Obama's threat to us: he's just getting started

Does that mean that $2 Trillion in debt in one year isn't enough for him?
Ugh.

And speaking of favorable press coverage

James Delingpole of the Telegraph savages the American press for their coverage of Obama:

Congratulations. Your presidential regime has managed to secure the most supine, slobbering, spineless, unquestioning media coverage since Enver Hoxha's Albania.

James... I'm not sure how you feel. Could you make yourself more clear?
:)

Obama's press coverage, the numbers

Somehow, I missed the release of this study of the media by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. It covers Obama in the first part of the administration.
Here is the highlight:

During his first 50 days in office, the three broadcast network evening news shows devoted 1021 stories lasting 27 hours 44 minutes to Barack Obama’s presidency. The daily average of seven stories and over 11 minutes of airtime represents about half of the entire newscasts. By contrast, at this point in their presidencies George W. Bush had received 7 hours 42 minutes and Bill Clinton garnered 15 hours 2 minutes of coverage, for a combined total airtime five hours less than Mr. Obama’s.

Yeah. We knew that.

Mr. Obama has received not only more press but also better press than his immediate predecessors. On the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news, fifty-eight percent of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, and 42 percent were unfavorable. CMPA’s previous studies of network news found that George W. Bush received only 33 percent positive evaluations by sources and reporters during the first 50 days of his administration in 2001, and Bill Clinton received only 44 percent positive evaluations during his first ten weeks (70 days) in office in 1993.

I wonder if that type of coverage has any effect on his favorability ratings?
Here's a chart of Bill Clinton's favorability ratings over time.

Clinton's favorability rating dragged down to 45 percent by May 10th... a little over his first 100 days in office. Which eerily parallels his media coverage in the first 70 days.

That made me curious as to how Bush's favorabilty ratings were after 80 or so days. The theorey being that favorability ratings would lag behind coverage. I wondered if Bush's approval rating seemed to be as affected by the media coverage. But that doesn't seem to be the case. His approval rating hovered around 53 percent on May 7th. So yeah. Thus another neat theory bites the dust due to actual facts and statistics.

Pravda: Capitalism on wane

We all knew. Its nice for them to tell us.
For those of you who don't know... Pravda is the newspaper that was best known as the mouthpiece for Russia:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

Yes. I can't argue with that.

Donate to Obama, get Ambassadorship

Okay... so its not quite that easy. But close.
Bloomberg has a story about a guy who raised a bunch of cash for Obama. Guess where he's going?

Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. On Wednesday, Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James.

Yes, just like every other crooked politician, Obama is appointing guys who gave him cash. So we're clear, its not just one guy.
Bloomberg lists off 3 others:

-- John Roos, chief executive officer of the Palo Alto, California-based law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, to Japan. He raised more than $500,000 for Obama.

-- Charles Rivkin, chief executive officer of Wildbrain Inc., to France. Rivkin collected more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and $300,000 for his inauguration.

-- Laurie Fulton, a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP, to Denmark. Fulton, 59, raised $100,000 to $200,000.

My hats off to Bloomberg for doing the research on this story. Not a lot of people are covering what Obama has done wrong. But that's for my next post.

UPDATE:

Someone pointed out to me the section in the article where they talked about Republican Tim Roemer, and how 'fair' his appointment was supposed to be. This is how Tim Roemer earned his seat at Obama's table:

Roemer campaigned for Obama in 11 states throughout the year. He said he's heard the rumors that he's being considered, but up until now, he's been "entirely focused and consumed" on the campaign.

So no... he didn't just do great deeds.

Ex president Clinton copping a feel on a starlet

Fran Drescher was accompanying Bill Clinton on the stage of the Life Ball charity event (oh man, the jokes are already writing themselves). As they made their way off stage, Bill lent a helping hand.
Someone on a BBS actually tried defending Bill by saying that his hand was on the small of her back. I've dated my share of women. The small of their back has never been between their hips.

Wouldn't it be weird if Obama opened up a "Dentention Center"?

Especially after he closed Gitmo?

I know. I'm being stupid now. Right....?
This was the headline from the New York Times article:

Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan

Buuuut, he'd still have trials. Right?

