begin. The story predictably praised Obama for a great bipartisan speech blah, blah, blah...all in past tense. She even described how he entered the chamber to grand applause.

It's easy to write a report about an event before it happens if you've decided how great it's going to be ahead of time.

And Jennifer was recently selected as President of the White House Press Corps! Niiiice.

Yup, I'm paranoid about the press being in the tank for the democrats and Obama. I gotta get over that.

Failed Policies of the Past, Huh?

When George Bush concluded that we would not boycott the Olympics in Beijing because of China's suspect humanitarian policies he was roundly ridiculed and said to be a puppet of China. Well guess what? Hilary Clinton our SOS says "nevermind" - those humanitarian issues in China aren't all that important after all.

Remember how Obama said Bush's plans in the Middle East were "failed policies" and the sovreignty of other countries was so very critical. "Nevermind". Turns out we are clandestinely carrying out a war in Pakistan to prop up another sovereign government.

Oh and the torture issue - turns out the new boss is just like the old boss:
Charlie Savage, NY Times:

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

All of the failed policies of the past become acceptable necessities when you're not in campaign promise (lie) mode.

The Battered American

There's a reason why there are revolts and protests all across this country lately. The middle class the "great overlooked segment" of our culture (according to Obama) has had it up to here on the new plans from our hope and change president. Victor Davis Hansen speaks for a not so silent majority of folks who've been playing by the rules.

Rahm Emmanuel's Questionable Tax Issues

Mr Emmanuel, Chief of Staff for the President of the United States received the equivalent of $100,000 in free rent from a man whose company did polling for the Obama administration. Allegedly he never claimed that income and therefore never paid taxes on it.

Tim Geithner, proven tax cheat, now has the IRS in his control. Ya think he'll send a few agents over to Rahm's house to look into this? Uh, no. Maybe President Obama will insist on it? Uh, no.

By the way, Rahm was getting paid $262,000 a year to sit on Freddie Mac's board during 2000 to 2001, the fraud years, when Freddie Mac was backing insanely thinly backed mortgages that are now going bust and have sent this economy into its current tailspin.

Then there's the $16 million Rahm earned between his director's job and running for Congress...

Blogs and other honest journalists are going to have to flog this for weeks before it ever hits the press since Emmanuel doesn't have a Senate confirmation hearing coming up.

Did you ever believe that one political candidate could promise so much integrity and deliver so little?

Prediction: What Stimulus Bill? Let's talk foreign policy.

Time for Biden's vision to come to fruition. This Spendulus bill smells and smells bad. The hoi poloi and the chattering classes all know it. Time to divert attention while the Dems start carrying the money bags home.

Watch for it.

Obama's Fearmongering is way out of hand

As we've complained here Obama is manipulating figures and exaggerating reality to gain the upper hand on ramming his trillion dollar Democrat wish list down the throats of American taxpayers. If you're a Democrat maybe that makes you smugly happy. It shouldn't. It's all a big lie. Recessions like the 1981-82 recession work themselves out with a minimum of government intervention and no resulting staggering debt.

Let's get the facts straight!

via the Wall Street Journal

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last
year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force
was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

Read the whole thing.

The natural progression of economics would have gotten us out of this recession as it has 5 times since the 1930s anyway without this staggering debt package and a huge Democrat wish list that never got the full debate treatment that it deserves. Very clever, but it has no resemblance to democracy.

The media of course bought it hook, line and sinker.

And they haven't pointed out that it's worse EVERYWHERE than here.

Change. Or is that just the jingling in your pocket Part 12

Obama promised no lobbyists in his administration. He' s only broken that promise 17 times so far. He promised transparency (Republicans were shut out of the Spendulus bill conference hearing). And he promised at least 5 days for the public to read any piece of legislation that would come across his desk. Try to find the bill before Tuesday (which of course would only be 3 days - all a part of a 3 day weekend).

This is a massive spending bill that will create few meaningful jobs, but will get alot of Democrats re-elected on the backs of the next generation's taxpayers. It is shameful, fascist politics carried out in the face of fearmongering.

