Someone recently challenged me to prove that Obama predicted a dire outcome if we reached a 10% unemployment rate.... and that the way out of it was a stimulus.
Throughout his remarks, Obama painted a stark picture, including double-digit unemployment and $1 trillion in lost economic activity—that recalled the days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Now, I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.
The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four.
We could lose a generation of potential and promise as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and our standing in the world.
In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.
These are America’s problems, and we must come together as Americans to meet them with the urgency this moment demands. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double digit unemployment and the American Dream slipping further and further out of reach.
Of course, you can't trust that source. Its Change.gov.
There is a myth that has been spread that the press never challenged Bush on the Iraq war. This, of course, is completely goofy. Here is just one press conference... just one... where the president was challenged. Here are some of the questions reporters asked:
" Since you made it clear just now that you don't think that Saddam has disarmed and we have a quarter million troops in the Persian Gulf and now that you've called on the world to be ready to use force as a last resort, are we just days away from the point at which you decide whether or not we go to war? And what harm would it do to give Saddam a final ultimatum, a two- or three-day deadline to disarm or face force?"
"Mr. President, you and your top advisers, notably Secretary of State Powell, have repeatedly said that we have shared with our allies all of the current, up-to-date intelligence information that proves the imminence of the threat we face from Saddam Hussein and that they have been sharing their intelligence as well. If all of these nations, all of them our normal allies, have access to the same intelligence information, why is it that they are reluctant to think that the threat is so real, so imminent that we need to move to the brink of war now? And in relation to that, today, the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, suggested at the U.N. that it might be time to look at amending the resolution perhaps with an eye toward a timetable, like that proposed by the Canadians some two weeks ago, that would set a firm deadline to give Saddam Hussein a little bit of time to come clean. And also, obviously, that would give you a little bit of a chance to build more support with any members of the Security Council. Is that something that the governments should be pursuing at the U.N. right now?"
"Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, if you haven't already made the choice to go to war, can you tell us what you are waiting to hear or see before you do make that decision? And if I may, during a recent demonstration many of the protesters suggested that the U.S. was a threat to peace, which prompted you to wonder out loud why they didn't see Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace. I wonder why you think so many people around the world take a different view of the threat that Saddam Hussein poses than you and your allies."
"Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, how would you answer your critics who say that they think is somehow personal? As Senator Kennedy put it tonight, he said your fixation with Saddam Hussein is making the world a more dangerous place. And as you prepare the American people for the possibility of military conflict, could you share with us any of the scenarios your advisers have shared with you about worst-case scenarios, in terms of the potential cost of American lives, the potential cost to the American economy and the potential risks of retaliatory terrorist strikes here at home?"
"Thank you, sir. May I follow up on Jim Angle's question? In the past several weeks your policy on Iraq has generated opposition from the governments of France, Russia, China, Germany, Turkey, the Arab League and many other countries, opened a rift at NATO and at the U.N. and drawn millions of ordinary citizens around the world into the streets into anti-war protests. May I ask what went wrong that so many governments and peoples around the world now not only disagree with you very strongly, but see the U.S. under your leadership as an arrogant power?"
"Mr. President, to a lot of people it seems that war is probably inevitable, because many people doubt — most people I would guess — that Saddam Hussein will ever do what we are demanding that he do, which is disarm. And if war is inevitable, there are a lot of people in this country — as much as half by polling standards — who agree that he should be disarmed, who listen to you say that you have the evidence, but who feel they haven't seen it, and who still wonder why blood has to be shed if he hasn't attacked us."
"Mr. President, are you worried that the United States might be viewed as defiant of the United Nations if you went ahead with military action without specific and explicit authorization from the U.N.?"
"Even though our military can certainly prevail without a northern front, isn't Turkey making it at least slightly more challenging for us, and therefore at least slightly more likely that American lives will be lost? And if they don't reverse course, would you stop backing their entry into the European Union?"
"As you know, not everyone shares your optimistic vision of how this might play out. Do you ever worry, maybe in the wee, small hours, that you might be wrong and they might be right in thinking that this could lead to more terrorism, more anti-American sentiment, more instability in the Middle East?"
"Mr. President, if you decide to go ahead with military action, there are inspectors on the ground in Baghdad. Will you give them time to leave the country, or the humanitarian workers on the ground, or the journalists? Will you be able to do that and still mount an effective attack on Iraq?"
