Wednesday, August 26, 2009
But they had to get the dog choice out of the way
Apparently, more time and energy went in to appointing The Big O's perfect dog than actually appointing people to government positions............
Plus, The New York Times reported Monday that Mr. Obama has filled less than half of the more than 500 senior administration positions requiring Senate confirmation. Seven months into his presidency, the president has neither an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets nor his own inspector general. He has not appointed his own director of the Transportation Security Administration, the Customs and Border Protection agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He doesn't have an intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security, and there's still a vacancy at the top of the Agency for International Development.
It's OK. They probably couldn't find enough people with a tax evasion issue on their resume........
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Animal Farm
Barack Obama has been in office seven months, and he's off to Martha's Vineyard? Some 70 millions Americans voted for President Obama, and I bet 60 million of them condemned his predecessor for taking too much down time at his ranch in Texas. George W. Bush set a record for presidential vacationing; he was the laziest commander-in-chief ever.snip
But here's the new man, supposedly with a wholly different work ethic and intellectual rigor, off to a similar start - and in the midst of a recession, with millions of Americans out of work and many millions more so stressed about money, they decided to either stay home or pass vacation up altogether.
I acknowledge the following:
1. Vacation is a good thing; everyone needs it. But Americans do not get enough; we have annually far less vacation than our peers in Europe and Canada. And few Americans get any vacation at all before they've worked on a new job for at least a year.
2. Being president of the United States is the toughest job in the whole wide world.
3. Barack Obama was handed a mountain of problems when he took office, and he's taken on the immense challenge of reforming health care.
But that doesn't mean he gets to take 10 days off after seven months on the job.
But let me point out a couple of things to those who think Barack Obama has worked up a sweat during his first seven months: He pretty much passed the buck on health care to Congress and allowed his administration's message on the need for reform - specifically, the need for a public option in health insurance plans - to become muddled. He allowed the right wing to steal the show and infest the debate with "death panel" myths and other lies. The discipline of message that helped Mr. Obama win election has been sorely lacking in the campaign to resolve the nation's costly health care crisis.
Plus, there's the escalating war in Afghanistan, and the Obama administration still does not have an Army secretary. Also missing, according to the Times: the top civilian in charge of military readiness at the Pentagon.
Sorry, but you don't get to put in for vacation with that much work unfinished, and a major national issue to settle, and two wars, and a recession with long-term unemployment. Not if, from the start, you want people to believe you really represent change.
First, I don't believe that any president gets a vacation; including Obama. Being president is truly a 24/7 job and it doesn't matter if you are in Crawford, Hawaii and Belgium.
I thought the criticisms of Bush were unwarranted but if you look at the Obama itinerary you have to wonder what in the hell is going on; trips to Europe, Using AF-1 for date nights in NY and Chicago, golf every weekend. This guy is on a taxpayer travel junket.
Second, where the liberal criticism of all this time off?
Nevermind.
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Another Giant falls
Add another to the list with Ted Kennedy.
Love him or hate him there's no denying that this guy was a giant among democratic politicians.
May God bless his soul.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
I can't wait until Bush leaves office
So the president is staying at a $40,000 a week house at Martha's Vineyard paid for by the taxpayer's; many of whom are worrying about their mortgages.
He's playing golf while our troops are dying overseas.
He reappoints Ben Bernake as Fed chief.
He's spent all of about 91 hours in the White House since the inauguration.
I can't wait until the next election so we can elect someone who represents change.....
And you want these guys to run health care? #71
The federal government mistakenly sent out stimulus checks to 1,700 inmates, the Social Security Administration said Tuesday -- a $425,000 error.
Social Security spokesman Dan Moraski told FOXNews.com in a written statement that the money went out because official records "did not accurately reflect that they were in prison."
The inspector general's office for the Social Security Administration is now looking into the problem as part of its broader audit on stimulus spending. The Social Security Administration acknowledged the glitch following a report that nearly two-dozen inmates in Massachusetts had wrongly received the $250 stimulus checks.
Even before the agency disclosed that the problem was more widespread, the discovery prompted complaints from Republicans critical of the $787 billion stimulus and the way it has been managed.
"It is unacceptable for convicts to be getting stimulus funds. It speaks to the lack of oversight and accountability to have such nonsense coming out of Washington. Where is the accountability?" House Minority Whip Eric Cantor said in a written statement.