President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

So Obama was talking to these human rights groups about the need for somewhere that you could put terrorism suspects who couldn't be tried. Like... Gitmo?

My favorite part of the story is that he was telling this to Human Rights advocates, who were presumably the biggest Obama supporters in the world. I would have loved to have seen their faces when the told them that he needed somewhere to put terrorism suspects without trials.
I kinda picture it like a scene from a poker match, where they just realized that they'd been bluffed.
Anyway, I have no doubt that they will somehow blame it on Bush.

Cheney's more popular then ever

While everyone is talking about Cheney's speech today, and while the talking heads are telling you that Cheney might be alienating people with his outspokenness, its important to know how Cheney is doing in the polls.

He's up 8 percent from the time he was in office.

House covers up for Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been accusing the CIA of lying to her about waterboarding.

Naturally, this is a serious charge, and the Republicans in the House decided it was worth looking into.
Of course, as soon as they suggested it, every single democrat in the house blocked it.

According to Brietbart:
The House voted 252-172 to block the measure that would have created a bipartisan congressional panel. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, sponsored the resolution.
Note that the Democrats didn't even want to look into the matter. How lame is that?

Let's be clear on this. If the Democratic members of the House really believed Pelosi, they would be insisting that we investigate why the CIA lied to her.
This is nothing short of a very scared bunch of Democrats trying to protect their power, and trying to hide the truth.

Happier Than I Thought?

According to a recent study by the Pew research foundation, the secret to happiness is being old, male, and Republican.

Which would suggest that the secret to being unhappy is to be a young female democrat. But I digress.

The interesting thing is to read the comments on the LiveScience website that reports this. There are people there who are arguing that the survey isn't technically correct, but it says that because Republicans lie more. Which, to me, indicates something about the person who has come to that conclusion.

Anyway, I had a bad February and March, so my year has not been great. But when I stopped to think about it, I guess I really am happier then I "should" be. I have a positive outlook on things. I don't wait on other people to take care of me. I believe, for the most part, in myself.
I am a Republican.

Old News, on Cheney / Haliburton

This is actually from 2004, but its really important to make sure that everyone knows this.
Cheney has often been linked to Haliburton. FactCheck did a report on the link to see if Kerry's claims were true. In an ad for Kerry:
It says, "As vice president, Dick Cheney received $2 million from Halliburton. Halliburton got billions in no bid contracts in Iraq. Dick Cheney got $2 million. What did we get?"
Fact check investigated it.
Here is a partial list of what they found:
A Halliburton pay statement dated Jan 2, 2001 shows just under $147,579 was paid that day as "elect defrl payou," meaning payout of salary from the company's Elective Deferral Plan. That was salary Cheney had earned in 1999, but which he had chosen previously to receive in five installments spread over five years.
Read the whole thing, because its too complex to sum up here.
But let me hit on the key points. Cheney took a deferred payment plan when he quit Halliburton. Its a way for him to spread his payments over several years to reduce his taxes. That payment wouldn't change based on Halliburton's profits.
Cheney's stock options were a different matter. He assigned them to be paid to charity.

Another words, no matter what happened to Halliburton, Cheney couldn't have personally profited from it.
So the next time that someone tells you that Cheney was shelling for Halliburton, read the Fact Check, then school them on the truth.

Anderson Cooper Still Has His Mouth Full

When I read on TVNewser that Anderson Cooper had apologized for his tea bagging comment, I was heartened. I thought that maybe a good journalist had figured out that he had stepped over the line and was trying to correct a mistake.

I was wrong.
Start here, with the original comments made by Cooper:

Anderson Cooper says "Its hard to talk when you're Teabagging."
It was a dumb joke. I have to point out that MSNBC was the first organization that I heard using that term to refer to the Tea Party protestors. But other news organzations, like CNN, followed suit.
The problem with all of them is that they suggested that the Tea Party protesters were referring to themselves with this term.
I was there in Chicago. They were not.
I Googled to try to find a Tea Party organization referring to themselves with this term. Its possible that someone did, but if they did, they didn't get much news coverage.