"Mr. President, good evening. Sir, you've talked a lot about trusting the American people when it comes to making decisions about their own lives, about how to spend their own money. When it comes to the financial costs of the war, sir, it would seem that the administration surely has costed out various scenarios. If that's the case, why not present some of them to the American people so they know what to expect, sir?"
"Mr. President, millions of Americans can recall a time when leaders from both parties set this country on a mission of regime change in Vietnam. Fifty-thousand Americans died. The regime is still there in Hanoi and it hasn't harmed or threatened a single American in 30 years since the war ended. What can you say tonight, sir, to the sons and the daughters of the Americans who served in Vietnam to assure them that you will not lead this country down a similar path in Iraq?"
Now would you feel okay saying that President Bush was never questioned on the Iraq War by the press?
Someone recently told me that Occupy Wall Street didn't get the 'benefit' of the pre-publicity that Fox News gave to the Tea Party movement. Which, of course, is bunk.
An online group dubbed “Occupy Wall Street” is calling for 20,000 people to “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months,” according to the website
Egyptians did it for democracy. So did people in Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. Now, activist groups are hoping Americans will launch their own uprising -- in the form of thousands of protesters descending on Wall Street this weekend.
Saturday at noon, a group that calls itself "Occupy Wall Street" is going to try to live up to their name for as long as they can. But first, they'll be meeting at Bowling Green Park for a program that includes yoga, a pillow fight, face-painting, small break-out groups to discuss topics like derivatives, and a lecture from an author. There's an arts and culture committee. Plus, there's yoga and a planned "Thriller" dance. It sounds a little bit like camp, or maybe one of those pre-college orientation bonding sessions. But as the group says on its website, it's actually a "leaderless resistance movement" meant to protest the concentration of wealth at the top of society — the "99 percent" standing up against the "1 percent."
Whew. All of this cutting and pasting is getting tiring.
The large-scale event, originally published back in July by Adbusters, a not-for-profit magazine aimed to "topple existing power structures," was inspired by the revolutionary events that swept through the Middle East earlier this year. The group's site reveals their hopes to transform Lower Manhattan into an "American Tahrir Square."
I ran across two videos today that are worth their weight in gold; mainly for the work that went into them.
My first nod goes to the Huffington Post. Yes, you read that right... the Huffington Post. Some editor must have spent a week in the editing suite putting together this representation of the president telling us that he was focused on jobs... since 2009:
The second one is the president telling us to "pass this bill", 90 times in 5 speeches over 1 week. Politico deserves a Pulitzer for this one.
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming
What I like about Ivar Giaever's letter is that he addresses the real problem of how this issue is debated. Global Warming data is taken as incontrovertible evidence, when it is anything but.
Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period.
Best regards,
Ivar Giaever
Nobel Laureate 1973
PS. I included a copy to a few people in case they feel like using the information.
Mr. Russert: “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”
Mr. Matthews: “It’s a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point.”
In the past several months as the debate over Social Security reform has taken center stage in the theater of the absurd that is modern American politics, the idea has been floated that the entire pay—as—you—go structure of this system closely resembles a Ponzi scheme, albeit one that is about to collapse.
Not far enough back for you? In 2004, the Daily Howler blamed the phrase on earlier generations: (quoting Ed Crane)
And so it goes in the offices of the Social Security Administration, home of the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Sold originally to the American public as a program to care for the indigent elderly, then as a "national pension plan" into which we pay "insurance premiums," Social Security has always been a fraud, a pay-as-you-go slush fund for politicians to dip into...
One of my favorite things to do is to examine what was said, in a prediction, in history.
For instance, let's say that you were wondering about the FY 2008 budget. Who passed it, and what was said about it?
The U.S. Congress on Thursday approved a $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget that funds President George W. Bush's huge defense buildup while also adding money for Democrats' domestic priorities.
The budget, written by Democrats who control both chambers of Congress, received no backing from House Republicans, while only two moderate Republicans in the Senate supported it.
Okay... so from this, we know that the Democrats wrote the 2008 budget.
Furthermore, we can state that exactly 2 Republicans in congress, total, supported it.
Its worth reading the article if you have the time.
Let's keep going... shall we?
This was a non-binding budget. Meaning that Democrats knew that there was a possibility that their spending priorities would get cut off at the legs. Or as one other article stated it:
The move appears to set up a clash this September with Bush, who has yet to veto a single appropriations bill, but who seems eager to get started.
The budget was a result of a lot of back and forth, with Republicans saying that Democrats were being overly optimistic on what they thought their tax plans would bring in.