Just wait until they approve your gall bladder removal; except that you needed colonoscopy.
What if this were Bush? #18
More...Move over Richard Nixon.
President Barack Obama has surpassed him as the most partisan president in my lifetime.
An environmental adviser on Obama’s payroll was behind that campaign to get advertisers to boycott Glenn Beck’s TV show, the Los Angeles Times reported.
On a blog.
This would be front-page news with Matt Drudge siren if Karl Rove had tried to pull a stunt like this.
Four more years of Bush
So I guess it only makes sense to reappoint someone Bush appointed......
But in the meantime, I think one thing is clear. Obama is way over his head with regard to esoteric financial issues, and he is actually trusting George Bush's judgement on who should be Fed Chair more than what would normally be his instinctive choice. Now that's funny, and I don't care who you are.
Read the whole thing
Amateur hour for the Obamunists
For instance, in the news right now, support for Obamacare has dropped from the 60% range to the 40% range today.
Does that mean the public has read the thousands of pages of the House bill and decided that it doesn't work for them? Of course not. But what accounts for the drop?
I'm a believer that 80% of the American public couldn't care less if Obamacare is the law of the land. This is the group I call bread, beer and baseball crowd. As long as they have the ability to feed their family and have a few bucks for some of their vices, they couldn't care less.
So the decline in support for Obamacare is less about Obamacare itself than the potential threat to beer, baseball and bread. That's a non starter.
In the same vain, it's the same reason the Iraq War became unpopular. People found that the war was starting to interfere with their ability to enjoy their baseball, bread and beer. Democrats are now overplaying their Bush Hatred Platform believing that the public's dissatisfaction with Bush advances their cause. It does nothing of the sort.
Far be it from me to offer the Obamunists some advice but this investigation of the CIA is a total loser for them. Why?
1) How hard do your think CIA agents are going to go after future terrorists? That makes for an increased terror threat.
2) The election is over. People voted last November for something not Bush; not to criminalize what people did to terrorists. Going after the CIA is a total over reach and will appear as political
hackmanship, which is exactly what it is. Hating on Bush does not a government make.
3) This action will highlight what got missed during the election. Which is this..... democrats are soft on terrorists.
4) Dick Cheney, maybe the only conservative hero in the ranks, is back in the news to rally the troops. You really don't want this guy in the news.
5) What goes around come around. Unbeknownst to the Obamunists, there will be a day when they are not in power. I don't think they want the next administration to be making public their politically motivated hack jobs.
6) Remember Nancy Lollapelosi's claim the CIA lied to her about interrogation techniques? That's coming back and we'll prove once and for all what a liar she is and the media will have to cover it.
7) This is going to dominate the news for the rest of Obama's vacation in a $40,000 a week shack when most of the public has major anxiety about their economic condition. This looks like a total tin ear to the #1 issue for the public today which is THE ECONOMY STUPID.
So the Obamunists can continue to believe that hating on Bush is a popular way of getting elected and a way to move the American public opinion their way but it doesn't make their guy more popular. Remember, no one pounded on Bush more than Nancy Lollapelosi and just how popular is she outside of her little socialist enclave of San Francisco?
But hey, don't take my advice and find your furniture on the street in four years. That's OK by me.
Life in "Progress" State
Rhode Island will shut down its state government for 12 days and hopes to trim millions of dollars in funding for local governments under a plan Gov. Don Carcieri outlined Monday to balance a budget hammered by surging unemployment and plummeting tax revenue.
The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force, excluding its college system, to stay home a dozen days without pay before the start of the new fiscal year in July.
The closures come as the worst recession in decades has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in tax collections and pushed unemployment to 12.7 percent, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan.
Carcieri predicted the state's fiscal future could grow even bleaker.
"There are going to be inconveniences for the public, and there are going to be sacrifices, as I said, for state employees," Carcieri said at a Statehouse news conference. "These steps right now are unavoidable if the state is to live within its budget, live within its means."
So let me make sure I've got this right. Residents of Rhode Island pay taxes for state services they are not getting.
What the hell is so "progressive" about that?