Which brings us back to the journalists like Anderson Cooper, and his 'apology.' This is what he said, you can watch his comments here.

Pardon the fact that I can't embed it. The guy who posted it on YouTube disabled embedding. He's been very defensive of Cooper.

Anderson Cooper clearly didn't believe that he was wrong. He blamed his teabagging comments on the protesters, and said, basically, that it was their fault for not knowing what it meant.
Which would be cool if they were actually referring to themselves in that way.

I love good journalism. I abhor bad journalism.
I have a lot of problems with Anderson Cooper, but my current one is that I can't understand what he's saying with that thing in his mouth. And I mean, of course, his foot.

David Pflouffe's "Swiftboat" fundraising

For those of you who don't know, David Pflouffe was David Axelrod's other hand in getting Obama elected.
So its important to understand the background on Pflouffe. According to SourceWatch, David raised a record $95 million for the DCCC in 1999-2000 for democrat candidates who were running for the house.
Keep that in mind, while you read this:

David Plouffe, the man who ran Obama's historic and ultimately successful run for the White House, wrote in a fundraising e-mail to Obama's massive supporter e-mail list that the same operatives behind the swiftboat campaign that helped end Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) quest to unseat President George W. Bush are regrouping to target Obama's healthcare efforts.

Now what does it sound like he wants to do?
Let's get specific:

In his e-mail through Organizing for American, Obama's semi-dormant campaign operation at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Plouffe asked supporters to donate money and organize to urge Congress to act on legislation.

He wants money.
And he's willing to sell you any type of fear to get you there... even by threatening that Republicans are going to (cue spooky music) Swiftboat Health Care.

NOTE: Swiftboating is to offer a completely different opinion then what a Democrat says.

On the other hand, trying to scare people into giving you money? That's cool. Right David?

Gore caught in an "Inconvenient Truth"

Gore never quite got over the fact that he lost the election.

To prove it, recently, he argued that Cheney had no right to criticize Obama this early in his term. Suddenly, its not right for the former VP to criticize the current president.
Gore argued that he waited 2 years to criticize Bush. But wouldn't you know, he couldn't even get that right?

The Weekly Standard, doing the kind of journalism that would sell newspapers, nails him to the wall here. One such quote:

USA Today, 4/15/2002: "Gore's speech was the emotional peak of the convention. With practiced skill, humor and a passion some delegates said they did not see during the campaign, Gore denounced virtually every element of Bush's domestic policy." (Headline -- "Gore's fiery speech raises questions of plans")

It makes you wonder why no 'mainstream' outlet did this basic 'Google' type of research. Its not like Gore's statements are made in private. Or like its hard to find an article in USA Today.

Anyway, its all good. You can still believe what he said about the Polar Bears dying off.

Victor Davis Hanson Nails Palin :)

Victor Davis Hanson is fast becoming one of my favorite columnists. Here, he writes about the first 100 days of Sarah Palin's Presidency. A sample, to get you to go there:

IT'S THE MATH, STUPID!
“Well,” lectured Paul Krugman, again in the Times, “we were worried that they didn’t teach math at Idaho U., and now we know for sure they don’t. Is it $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion, or $2 trillion in red ink this year? Are we supposed to be impressed that she offers ‘fiscal sobriety’ by cutting 0.003 percent of the budget? She gives out money to those who don’t pay taxes and calls it a tax cut. And now Queen Sarah tells us that in four years she’ll ‘halve’ the deficit, as if she hasn’t borrowed another $5 trillion in the meantime.

VDH is brutal in his writing... and if life were fair, he'd get a Pulitzer for that opinion piece. Presuming, of course, that the committee understood great satire.

Fact Checking Biden

Thanks to the AP for doing the basic research. When Biden tried to recently portray an economy on the rebound, they did the number checking and printed the actual facts.
More importantly, they challenged the administration on the basis for its claims:

To visualize that disconnect, consider this: The administration has promised to create or save 600,000 more jobs in the next 100 days. Even if the nation loses another 5 million jobs during that span (a highly unlikely prospect) the White House could still claim success.