Furthermore, the Democrats were counting on 'reserve funds':
The House and Senate versions of the budget depend on "reserve funds" to pay for additional spending for such programs as children's healthcare and farm aid. With the reserve funds, Congress can avoid the hard choices that drawing up any budget, whether it's for a household or the federal government, usually entails.
There's only one catch: The reserve funds are empty. If Congress wants to fill them, it will have to do what it has tried to avoid: cut from defense or domestic programs, raise taxes or borrow the money and drive up the deficit.
I'm going to continue researching this. But I wanted to share.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely -- to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.
Now, as we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.
Wait... maybe we can get him saying that he won't rest until he gets us a job?
I've mentioned before that sometimes I just use my blog to keep tract of links.
In this case, its because someone I know is trying to argue that Obamanomics is a term that Fox News uses.
Let me make this clear; they aren't arguing that Fox News is one of many places that uses Obamanomics. They are arguing that its mostly Fox that created the term, and uses it to bash the economic policies of Obama.
So let's go over who used the term in 2008. -And while we're at it, let's see what people predicted would happen under Obamanomics.
Of course, there was the uber-conservative Firedoglake:
Obama’s tax plan will put more of the burden on the rich, he will raise the minimum wage, make unionization easier and generally help workers. The effect won’t be large, but for the poorest workers and for unions, it will be noticeable.
In this disjointed article, the author suggests that the biggest problem with Obamanomics is that Obama wants to give money back to the people... which is... bad. The author argues that the people don't know how to spend their money right. Ooookay.
August 2008, Counterpunch uses the term. They talk about how Obama has spent time speaking about deficit (cough cough!) reduction:
Obama also embraces some elements of deficit reduction in his thinking. That’s not wrong in principle. Lower deficits can strengthen the value of the dollar, making imports less expensive. Lower federal budget deficits can make it harder to justify fiscal austerity that shrinks needed social welfare, training or public investments of various kinds. Government borrowing can crowd out private sector borrowing, making investments more costly.
Thank goodness that Barack isn't raising the deficit?
Then there was The Economist, who had to say this about the president's economics:
As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico.
To be fair, he hasn't changed that economic narrative.
Mark Green, from Air America, on the Huffington Post, referring to Krugman on Obamanomics:
Also, studies have shown that the GDP under Democratic presidents has been more than 300% higher than under Republican presidents. So whenever McCain falsely aserts that Obama will raise everyone's taxes or that he'll balance the budget by 2013 despite cutting revenues by several hundred billion annually, the affirmative answer is -- Democrats grow the economy far more than Republicans. 300% more. For the most recent example, contrast Clinton and Bush.
Whew. Then the economy is getting far better. Right. errr... right?
That's the problem with Democratic predictions. Its never their fault that things didn't turn out that way.
Obama would certainly shift government priorities to improving job prospects and raising living standards for American workers. He proposes raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, offering refundable $4,000 tax credits for college, expanding the childcare tax credit, reforming bankruptcy laws, rebuilding infrastructure, establishing a new employee savings plan and investing in alternative energy to create “millions of new green jobs.”
Reminder; his economic policies were supposed to keep the unemployment rate under 8% too. But that's just window dressing.
Here is a completely laughable article by the economic writer for the New York Times, on what Obama is planning:
All of this raises the question of what will happen to the deficit. Obama’s aides optimistically insist he will reduce it, thanks to his tax increases on the affluent and his plan to wind down the Iraq war. Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.
A fiscal conservative. Who raised the debt by $3.4 Trillion in 2 years. Here was the hint... in the same article:
“I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.”
Uh, yeah.
Well, aren't we all glad that worked out so well?
In August of 2009, Barack was interviewed by Chuck Todd on the economy. When it came to the issue of raising taxes on the wealthy, Barack was asked by Scott Ferguson to: Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy. Barack answered that it would be a mistake to raise taxes at that time. He said that it would cost jobs:
Well, first of all, he is right. Normally, you don't raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven't and why we have instead cut taxes. So I guess what I would say to Scott is his economics are right, you don't raise taxes in a recession. We haven't raised taxes in a recession. ... ...So he is absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up — take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.
You heard, of course, about how the government is trying to get rid of standard incandescent light bulbs. You may have also heard that the Republicans in congress are trying to squash this part of the 2007 Energy Act. Bloomberg has an incredibly slanted view of this bill, and gives the Obama administration POV almost verbatim:
The legislation, which was debated on the House floor yesterday and is scheduled for a vote later today, would cost Americans $6 billion in energy savings in 2015, the White House said in a statement yesterday.
