SNL takes on Obama, again.
The last time SNL did a skit that wasn’t completely fawning of our Dear Leader, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer actually spent air time “fact checking” the skit. I wonder if SNL took that under consideration for this skit. Their facts are spot on. In all, a much better job of political reporting that you would see on MSNBC during their “prime time” smear shows.
HT to Mr. Reynolds and Hot Air.
It’s a question of competence
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The Obama White House has failed multiple instances of basic core competence.
Then there was the embarrassing list of items that were being funded by the Porkulus program, which included:
– $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
– $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.
– $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
– $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
Now, according the the recovery.gov website, built at the cost of millions of tax payers dollars, $6.4 billion of that democrat porkulus bill has been spent in congressional districts that don’t exist.
In the non-existent 14th congressional district alone, the Obama administration claims to have spent $617,848 in order to “create or save” five jobs. That is $123,569.60 per job, in a part of America that doesn’t even exist.
You can bet that this buck won’t stop at our Dear Leader’s desk. Nope, he’s going to pass this steaming pile of incompetence on to his good buddy, Joey Biden. Yup, the man a heartbeat away from the Oval Office was in charge of implementing the Porkulus program, and he has managed to screw that pooch royally.
A realistic look at the unemployment rate under Obama
Victor Davis Hanson points out some important facts:
One of the oddest things is President Obama’s continuing surprise at the rising unemployment rate. Indeed, we now have a new Orwellianism of “jobs saved”: as jobs are lost, we are told that some of those who do have them were “saved” by President Obama (note the logic: you ignore the stats that quantify reality, but hype fantasy).
If you were a contractor, a car dealer, a dentist, or an accountant, and if you heard that we may/will/sorta raise federal income taxes, lift the tax caps off FICA, think about a VAT tax, impose a health care surcharge on the “wealthy”, have new mandatory fees for forced medical plans and green energy, and had you just got hit with new raised sales and state income taxes, why would you be secure about the future and gamble on it by hiring more employees.
The evidence that the Obama White House is completely making up the jobs “saved or created” numbers is pretty clear. It is also very clear that it was their intention from the beginning.
Obama is in China
I guess he had to check in with the Communist Chinese government, since they hold the mortgage on his Presidency.
I wonder if he is going to check on those training programs in China the US taxpayer paid for.
Update: Dana Milbank points out in the Washington Post that getting out of the country when bad economic news hits is how our Dear Leader rolls:
Unemployment hits 9.4 percent. President Obama flies to France.
Joblessness reaches 9.7 percent. Obama jets off to Denmark.
The rate of those out of work soars to 10.2 percent. Obama packs his bags for Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.
Faced with the worst domestic economy in decades, the president has responded — by setting a record for foreign travel.
…
[…] Obama was safely over Canada when his Treasury Department announced another record monthly budget deficit.
The economy clearly isn’t much of an issue for our Dear Leader, since there is clearly no recession at the Obama White House.
Hard Left democrats offer a sincere apology to George and Laura Bush
It’s been said that our Dear Leader just doesn’t make Republicans appreciate George Bush, it makes them long for the days of Bill “It’s the economy, Stupid!” Clinton.
Well, it seems that the Ditherer in Chief and Empress Michelle has some democrats appreciating former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush.
We know absolutely no one in Bush family circles and have never met former President George W. Bush or his wife Laura.
…
Oh, how we RAILED against Bush in 2000…and how we RAILED against the surge in support Bush received post-9/11 when he went to Ground Zero and stood there with his bullhorn in the ruins on that hideous day.
…
Well, we told you before how much the current president, Dr. Utopia, made us realize just how wrong we were about Bush. We shudder to think what Dr. Utopia would have done post-9/11. He would have not gone there with a bullhorn and struck that right tone. More likely than not, he would have been his usual fey, apologetic self and waxed professorially about how evil America is and how justified Muslims are for attacking us, with a sidebar on how good the attacks were because they would humble us.Honestly, we don’t think President Gore would have been much better that day. The world needed George W. Bush, his bullhorn, and his indominable spirit that day…and we will forever be grateful to this man for that.
As we will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.
FOR HOURS.
The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.
If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks…you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes…and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.
..