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Monday, August 24, 2009
Keeping this one in the memory bank
Swine flu may infect half the U.S. population this year, hospitalize 1.8 million patients and lead to as many as 90,000 deaths, more than twice the number killed in a typical seasonal flu, White House advisers said.Let's see how this compares to other great government proclamations like Global Warming, Acid Rain, Alar, Red Dye #5, saccharin, the metric system.....In a report by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, President Barack Obama today was urged to speed vaccine production and name a senior member of the White House staff, preferably the homeland security adviser, to take responsibility for decision-making on the pandemic. Initial doses should be accelerated to mid-September to vaccinate as many as 40 million people, the advisory group said.
Seasonal flu usually kills about 36,000 Americans, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Swine flu, also called H1N1, causes more severe illness needing hospitalization among younger people than seasonal flu, while leaving people 65 and older relatively unscathed, said Mike Shaw of the CDC.
And you want these guys to run your health care? #41
At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease.One of the leaders of a Gulf War veterans group says panicked veterans from Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming have contacted the group about the error.
Denise Nichols, the vice president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, says the VA is blaming a coding error for the mistake.
Letters dated Aug. 12 were intended to notify veterans who have Lou Gehrig's disease of disability benefits available to them.
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We want these guys to run health care?
How would you for him to have access to all of your medical records like this bureaucrat?
Andrea Schreindl was charged in California with Unauthorized Access to a Computer and Unauthorized Inspection of Return or Return Information. Ms. Schreindl, while an employee of the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB), accessed and inspected, without authorization, the Federal tax information of twenty-one people that had been provided to the FTB by the IRS.
Welcome to the machine......
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The deficit
No problems for the Obamunists; let's crank it up another 9 trillion over the next 10 years.
Over at Greg Mankiw............
Before you read this story, here is one number you need to know: the U.S. federal government's debt is now about $7.4 trillion. That is the accumulation from past budget deficits.
With that number firmly in mind, here is a story from the Washington Post about the path of future fiscal policy:The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama's policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.
The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama's policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February.
read his blog
Life in "Progress" City
Let's play this game. You are the daughter of a local city council member (also a retired policeman) and you get pulled over at 1:30 am with a bottle of vodka under the seat. In addition, the driver has an outstanding felony warrant.
Do you
a) stay in your car and follow the instructors and go on your merry way.
b) do you get out of your car and mouth off and eventually get tazed by the officer.
Well, if you are a "progressive" here in Cincinnati, you choose B and then you go to the media and charge the police for excessive force.
A Cincinnati police officer arrested and used a Taser on the daughter of Cincinnati City Councilman Cecil Thomas early Sunday.Police records said Celeste Thomas, 26, was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a hit-skip accident and was arrested at 1:25 a.m. Sunday along W. McMillan Street on charges of obstructing official business and possessing an open container, after a bottle of Kamchatka vodka was allegedly found under her seat.
She was told to stay inside the vehicle, police said, but disobeyed verbal commands and exited the car, approaching officers.
Her arrest report indicated she had marks on her back as a result of being subsequently shocked with a Taser.
Cecil Thomas, a retired Cincinnati police oficer, said his daughter told him she was ordered out of the car, a 2004 Toyota Corolla that she owns, and told to get down on the ground.
She repeatedly asked officers why she was being detained, he said.
Court documents say Washington, then of Pleasant Ridge, is accused of breaking into the home of a neighbor on July 24 by kicking down the door. He threatened to kill the victim, a complaint said.
“While that was taking place, that type of conversation, she felt a sharp pain in the back. She said she felt like she was having a seizure,” Cecil Thomas said.
The car’s driver, Demetri Washington, 33, was found to have a felony warrant on a burglary charge.
Let me give a little education to Ms. Thomas from a white guy who had a gun drawn on him during a traffic stop. (something her cop father failed to do).
Shut up get into your car.
I once looked into my rear view mirror and saw a cop with the flashing lights on. I was so surprised, I pulled over and got out of my car. The cop actually drew his gun and asked me to get back into my car with the hands on the wheel.
I did what he said and got my speeding ticket. He told me that when I popped out of the car so quick, it looked like I was up for a confrontation which is why he drew his gun (this was pre tazer days).
I ended up with a ticket but no injuries for a club in the head or a gun shot wound.
We'll wait to see what the cop cam shows but I'm siding with the cops until the evidence says otherwise.
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