Obama administration plans to destroy the $100 Billion Space Station
Filed under: Our Dear Leader, Politics, Space Tech, Technology
Our Dear Leader’s appointees at NASA use the more PC term, “De-Orbit”, which means letting the incredibly expensive International Space Station drop out of orbit and burn. Any large leftover chunks are supposed to fall into the Pacific Ocean.
The station has cost $100 billion to put into orbit, build and maintain, so far. No plans to replace it with something useful that I’m aware of.
Hopefully, for $100 Billion, it will provide a decent lightshow for US tax payers on the way down.
Look at this way, $100 Billion is only double what the US tax payers got stuck with for BHO’s failed mortgage foreclosure scheme (it was supposed to prevent more foreclosures, instead, the numbers have shot upwards), and it’s only 20% of what Barry claims he can same in fraud and waste in the part of the American health care system that the government already runs. Personally, I’d have more faith in his scheme to inflict a socialist medical system on the American people if he cleaned up the fraud and waste in the current government run system first.
There is actual, real science being done on the ISS, so why is our Dear Leader looking to scrap it? Could it be that there isn’t enough pork for his democrat cronies in Congress to skim off it? As far as I can tell, there are no plans to replace it, even though it is a lot cheaper to go to the Moon from Earth orbit than it is to go from the bottom of Earth’s gravity well to the Moon, or Mars, or…
Update on Obama’s War on Inspector Generals
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
As I’ve wrote about before, Our Dear Leader has a disturbing pattern of firing Inspector Generals, the people who are charged with uncovering corruption and waste of tax payer money.
Byron York reports that Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who dared to uncover corruption by Obama political appointees and friends of Empress Michelle, is suing the federal government for an “unlawful” firing.
The Obama administration’s case was incredibly feeble and libelous to begin with. This will be an interesting case to watch.
Obama’s Dismal Failure
The democrat’s “stimulus” bill has been proven to be what it was labeled when it was rammed through congress and down the throats of the American people, a “porkulus” bill. It was supposed to boost the economy, but has had the predictable, opposite effect.
“The report we got from the Department of Transportation is dated July 3rd,” said Mica at the Capitol Hill press conference. “It indicates how much money of the $48 billion [allocated to the Transportation Department] they have control over has gone out — that’s $523 million – 1 percent, approximately 1 percent. And the top 10 states of unemployment, our leading states, including the District of Columbia, only $83 million has gone out to those states.”
“This stimulus package was sold to the country as being an infrastructure bill,” said Rep. John ‘Jimmy’ Duncan (R-Tenn.), “and yet only somewhere between 7 and 8 percent of it was aimed at or provided for infrastructure in the first place.”
…
“Remember, the stimulus promised 3.5 million jobs was being created, and yet 2 million jobs – additional lost jobs – have been lost. Dismal failure.”“The stimulus promised,” said Diaz-Balart, “and we were told that in the budget committee and we were told that publicly by the administration, that unemployment would not go above 8 percent if that stimulus passed. Look at the numbers now.”
Of course the democrat’s porkulus bill isn’t helping the economy. That isn’t what it was intended to do. The goal of the Obama administration is not to fix the economy, but to fundamentally change the role of government in the United States of America.
Morning Round Up.
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
NYC Mayor Bloomberg is pissed at both Hillary Rodham Clinton and our Dear Leader. While breaking his campaign promise and jacking the taxes of Americans through the roof, HRC, likely acting on orders from BHO, exempted foreign diplomats from paying property taxes that have been in place since 1873. This will cost NYC, which is having budget problems like most Americans & American businesses, $260 million. This is on top of the $66 million the State Department owes NYC for providing police security for United Nations missions. I’d feel bad over this, but NYC voted overwhelmingly for both HRC as a carpetbagging Senator and for our Dear Leader. The residents of NYC are getting what they asked for, good and hard.
It also appears that our Dear Leader is getting tired of having to answer pesky questions from the American people, like “Why did you screw the pooch on the economy?” He canceled a “Town Hall” style meeting, that would have included questions from the American people and replaced it with a teleprompter driven speech with no questions. No pesky citizens either, since the venue for the speech is closed to the public. No Sunshine here.