So let's start here, with what H.R. 2417 is. H.R. 2417 would, according to the bill, repeal:
Sections 321 and 322 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
to conduct research and development efforts related to lighting technologies, perform market assessments related to energy-efficient lighting products, and educate consumers about such products.
Sounds like a good way for us to save some money. Particularly at a time when we are trying to cut down on government spending.
Hilarious. The entire left just swallowed their collective tongues.
Remember how all during Bush's term, the left argued that Bush tried to connect 9/11 and Iraq through hidden speech? Or something like that? Well, Panetta straight out said it:
The reason you guys are here is because of 9/11. The US got attacked and 3,000 human beings got killed because of Al-Qaeda
Now if he were a Republican, every single liberal in the US would be talking about how he was trying to distort 'the truth'. But since he's working for a guy in the WH with a D next to his name...
I just wanted to keep a list of this, handy. Spending, of the US government, in trillions, per year: 2000----1.7 2001----1.8 2002----2.0 2003----2.1 2004----2.2 2005----2.4 2006----2.6 2007----2.7 2008----2.9 2009----3.5 2010----3.4 SOURCE
Santelli was the guy who made the original call for a new Tea Party. In the discussion about the debt, he gets it right yet again...
Yes, Santelli... stop spending! A few very relevant points are made in this video. But the most important one is this, as stated: In August, we will have $203 billion of revenue. We will also have $362 worth of bills.
Now lets just think about that for a second. Suppose you had a company, and you were taking in $2.03 for every $3.62 spent. Wouldn't you take a serious look at your spending? Of course you would.
Earlier, I wrote about how Jon Stewart can't admit that he was wrong about Fox News viewers being the most "misinformed" viewers. I did a bunch of research on one of Fox News' rivals, and applied the same standard that Jon Stewart did. Which I thought was kinda brilliant.
Shortly after that, a number of people all started using the same argument that Politifact used (a few of) the wrong studies. That there was a thin difference between being 'misinformed' and not knowing what the facts were. If one person had come to this conclusion, I'd chalk it up to one person splitting hairs. But it wasn't one person. It was a herd of Dems. So I googled, and came up with the FireDogLake post that seems to be the source of it all:
...The three Pew polls measure how informed viewers are. They don’t even belong in the discussion, because they don’t go to Stewart’s point.
Let's go back to Stewart's point:
Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.
If we constrain our definition of "misinformed media viewers" to the FireDogLake version of what Stewart meant, then we're not talking about 'every poll'. We're talking about one polling service: PIPA. Moreover, we're talking about what PIPA asked people, and what PIPA felt was 'misinformation.' I ran into this study before, which is why I wanted to focus on it. A lot of the questions are subjective, but no question was more wrong in my opinion then this one:
When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it
NOTE: the second vote, while not initially appearing to be connected to TARP, does have TARP bootstrapped onto it. Read the text.
Now keep in mind, PIPA said that Fox viewers were 'misinformed' if they believed that most of the Republicans were against TARP. How do they form that opinion? Wait. Let's do this. Suppose you asked viewers who supported TARP more, dems or reps? What do you suppose the vast majority of MSNBC viewers would say? I'm going to jump into the pool and suggest that their 'misinformation' rating would go way, way, way up, along with those who listen to NPR.
When President Bush made the same mistake during his campaign for President in 2000, he was roundly criticized as unintelligent.
Yet, Barack can continue to make gaffe after gaffe, and its not a reflection on him.
To be fair, I don't consider "The Internets" to be that big of a gaffe. But then again, I wasn't the one making fun of Bush for doing the same damn thing.
The Washington Post recently fact checked one of Obama's speeches on the debt, and gave him "Two Pinocchios." A sample of what they wrote:
The president’s claim of an “unprecedented” effort to trim federal regulations is laughable. And it would be nice to hear Obama acknowledge for once that, until a few months ago, his administration was eager to do business with Gaddafi.
They also take apart his efforts to blame corporate jet companies for robbing the public coffers of taxes. Read the piece. Its pretty good.
At least, according to Obama. Boehner asked the question of the president in his Twitter Town Hall. But Obama, according to the CNN video on Real Clear Politics, said:
Eventually, I'm sure, the speaker will see the light
Remember how Obama kept saying that most of his campaign contributions came from small donors?