I worried that Obama might be just another promise-breaking politician with an Evangelist's skillset. Unfortunately I was far more correct in my assumptions than I wish I was.

Welcome to Obamerica.

Sorry Elkhart you've been used (Oh and you too Peoria and Ft Myers)

Sometimes it's the audacity of false hope that hurts far more than living with reality.

President Obama chose three of the bleakest economic sites in America to stage his whistle stop tour promoting the new trillion dollar (with debt service) spending bill. More fearmongering followed by more unrealistic promises were the order of the day.

Elkhart, Indiana known as RV capital of the world is suffering. Orders for RVs that cost an average of $163,000 each are off. Way off. 75%. The companies and the people that work at them are in dire straits. Unemployment in Elkhart is 15% more than twice the national average. Obama has promised them a turnaround - soon, if only they will support the trillion dollar spending bill. Cheering crowds chanted yes we can and had visions of RVs rolling off the assembly lines again.

One problem. A $13 a week tax break for working families, or an increase in food stamps of $25 a month, or an extension of unemployment benefits will not stimulate one person to say "Honey, let's pick up one of those RVs this weekend, I've got $13 burning a hole in my pocket."

But wait, what of the corporate tax breaks? Won't that let the RV companies hire more people? They are a joke. Corporations are going to be able to write off more of their stock investment losses than before. Well, the only stock investment losses that can be written off are those that match stock investment gains. Check your portfolio. Stock investment gains anyone? A symbolic bust. One of many in this bill.

In Peoria Caterpillar workers were told by the new President that the new stimulus bill would bring back some of the workers laid off (22,000) recently. "Jim" (the President referred to him personally) head of Caterpillar, told him so. One problem. Jim held a press conference an hour later and basically said just the opposite. Caterpillar will be laying off more people after the bill is signed.

In Fort Myers regular folk listened and cheered and many had personal requests. One woman told a touching story of how she and her 37 year old son were homeless, living in a pickup truck. Obama promised help and the lady that we all felt quite sorry for got it the next day. The wife of a local state rep Nick Thompson and his wife Chene presented the woman and her son with a rent free home. Thompson is a Republican.

Maybe that's what Obama means by bipartisanship.

Jourtegrity Loser of the Week 021109

Jourtegrity Loser of the week.......dumb roll please....is NY Senator Charles Schumer who said when discussing the Spendulus bill...

"and let me just say to all the chattering classes, when considering these, yes, "porky" amendments - the American people just don't care."

Thanks, Chuck, us chatterers will move on to the A-Rod steroids case. Or the octuplets - now that's news!

And what does this have to do with Jourtegrity lost? They fact that you didn't hear or read about this gem in the MSM makes it a journalistic integrity issue.

It's the timing, stupid.

Ramming a trillion dollar bill down the throats of Americans that is 796 pages long and that changes like a neurotic chameleon by the hour, is wrong and frankly fascist. Camille Paglia via her Salon.com blog

Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration's coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line.

The fact that Harry Reid seems to think that wielding a threat - "we may have to work next week (a normal vaca week for the hard working pols)if we don't get this done by Friday" tells you alot about the gravity that our honored Solons feel about this bill.

If the car salesman knows that you have to walk off the lot with a car that day, who do you suppose gets the best end of the deal?

Oink.

.

I bet he actually hugs the teleprompters

John McCain and President Bush were often berated for their inabilitiy to comfortably read teleprompters. They usually sounded stiff, unrhythmic and disinterested. Clearly they didn't practice enough.

But Obama - whoa can that man read a teleprompter! On his campaign swing through Elkhart, Indiana it was vintage, on-the-stump Obama whipping his head back and forth in perfect rhythm telling the great unwashed of that job depressed town that he would bring them back to life and he'd blacktop I31 and fix the bridges down on South street if that's what it took to get more people to work. Nothing reads on a teleprompter like chicken-in-every pot rhetoric. The man's a glib genius.