And we are blessed to have Dick Cheney, wherever he is, keeping tabs on all that’s going on and speaking out when the current administration does anything too reckless and dangerous.Cheney’s someone else we villainized and maligned in the past who we were also wrong about. There has never been a Vice President, including Gore, Biden, or Mondale, who was more supportive of gay rights than “Darth Cheney”. There has never been a Vice President more spot-on right about the dangers facing this country from Islamic terrorism.
We live in strange, strange times indeed.
We are now officially committed fans of George W. and Laura Bush. We are fans of Dick Cheney. Our gratitude for them makes us newly protective of them, and the continued role they play in this country.
…
Thank you for your service, Mr. President. We’re sorry we didn’t appreciate you while you were in office, but we thank Heaven we’ve wised up and can see the good you are out there doing, under the radar, today.
There are times when reality trumps political ideology, and this clearly is one of them.
Kudos to the gang at HillBuzz for having the courage to speak out on this subject. I’m sure that horde’s of O-Bots will demonize them for daring to not idolize Barack Hussein Obama as the leftist group-think demands.
Inspector General Walpin cleared of White House Smear
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The Obama White House, making a lie out of its promise for increased transparency, fired Inspector General Walpin back in June for doing his job and daring to investigate on of our Dear Leader’s political appointees.
The reasons given at the time were absurd and easily disputed. The reality of the situation was clear.
Team Lightbringer fired a government employee for doing his job. The findings of Walpin were embarrassing not only to our Dear Leader, but to Empress Michelle as well, since the waste and corruption found was in one of her pet projects.
Well, now a US Attorney has cleared Walpin of any complaints that he acted “improperly.”
Inspector General Walpin wants his job back, and he has filed a suit in federal court stating that he was fired improperly for investigating a political appointee of the President. Of course, following its policy of removing any trace of transparency and openness in the federal government, the Obama White House is trying to have this case dismissed.
The Wisdom of Dr. Pournelle
I’ve posted very insightful comments by Dr. Jerry Pournelle before.
Here are couple more. First on is on the economy.
“Unemployment is over 10%. It wasn’t supposed to get that high. TARP was supposed to fix that. . . . If the health care bill passes, it will fundamentally convert these United States into a different kind of popular democracy, which generally means rule by a unionized bureaucracy organized to vote. Once that much of the economy is run by government, economic recovery as many hope for will simply be impossible. Permanent unemployment at 7% or so; median income perhaps 10% higher than it is now, but not much higher; and a long period of stagflation. Reluctance to take on new employees, and great incentive to export jobs. Is this a picture of the future? We will have to see, as Congress debates the health care and carbon tax bills. . . . With Detroit a ruin and manufacturing industries on the ropes, small business is the only possible engine of recovery from what they don’t call a Depression; so the Congress is going to add an 8% tax on employing people. We already have the longest period of increasing unemployment since the Great Depression; I presume we are going for a really big record setting period of increasing unemployment. . . . The incentives are now to the job black market — hire illegal immigrants who don’t have to have health insurance — or to export the job if that can possibly be done.”
Next up this on target observation about Health Care and politics.
“I would have thought that the Obama administration is at least as responsible for the US response to the Swine Flu problem as the Bush administration ever was for the New Orleans response to Katrina, but the media are not reporting it that way. I wonder how those who stood in long lines for hours only to find that there is no vaccine feel about the government’s coming takeover of the entire health care system? Will the new health care system work more smoothly than does, say, FEMA? Is there any reason to think so?”
Update: Let’s not forget Dr. Pournelle’s Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
A loss for the democrats does not equal a win for the GOP
The democrats and their tame pets in the media (MSNBC & CNN are pushing the DNC talking points early and often) are spinning like tops on crack trying to downplay just how bad last night’s elections were for the democrats and our Dear Leader.
Virginia went big for BHO one year ago and was considered a solid blue state. After one year of of total democrat control over the executive and legislative branches, not only did the democrat loose his election bid, so did the Lt. Governor and the Attorney General, both democrats, to Republicans.
Pennsylvania was also a state that went for our Dear Leader a year ago, and has turned. Statewide elections went predominantly to Republicans.
Then there is New Jersey. The state that is challenging Chicago for the title of capital of political corruption and a solid democrat state. Despite multiple visits by Obama and Joey Biden to support their good friend, the sitting democrat governor, the Republican won. What is even cooler is that Gov. Elect Christie made his chops by fighting corruption in New Jersey.