Uh. Turns out its not true. Guess who actually is getting small donors? According to AP, Michelle Bachman.
...Bush and Obama depended more on thunderstorms of money — bundles of checks collected by big-money donors, each written for the maximum amount allowed by law. Bachmann's accounts are instead filled with small contributions sent by devoted supporters.
Cool for Michelle. Although that won't quell the liberal belief that she's being sponsored by corporations.
I've seen some ridiculous gaffes by Obama, but this one took the cake.
I need to start by introducing you to Medal Of Honor winner, Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti. Jared lost his life in Afghanistan. According to the official website:
With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Monti twice attempted to move from behind the cover of the rocks into the face of relentless enemy fire to rescue his fallen comrade. Determined not to leave his Soldier, Staff Sergeant Monti made a third attempt to cross open terrain through intense enemy fire. On this final attempt, he was mortally wounded, sacrificing his own life in an effort to save his fellow Sohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifldier. Staff Sergeant Monti's selfless acts of heroism inspired his patrol to fight off the larger enemy force
The president presented his parents with the Congressional Medal Of Honor, after giving this 14 minute speech on Jared.
It is a moving ceremony, one which I'm fairly certain that the parents will not forget.
“First time I saw the 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.”
This truly is the worst possible gaffe the president could have committed. Now granted, he did call the parents to apologize. But this fits under the heading of "imagine if Bush said this...?" Because if this were any other president, we'd still be talking about this today.
I hate, hate, hate when people can't admit when they were wrong.
No one is more problematic at this then Jon Stewart. Granted, admitting that you're wrong isn't as funny as sticking to the premise that you're right in lieu of the fact that Politifact screwed you to the wall.
So let's start here. 3 minutes in... Stewart says:
"Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
Fox actually scored better than its two direct cable-news rivals -- MSNBC, which is a liberal counterpoint to Fox, and CNN, which is considered more middle-of-the-road. Also scoring lower than Fox were local television news, the evening network news shows and the network morning shows.
Ouch. Politifact concludes, after showing several different studies:
So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets -- such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks -- often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows -- such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show -- actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.
Of course, Jon Stewart admitted he was wrong, and moved on. Oh wait. He didn't. Ugh. Like the rest of the left, he doubled down instead of admitting that he was wrong. Stewart went on the air to say that if he was wrong, it was because he watches Fox News... whom he still claims is consistently wrong.
To keep his claim true, Stewart quotes a number of Politifacts.
Fox was never reviewed by Politifact, as a network.
They DO review individual people who have made statements on opinion programs, and then they find the statements to be true or false. In fact, if you notice, the very first quote that Stewart refers to comes from Glenn Beck. After that, he kinda doesn't mention/refer to the fact that the statements he's quoting are from opinion makers on Fox. However, Politifact does list them in one, handy, statement. What you'll notice is that Stewart is using statements from Beck, Palin, O'Reilly, and even Karl Rove as "Fox News" statements.
Now most people understand that if you list off a bunch of commentaries, you'll find people who have statements that aren't completely true. And if Stewart did that, he'd have to admit that the same thing happens on other networks.
Like... I dunno... lets do this with MSNBC.
Olbermann:
"Subsidies for oil and gas companies make up 88 percent of all federal subsidies. Just cutting the oil and gas subsidies out would save the U.S. government $45 billion every year."
Gov. Sarah Palin "got precisely zero support for her call for Alaska's Democratic Senator Mark Begich to resign because Ted Stevens' corruption conviction was overturned."
Under changes being debated, state employees in Wisconsin "who earn $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year might have 20 percent of their income just disappear overnight."
With his decision on whether to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama "has to fix yet another problem he inherited from the Bush administration."
Now I'm not even on the staff of Comedy Central writers, and I came up with that 'short' list, from just 4 people who appear on MSNBC. Should I presume that Stewart did the same thing as I did, when he researched Fox? That he took the time to compare it to other networks?
Of course he didn't. Because like many people on the left, he can't admit that his premise was wrong. He will continue to look for evidence that proves him right, ignoring anything to the contrary.
There is a thin difference between ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance is not knowing. Arrogance is the presumption that you already know.
The biggest problem that we're going to encounter in the future is the money that the government has not allocated, for items they promised to pay for.
In a corporate environment, these are known as liabilities. Corporations have to use accrual accounting instead of cash accounting.