House democrats are seeking a $540 Billion Tax increase in order to pay for what idiots on the left are calling “free health care.” The policies of congressional democrats and our Dear Leader have driven a bad economy even worse, and now they want to put a crippling tax on the American people. Hardly surprising, this latest bit of idiotic behavior is being driven by tax cheat Charles Rangel.
While the government is under the control of democrats, the federal deficit has reached a new record, $1 Trillion dollars. Given that most of our Dear Leader‘s staff doesn’t pay taxes, it’s up to you to foot that bill. Oh, and expect that to go much higher. They are out to radically change the American government, and they really don’t care what it costs.
I’ve been writing about the President’s war on Inspector Generals, the people who’s job is to find corruption and waste in the federal government. That story isn’t going away as fast as our Dear Leader and the MSM would like it too.
Evaluating the Stimulus effect
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Our Dear Leader and his democrat cronies are backpedaling and trying to lower expectations on their massive porkulus program funded by skyrocketing massive federal debt.
The fact that the pork ladened democrat driven stimulus bill is not stimulating the economy or creating jobs shouldn’t be a surprised.
Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw pointed out back in January that almost two thirds of the stimulus money is not scheduled to be spent until after 2010. For Americans suffering under the Obama Economy, that is not good news. It is clearly designed to delay economic benefit until the beginning of the 2012 election cycle.
It isn’t helping the economy now, because only 8% of the one trillion dollar porkulus program is scheduled to be spent in 2009! We are now learning that the money is being spent much more slowly than planned, and appears to be directly funded to areas and organizations that were strong supporters of our Dear Leader. Yup, hardly surprising that there is more than whiff of corruption associated with the democrats porkulus program.
It’s interesting to look back at what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the economy back in February. They projected an unemployment peak of 9.2% hitting in early 2010. That was if the federal government kept its mitts off the economy. Given the liberal democrat meddling, we hit 9.5% at least six months early. The CBO predicted that the economy would be on the mend by late 2009. So it is clear that our Dear Leader‘s meddling has made things worse for the American people.
The important thing to remember is that Obama’s goal is not to fix the economy, but to fundamentally change the role of government in the United States of America.
Update: Keith Hennessey has an excellent fisking of our Dear Leader’s statement on the economy.
Death of Transparency at the Obama White House
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Remember how our Dear Leader promised more “transparency” and “sunlight” to government? Well, that was just smoke and mirrors (a polite term for Bullshit) to get the rubes to vote for him.
Here is the reality of the Obama regime. “A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration officially abandoned the President’s “Sunlight before Signing” campaign pledge that the White House would post all legislation passed by Congress for at least five days before the President would sign it.”
Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute points out, nine new pieces of legislation have been signed into law by the President and yet, as of Friday July 10, 2009, not one had been posted on the White House web site.
Yup, the stench of hypocrisy in the Obama White House is getting pretty thick.
Cold reception in Russia
Our Dear Leader is not getting a warm reception in Russia. Very different than his campaign stop in Berlin, but then there was a free concert and free beer to draw the crowds there.
The Russian news agency Pravda had this to say about Barack Hussein Obama,
Obama: Deceiver, cheat, swindler, liar, fraudster, con-artist.
For once, Pravda is living up to its name.
If you have any doubts about how the Russian government feels about our Dear Leader, take a look at how Russian President Dmitry Medvedev greats the, ahem, so-called “Leader of the Free World.”
Russia gives Obama the cold shoulder
Clearly, the Russian government feels that Barry is a bigger chump than Jimmy Carter. They will be able to pretty much whatever they damn well please for the next three and half years, safe in the knowledge that BHO won’t lift a finger to stop them. In fact, they are counting on him rolling over and spreading for them when ever they snap their fingers.
Sadly, they are probably right.
Update: Chuck Norris sees a Obama/Carter connection as well. He isn’t as happy about it as the Russians are.
Further proof: During our Dear Leader‘s visit, Putin went out of his way to praise the hospitality and openness of former US President George W. Bush. Just his little way of pointing out that he doesn’t think very much of the current US President, Barack Hussein Obama.