This has been my problem with the administration from the beginning. They will say that they 'succeeded' in creating/saving jobs, because they thought about it. And thinking, in this administration, is doing.

White House Prediction: no job growth

After nearly 2 TRILLION of spending... how much job growth do you think that the WH is predicting?
None.
No kidding.

President Obama's chief economics forecaster said on Sunday that the country was not likely to see positive employment growth until 2010, even if the economy began to grow later this year.

Now let's pause and consider this for a moment. Let's say that this was Bush, not Obama, who did this. Do you think that the press would go after him for spending so much without any result until 2010?

9/11 Family member on Obama

Debra is the sister of Charles F. Burlingame III - the pilot of American Airlines 77 - which was flown into the Pentagon by terrorists on 9/11.

She was invited, along with others, to meet with the president. Her passionate editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 8th. A small portion of it:

Given all the developments since our meeting with the president, it is now evident that his words to us bore no relation to his intended actions on national security policy and detainee issues. But the narrative about Mr. Obama's successful meeting with 9/11 and Cole families has been written, and the press has moved on.

The Obama team has established a pattern that should be plain for all to see. When controversy erupts or legitimate policy differences are presented by well-meaning people, send out the celebrity president to flatter and charm.

I can't post her entire editorial, because I don't want to violate copyright. But I hope you'll go there and read it. She details what this administration has done, point by point, including a proposed release of detainees and the possibility of making them eligible for welfare support. Its absurd, but welcome to the Obama administration.

Something completely different

Joe Cocker, subtitled, appropriately.
Go there if you need to smile.

Obama popular among Muslims

According to Reuters...

Of those surveyed, 33 percent had a favorable view of the United States, 43 percent had a negative view, 14 percent were neutral and 10 percent said they did not know, Ipsos said.

In contrast, Obama received favorable ratings averaging 48 percent in the region as a whole.

I'm okay with people in the Middle-East having a bad opinion of "us." We're talking about countries that stone a woman to death simply for being seen with a man, alone. The woman gets murdered in cold blood, while the man gets... well, we're not sure. But he doesn't get stoned to death.

I find it interesting that Obama has such a positive rating by those people. You have to wonder what it is that they see.

Obama cuts $17 BILLION!!!

...from the deficit. Leaving it hovering at around 1.8 TRILLION.

President Barack Obama urged Congress to cut almost $17 billion in programs, including tax breaks for oil and gas companies, while seeking an $81 billion increase for his domestic agenda.

Ugh.

Even with the proposed cuts amounting to only about one- half of 1 percent of the total budget, Obama is confronting resistance to them in Congress and from interest groups seeking to keep alive favored programs.

The good news is that Republicans are starting to listen to the Tax Protesters, and they are making loud objections to Obama's plans...

“The administration’s proposed cuts, while welcome, don’t go far enough, and they appear to be a diversionary tactic -- an effort to change the subject away from the unprecedented debt this budget heaps on future generations,” House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement.

Thank you, Mr. Boehner, we appreciate it!

"New Era Of Responsibility"

That's what it actually says on the White House Home page, next to their 2010 budget.

I'm about to violate my new promise to myself, about using inappropriate language on my blog.

What the fuck?
How do you add 50 cents of debt for every dollar of spending and then have the Audacity of Spending to use the phrase "A New Era Of Responsibility" near your budget?

If that's responsible spending... what the heck does Obama think is irresponsible spending?

"No. That's MY photo of Obama!"

Just when I think that the cultists can't go any farther, from Cincinnati.com:

Marla Anderson wanted that Barack Obama picture. So much so that Wyoming police say she walked into a Grove Avenue home Friday to take it.She struggled with the owner, who called police for help.

C'mon people.
There are enough photos of Obama to go around. Trust me on this. Its not worth it. No really. Its not worth it.

I'll prove it. Go here and print one out for yourself. Feel better?

50 cents of debt for every dollar of spending

Its almost unfathomable to me that people aren't getting this. From AP, with thanks to Andrew Taylor for putting this in terms that everyone can easily understand:

The government is currently adding 50 cents of debt for every dollar that it spends.

