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.
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.
Translating ObamaSpeak Park 4
The latest in a public service, translating the words of our Dear Leader and his cronies into standard English.
When a democrat uses the term “deficit neutral”, that translates into English as “your taxes are going to get raised through the roof!“
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.
White House Press Pool says NO to Obama bully tactics
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Free Speech, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Kudos to the White House Press Pool for standing up on their hind legs and saying “NO” to the Obama Administration’s attempts to subvert the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Team Lightbringer tried to ban the Fox News reporter from participating in a standard Press Pool event. The other television news organizations in the pool (CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS) refused to be a part of this and would not proceed unless the entire Press Pool was part of the interview.
Allahpundit points out the disgusting level of hypocrisy shown by the Obama White House:
Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox — before pulling the plug today?
A free and unfettered press is a key element of a functional constitutional republic. A fact that too many so-called “liberals” are sadly all to willing to ignore as long as their political enemies are the ones be oppressed.
It is also very disturbing to see the President of the United States to be more concerned with his “War” on those in the news media who dare to not march in lockstep with his agenda than the war Islamofascists have declared on America.
Responding to their master’s voice
Filed under: Free Speech, Media Bias, Our Dear Leader, Politics
A talking head at MSNBC parrots the Team Lightbringer party line and states flat out that she is quoting an email from the Obama White House.
So much for that objective media thing.
ACORN: The Gift that keeps on Giving, this time in Philadelphia
Yet another ACORN sting video! This time from Philadelphia, PA.
Remember that our current President, Barack H. Obama has ties to ACORN that go back to his early days operating in the bed of corruption that is Chicago politics. His connection with ACORN, which is involved in yet another vote fraud scheme, this time in Troy, NY, has continued up to this day.
It will be interesting to see how the leftist weasels over at Media Matters try to spin this one.