Obama’s continuing war on Inspector Generals
Our Dear Leader has a disturbing pattern of firing Inspector Generals, the people who are charged with uncovering corruption and waste of tax payer money.
He is still at it, this time it is Amtrak inspector general Fred Weiderhold. He was investing the federally supported company’s “meddling in financial audits and probes.”
Michelle Malkin has all the dirty details of this tail of corruption and cronyism.
All of the usual suspects are involved, Empress Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and a cast of Obama political appointees who don’t care one wit about the Rule of Law in the service to the Lightbringer.
Constitution in Obama’s way
By way of Hot Air is this Jack Tapper story about our Dear Leader wanting to ignore the Rule of Law and bypass the Constitution.
With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.
Bypass the Constitution? Well, Team Lightgiver doesn’t like the thing anyway, with it’s pesky concepts like limiting the power of government and ensuring the rights of individuals.
As Ed Morrissey points out, the democrats hold sixty seats in the Senate. Getting this passed should be no problem. Unless our Dear Leader thinks he can’t get a majority of his own party to approve this Charlie Fox of a treaty, which is why he is considering violating the Rule of Law. Not that he’s losing much sleep over that, probably because the MSM, with the exception of ABC’s Jake Tapper, not covering the story about the President of the United States, who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, is publicly discussing violating Article 2, Section 2, of the Constitution.
Obama: Carter on Steriods?
We already know that our Dear Leader determined to do all the things sane people didn’t like about GWB and take that foolishness to new levels (increased spending, higher deficits, expanding government).
Now he is out to prove that he can be a worse President than Jimmy Carter (by any rational measure, the worst President of the latter half of the 20th Century, and the last fifty years to boot). Unemployment is up to a record 9.5% and will probably hit double digits under the mismanagement of Team Lightbringer. Ace does have a kind word about our Dear Leader’s handling of the issue, “In the spirit of saying something nice about Obama: he’s tanked the economy very quickly.”
Another hallmark of the horrors known as the Carter administration was record high inflation and interest rates. Don’t worry, our Dear Leader has that covered. His plan to deal with the record high, back breaking, federal deficit he and his congressional democrat partners in crime have created is to jack up inflation. Only to 6% or 8%, just so they can pay off the debt with dollars that are worth less.
Wait! It gets better! How do you slow rampant inflation? You jack up interest rates! Keep in mind it will also slow or halt any economic growth, but BHO and the congressional democrats have a really sweet pension plan complete with great health coverage that their socialized health care plan for rest of American won’t effect.
You shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Improving the economy just isn’t a priority for our Dear Leader. Massive social change and the restructuring of the function of the federal government is.
Update: Gay Patriot post: Despite Failure of “Stimulus” to Work as Advertised,
President Focuses on Regulatory Schemes, not Economic Recovery
Apparently, Obama is more interested in exploiting the economic crisis to achieve his own political goals* than to first accomplish what he was elected to do. Recall, how the polls started shifting in the Democat’s direction as the scope of the financial meltdown became clear. He used the economic downturn to his political advantage. People trusted him to fix the economy.
But, now instead of focusing on the economy, he continues forward a myriad of initiatives, many of which would place burdens on private industry, you know, companies which tend to create new jobs. Instead of getting us out of the mess that Obama “inherited,” the “stimulus” has made it worse.
Small businesses aren’t hiring because they are “paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty.” If they had greater confidence in the Administration’s economic plans, were less skeptical about its attitude toward the private sector, these employers might be expanding their businesses, hiring new workers and spurring economic growth.
Given the regulatory schemes proposed by the Obama Administration and the legislation proposed by the Democratic Congress, no wonder the economy continues to stagnate.
Here is the bottom line on the democrat’s porkulus package. It didn’t create jobs, it created work. The stuff your money is going for is mostly infrastructure construction jobs that will go away when when the federal money runs out. Work that, for the most part, should have been done already with your gas tax money. Money misspent by state governments. There were plenty of actions that the federal government could have taken that would have created lasting jobs, that would product value, and grow the economy, but that just wasn’t a priority for Barack Hussein Obama and the congressional democrats.