Let me see if I can put that into perspective.
Let's say that you make $30,000 a year.
This year, you spend $45,000. In one chunk. That's this year alone.
If you did that, and had nothing appreciable to show for your spending, what would you call yourself? Irresponsible? Reckless? Dumb?

The fact is that our deficit... not our debt, but our deficit... is 1.8 TRILLION dollars this year. Our spending? Roughly twice that.
How did we get here, folks?

By deciding that everything is a necessity for the government to get involved in.
By nodding our heads when the government says "Do you want us to buy you this?"

We got here by never having the common sense to realize that we are still going to have to pay for it.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ear; or at least half of your current income in debt. Because that's what we are doing... today, in our government. And its going to drown this country.

We just confronted the fact that there were too many individuals buying homes that they couldn't afford.
The solution to this, by the current government?
Spending that increases the debt by 50 cents, for every dollar we spend.
That is not cool.

And the right is called the party of hate?

I found this courtesy of the Telegraph in the UK:



Yikes.
There is something very frightening about seeing the president laughing when a comedian refers to Rush Limbaugh as the 20th hijacker.

I have to remind myself that the Democrats are not the party of hate... that we are.

Fed 'Stress Test' wasn't?

The idea of the "stress tests", put out by the Fed, was to give a fiscal report card on the health of major banks.

Only... they let the banks 'negotiate' their financial standing. The WSJ, via Reuters:

The Federal Reserve reduced the size of capital deficits facing several banks before releasing the results of stress tests on the financial institutions, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

This means that either the Treasury's initial report was completely wrong, or the Treasury department caved to pressure from the banks, and put out a report card that was not accurate.
Which is kinda how we got here in the first place.

-John

"Grants.gov"

While wandering around Recovery.gov, I found Grants.gov.
It shouldn't be confused with Change.gov, or any of the multitude of .gov websites that the Obama administration has branded.

But it does have one thing in common: a desire from the government to give away cash.

Grants.gov runs in a way that only the government could run.
If you were running a business, you would figure out what you needed, and then try to find businesses that could provide those items or services.

Grants.gov works the other way around.
It asks the person applying what they are going to provide in return for the money provided.

Some examples:
Recovery Act Limited Competition: High-End Instrumentation Grant Program (S10)

"Purpose. The NCRR High-End Instrumentation Grant (HEI) program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase a single major item of equipment to be used for biomedical research that costs at least $600,000. The maximum award is $8,000,000."

It then lists basic categories of 'possible' spending. Note, these seem to be just suggestions of the kind of things that the person applying for the grant COULD provide: structural and functional imaging systems, macromolecular NMR spectrometers, high-resolution mass spectrometers, cryoelectron microscopes and supercomputers.

Note; about $160 MILLION is being set aside for such mystery purchases.
Only in America do we provide money, and then ask people what they will give us for the money.

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence FY2010

An organization may submit only one application through one of the following FY2010 Grants for Arts Projects categories: Access to Artistic Excellence, Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Fast-Track Review Grants, Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth.The Arts Endowment's support of a project may start on or after June 1, 2010.

You can get up to $150k for that one.

The point is, there are literally thousands of grants on those pages.
They are all offers from the government to give you money... but you have to tell them what you are using it for.
Which is like me going to the store, and telling the clerk: "I have $150. What are you going to sell me in the category of groceries."

Grants.gov is a way to make it easier for the government to give that money away.

Recovery.gov is a PR tool

Again, I need to remind everyone that when the president announced "Recovery.gov", he said that it would be a tool for us to track every last penny of spending.

What he didn't tell us was that, according to his people, they don't have the data capacity to get it up and running until October.

They also didn't tell us that Recovery.gov is a place where everyone can go to get money.
Here's an example:

Want to see what kind of federal grants are available? Federal agencies offer more than 1,000 grant programs and access to approximately $400 billion in annual awards. Note that federal grants are not federal assistance or loans to individuals. Rather, organizations can search and apply for grants from 26 different federal agencies through the Grants.gov site. For grant opportunities related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, use the Find Recovery Act Opportunities option on Grants.gov.