These victories were not so much the result of the message of the GOP as they were the actions of the DNC and our Dear Leader. The swarms of new democrat voters who were “inspired” by BHO a year ago stayed home, and centrist voters who are not happy with the direction the country is heading in came out to vote instead.
The one election everyone had their eye on that the GOP lost was the one the GOP was the most involved in. The infamous NY23 election. As NPR’s Mara Liasson pointed out, there was no primary election. The state GOP selected a candidate that was more in line with the party platform of the DNC that the democrat candidate did! When fiscal conservatives, the core base of the GOP, objected and put forth a candidate from the Conservative party. What did the NYS GOP do when the Conservative candidate do when the Conservative candidate proved to be more popular than their liberal choice? They pulled her from the race, but left her name on the ballot, and then supported the democrat in a fit of ‘salted earth’ tactics.
The democrat, who was to the right of the Republican candidate, ended up winning over the Conservative candidate with a margin of victory that was smaller than the number of votes the Republican received.
So, in the NY23 election, the Republican party worked to make sure the democrat candidate won.
Not a stirring recommendation for the GOP.
Obama’s ‘Calculator Abuse’
According to ABC News’ Jack Tapper, Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, used the term “Calculator Abuse” when a reporter did some basic arithmetic the the federal government’s own numbers. The government’s own numbers show what the reporter pointed out, $160 billion spent divided by 1 million jobs “created or saved” means that each of those jobs “created or saved” cost the US taxpayer $160,000 per job. Once again, Team Lightbringer responded with a classic defense, “Who are you going to believe? Me or that lying calculator?”
As we know know, the term “jobs created or saved” is a scam created by our Dear Leader to hide the truth from the American People. It has become so obvious that even CBS “News” has been forced to report on it.
Ace goes into much more detail on how the Obama administration knew it was a farce from day one and were much more concerned with creating the illusion of economic growth where there is none.
When the WH demanded that those who received Spendulus money “report” back on how many jobs were “saved or created,” they insisted upon a nonsensical rule: If a single dollar of Spendulus was spent on an employee’s salary, whether that employee was a new employee or an old one, that gets counted as a job “saved or created.” If he’s a new employee, that job was created. If he’s an existing employee, that job was saved.
For $1.
Yes, $1. Because the nonsensical rules the White House told these people to count “saved or created” jobs by simply stated: If any employee’s salary is paid, in whole or in part (any part!), count that as a job “saved or created” by the spending.
And then report that number back to us.
Note that the White House’s rules do not seek to discover which jobs really were “saved or created.”
The harsh reality of the current economy, the worst since Jimmy Carter, and its effects on the average American just doesn’t matter to our Dear Leader.
Michelle Malkin has more details on the “jobs created and saved” scam.
President Barack Obama’s economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit’s inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government’s latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an “extensive review” to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press.
Update: Even the way far left leaning Boston Globe has noticed that the White House numbers have no connection of reality. It is interesting to listen to the Globe reporter try to spin this White House scam as a “mistake.” There is no mistake. Team Lightbringer knew that the porkulus wouldn’t actually create any actual jobs, so they came up with “rules” that would make it appear that some actual benefit was was created by that massive spending bill.
Obama White House opening up a new front on their War with the American Press
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
It’s time for Fox News to get over itself. Really, you just aren’t that special.
The Obama White House, in what must be part of their effort to be “the most transparent administration ever”, has now attacked the Associated Press. It seems that the AP committed the sin of noticing, and reporting, that the numbers Team Lightbringer has used for “jobs created or saved” have been inflated.
The Obama administration on Thursday slammed a report from The Associated Press alleging the government had overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under President Obama’s $787 billion recovery program.
…
The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.Within minutes of the publication of AP’s story, the White House released a statement at 12:15 a.m. Thursday that it said was the “real facts” about how jobs were counted in the stimulus data distributed two weeks ago.
…
A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of Obama’s economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.A child care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.
Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.
The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus.
…
The AP’s review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.
What we are seeing here is the sadly typical Team Obama aversion to actual facts. They much prefer their own view of the world, where reality had best not rear it’s head.
Remember that this is the same Administration that fired Inspector Generals for doing their job, i.e. finding waste and corruption in government. We are seeing a clear pattern of abuse by the Obama White House.