And in last night's press conference, the staged portion, that is the telepromptered portion, Obama was on message. Head turning, subtle eyebrow raises, tiny smirks and solid fear mongering rhetoric poured out like honey on the assembled adoring press. The message - I inherited a deficit that George Bush doubled in his eight year stint and my plan to fix it is to double it again in my first 3 weeks in office.

But then they had to turn the teleprompters off. Clearly, Obama must have felt like Cap't Sully when the engines went dead. The feeling in the pit of his stomach had to be similar. A panic set in, you could see it in his eyes, and not only did he not make a safe water landing but the good ship Obama crashed hard and didn't come to a stop until the reporter from the Washing ton Post changed things up with a question about baseball and steroids.

Obama's answers were rambling, unsteady and mostly empty of content. It really did seem like a robot whose wires got short circuited and he was spinning around delivering truncated phrases from Jonny Favreau's talking points memos.

The one thing about telling the truth all the time is you never have to remember what you said.

Didn't matter though. The Democrats-only government will respond with a flow of fake money into the economy like we've never seen and they will save us from a "catastrophe". Of course, nothing works like fear and as Rahm Emmanuel says "never let a good crisis go to waste".

Obama says you have no right to question what's in the Spendulus bill

Because...

(via APs Charles Babington)

Obama warned Republicans not to "come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis." Americans, he said, "did not vote for the false theories of the past, and they didn't vote for phony arguments and petty politics."

So there you go folks...you clearly just don't get it. You're idiots and Obama and the Democrats are not!

Now shut up and let's let a guy who's never run anything bigger than a lemonade stand spend 800 billion dollars without questioning him.

Obama promised 6 weeks ago that the Spendulus bill will have a:

"new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight. We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review."

Pay attention to what's in this bill. You won't believe it.

That Blackberry must be coming in handy

Like Diogenes walking the streets of Athens, lantern in hand, in search of an honest man, Obama must be wearing out those thumbs looking for someone in DC who isn't a tax cheat. Performance czar Kellifer resigns today (tax cheat) along with Tom Daschle(tax cheat). Richardson already resigned with corruption charges and Tim Geithner(tax cheat) was apparently just too big to fail.

Remember how all the comedians could only find nasty stuff to say about Palin and McCain because Obama is too clean to joke about? Say what?

The Teflon Administration. Get used to it.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's husband solicits 100s of millions of dollars from foreign powers that we must interact with on important international affairs. A conflict of interest of epic proportions? Outrage from the media ? Nope


Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner cheats on his taxes to the tune of $43,000 while attempting some very spurious deductions. Outrage from the media? Nope

Obama cabinet appointee Tom Daschle (who lost his re-election bid to the Senate in South Dakota under a cloud of corruption pushing through a 15 billion dollar airline bailout bill benefitting his wifes' company) is found to have dodged over $100,000 in taxes. Outrage from the media? Nope

It's all a big game of look the other way - The One can do no wrong.


I'm having trouble keeping my breakfast down lately.

Where is Obama as Kentuckians freeze to death?

Bush was wrongly blamed for inaction in Louisianna when hurricane Katrina hit. It was the Governor of that state that did not send out the National Guard. It was the Mayor of New Orleans who did not release the hundreds of buses that were set to evacuate the people to safety. It was FEMA that had the federal authority to search for people and thousands of people were brought to safety by FEMA's activation of the Coast Guard. But the Democrat media sought to use this natural disaster as a chance to embarass George Bush and label him as an unfeeling racist who sought to reduce the number of black people in America. Investigations of the response have since proven the accusations to be false and in fact outright lies and misrepresentation. You probably didn't read any apologies from the main stream media. I know I didn't.

So 49 people have already died and nearly one million people are without power and may be for 2 more months. Where's Obama? Where's the outrage?

Turns out Obama wouldn't have enjoyed being in Kentucky to check things out anyway.
Via the NY Times:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

But what about global warm...oh never mind.


It would be laughable except that it's not really funny. At all.