I added my own emphasis in red.
This is what I hate about government: they are so completely anxious to give away my money. But its not even my money. Its the money of our kids.
And its nothing short of a crime that Obama isn't legally required to tell you that every time he comes up with another pork bill.

More on Acorn

According to Review Journal.com:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

Yet, people continue to argue that ACORN is blameless in all of this.
If it is, then its an 'innocent' organization that just happened to attract dozens of bad people.

Cliff Asness, on Obama's Chrysler's reorganization

Cliff Asness is a hedge fund manager. You may know that the Obama administration criticized Hedge fund managers for not going along with his plan for reorganizing Chrysler.
As one of the targets of the Obama administration, he obviously has a stake in all of this.
Cliff gave his argument on "Zero Hedge". I'm including a large portion of it, because he makes a great point:

Here's a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It’s not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders' contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.

The above is how it works in America, or how it’s supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler’s creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse.

That's all true. The president favored the United Auto Workers above the people who invested in the company. That's not fair. The company would not be there if it wasn't for investors.

House Democrats seek MORE money... what???

As if quadrupling the deficit in 100 days was not enough...

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will seek passage in coming weeks of $94.2 billion in emergency money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other programs, including $2 billion more to prepare for an influenza pandemic.

Pork, pork, pork pork pork.
Say it with me. Pork.

"Is the media soft on Bush?"

Considering what's going on today, I thought it would be interesting to link to this story from the American Journalism Review. Its from October/November of 2003. It takes on the topic: is the media treating Bush too softly?

Bush himself acknowledged the event was "scripted" when he called on CNN's John King from a predetermined list of reporters. Critics argued the press should not have succumbed so meekly to such an indignity, and some even accused the White House press corps of submitting questions for advance approval--an allegation that beat reporters vehemently denied.

Hilarious.
In case you haven't been paying attention, in every press conference to date, Obama has been picking reporters from a list on his podium. Most of the time, he has to ask if they are 'there'. Its pretty sad.
But how many times have you heard Obama being called out for it?
Its not just that journalism is dead. Its that they don't even realize they are dead.
There is a giant yawning chasm out there waiting for a newspaper that will challenge the status quo.

NY Times publisher is asked about a spiked story on ACORN

According to the Philadelphia Bulletin:

New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger was asked about the March 30 The Bulletin report that his paper intentionally did not use information that might be deleterious to the Obama campaign.

His answer?

“He said he didn’t know anything about it and told me to give the details to his staff assistant and she would get back to me,” Mr. Gammon told the Bulletin in an email.

If this is true, then Sulzberger is completely in the dark about the daily business of his newspaper.
I don't believe that is true. How about you?

Iowahawk has topless pictures of the gay marriage opponent

You can find the photo here.

"Recovery.gov" won't/can't do its job

Remember how Obama promised to have a website up and running that would allow 'everyday citizens' to track the progress of government dollars?

How he promised that we would all be able to watch and see how our money is being spent?

Remember how he promised that we could watch every penny of "stimulus spending', so that we could alert him if money wasn't being spent wisely?

Would it surprise you to know that the government won't let us 'track every dollar' until November?

"Recovery.gov now lists programs being funded by the stimulus money, but provides no details on who received the grants and contracts. Agencies won't report that data until Oct. 10, according to Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which manages the website."

What complete bullshit that is.
Devaney says that the problem is that the board "doesn't have enough data storage capacity".

Let's presume, for a moment, that was true.
Let's presume that Devaney doesn't have a one terabyte hard drive lying around. That after spending $787 BILLION on a stimulus program, they don't have the $150 lying around to buy a terabyte hard drive to keep tract of it all.

What does that mean?

It means that currently, no one in government is keeping tract of all of the stimulus money. Because, you know, they just don't have the storage capacity to do... accounting.
Can you think of any more lame excuse then that?

Look: I knew that we would hear some kind of excuse like this. Its not like the government wants us to know where it is spending its money. But this is pretty extreme. To say that they don't have the DATA capacity?
Liars.
They are liars.
Say it with me: "Liar"
Obama? "Liar"
Devaney? "Liar"
Any Democrat who stands behind this excuse? "Liar"

Right now, the government is spending close to $800 BILLION dollars of the porkulus bill, and they can't keep tract of it?
C'mon. You and I know that is bullshit. Please call them out on it.

Two more looks at Obama's first 100 days

The first one comes from "Factbox", a product of Reuters:

* The Dow closed at 8281.22 on the last trading day before Obama took office and closed slightly lower on Friday at 8076.29. In between, it plummeted about 1,800 points to 6469.95 on March 6 before recovering. The broader S&P 500 closed at 850.12 on Jan. 16 and ended slightly up, at 866.23, on Friday.

AND

Joblessness was 7.6 percent in January and had risen to 8.5 percent by March, the latest monthly figure. New unemployment claims have continued to rise in April.

And most importantly:

Number of appointees with personal tax issues: at least 6

How do you raise revenue in the Obama regime? Appoint more democrats into office, and make them pay their taxes.

Obama had a speech on April 29th, a Wednesday. AP Fact Checked his speech.
I can't believe that anyone is finally doing this, but I'm just glad that someone did.
On Obama's "Stimulus" bill, they write:

"...his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion."

The rest of the Fact Check is similarly great.

For those of you who didn't understand, this is what us Tax Day protesters were upset about. Thank you to Calvin Woodward. I know that Obama fans will be littering his inbox with criticisms. I want to give him credit for good journalism.

And now, how to pay for it?

According to the Hill:

Leaders of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition stood shoulder to shoulder with House leaders on Wednesday and rallied around a $3.5 trillion budget agreement that also paves the way for an eventual pay-as-you-go law — a provision that became a prerequisite for Blue Dog support of the budget document.
Exactly how that law is going to work is still under substantial negotiation.

No shit?

Error Force One over New York

Who the fuck did this?

From the Wall Street Journal:

A plane circling Lower Manhattan escorted by two fighter jets is part of a “photo op,” said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. The event caused some evacuations of office buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J., on Monday morning.

Their update said from Reuters said:

One of President Barack Obama's official planes flanked by an Air Force fighter jet flew low over the Statue of Liberty on Monday for a photo opportunity that reminded startled New Yorkers of the September 11 attacks....
...The U.S. Air Force said the "aerial photo mission" involved an F-16 fighter jet escort and one of the Boeing 747s designated as Air Force One when the president is aboard, which he was not. Police and the Federal Aviation Administration said three aircraft were approved for the mission.

The New York Post had reported:

...Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, later said he approved the mission.

"I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption," he said. "I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

Note: the White House director of the Military Office said he approved of the mission. He did not say that he planned it.

Why is this important? Well, because unnamed"White House aides" tell us that Obama was furious when he heard about the report.

How many people think that the president doesn't know where his plane is from day to day?

John Stewart got the controversy right:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Mistakes on a Plane
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Two versions of 100 days of Obama

You can either read the fawning full-statist propaganda from the DailyKos here, or go to the critique from Scarborough and Glenn Beck here.

A sample of the Kool Aid from the Daily Kos:

► Passes $787 BILLION Jobs-Stimulus bill.

► Signed $32.8 billion bill for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, extending health care to 4 million uninsured children. A bill vetoed various times buy Bush.

A sample from the criticism of Scarborough and Beck:

1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them...

AND

5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15

The fifth one is my personal favorite, because I was there.

You'll note by looking at the DailyKos list, that they are all wet and happy that Obama is spending a lot of money and 'giving' them things. They have no clue as to where the money will come from. They don't care. They just know that, for now, they are getting something for 'free'.

They are idiots.

Obama to teleprompter operator: Go ahead, move it up

Just when I think that the teleprompter follies can't get any funnier, Obama starts giving the teleprompter operator's instructions. According to Politico:

Laying his plan for a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Obama began to name the members of PCAST listed in his prepared remarks – before realizing he’d already introduced them, earlier in his speech.

“In addition to John – sorry, the – I just noticed I jumped the gun here,” Obama said, pausing for several seconds as he looked at the prompter. “Go ahead. Move it up. I had already introduced all you guys.”