In cash accounting, its real easy to calculate your balance. You just indicate revenue - expenses. So if you spent $50,000, but made $60,000, you would indicate $10,000 of profit. Now here's where things get complicated. Let's say that you owe $200,000 to someone who billed you for services to your business, but you didn't have to pay the bill for another 2 years. In cash accounting, you still had $10,000 of profit. On paper, your business is making money.
Corporations can't use cash accounting for this reason. They have to indicate what their liabilities are on their balance sheet. Somewhere on their financial statement, they would have to indicate that they owe $200,000.
How does this relate to our government? Our government does what no business would ever be allowed to do: they put off obligations (money owed), often sell bonds to cover these expenses, and then indicate a balance that doesn't reflect this debt.
If I've lost you, you can always read this USA Today report that puts it into perspective.
The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $528,000 per household. That's more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.
Most people are familiar with the fact that we are currently $14 trillion in debt as a country, or that we are now running deficits of over $1 Trillion a year. In this post, I explained how the current administration is now running a deficit averaging $1.7 Trillion a year. But most people aren't aware of how much we truly are in debt.
So as you listen to congress talk about cutting $10 billion, or even $50 billion from the budget, and as you hear congressmen protecting their pet projects, remember that figure: $61.6 Trillion.
ABC News reports that Obama's 2012 campaign is trying to mislead its minions in their latest video. The video is reportedly a compilation of issues that the Republicans talked about in the latest debate. However...
...the video, which Messina calls a “highlight reel” and the DNC titled “What in the world are they talking about?” selectively uses clips from the 2-hour forum suggesting that the candidates were focused on idiotic issues, or battles from the past, when all of the topics the video hammers the Republicans for talking about were ones they were asked about at the forum.
Huh... the DNC is dishonest? When did that happen? Here's the video, below.
If you want to compare that to what they were actually asked about... watch the CNN video. The debate actually starts 2:15 in:
I'm not talking about those who have actual mental deficiencies. I understand that a child with a mental limitation or someone who has a severe and limiting disease is not capable of the thought process that we know as logic.
However, there are adult creatures known as 9/11 conspiracy theorists who actively ignore logical thought in order to come to the conclusion that a plane didn't actually fly into a building on 9/11. Or, alternately, that a burning building cannot collapse due to structural damage.
This idiot, the one who uploaded this video, is one of those tools:
Now naturally, upon seeing this video, I tried to explain to the idiot in question that elevators can fail if there is a plane that flies into a building. Because while all modern elevators have safety features, they all have limitations. They were not meant to keep an elevator from falling after the cables are cut and when tons of burning liquid kerosene are poured on top of them.
This idea was not acceptable to the idiot who posted this. He/she/it responded with:
Approximately eight 100-millionths of one percent of elevator rides resulted in an anomaly ..... that about sums it up. So right there your odds are 1 in 80,000,000,000. Now multiply those odds with all the other anomolies, like three steel buildings collapsing from fire in one event on the same, when a steel building has never collapsed from greater fires. NORAD off duty .... etc. The official story, with your fireball down shafts, is at least a billion trillion to 1, if even that
I wanted to reply to IranContraScumDid911. But not too ironically, they blocked me from posting anything else as a response. Which makes sense, because they also wrote this:
Four plane crashes disappeared in one event? What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered? The black boxes disappeared?
I'm going to work backwards. The only way that the conspiracy theorist could believe that four planes did NOT disappear in one event is if they honestly thought that the bulk of New York who SAW the planes fly into the two twin towers were all lying. They furthermore would have to believe that the people in the Pentagon, who lost friends, were also lying. Finally, they'd have to believe that the people who were working in ATC, who literally dedicate their lives to the idea of planes not running into things, were complicit in this lie. Its kinda like believing that a hospital full of doctors were all involved in killing 400 patients on the same day. But I digress. The point is that when the writer says:
"What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered?"
...They are actively denying that the four planes were witnessed hitting said items. They are denying that the video of the first plane hitting the first tower (taken by firefighters, no less) is real. They are denying that the second plane hitting the second tower (taken by scores of different news outlets) is real. The odds of you recovering a wing of a plane that hits a building while traveling at 600mph is approximately 0.0000001%. That's a guess on my part.
100% of cases where a commercial airplane has slammed into a building has resulted in elevator failures. The fact that you cannot grasp this (or that you believe that because the odds of non-airplane-related-elevator-crashes are so great) boggles my mind. Here's a parallel thought for you to ponder. Your chances of sitting in your office on an average day and having a plane plow into your building and immolate you in a gigantic ball of flame are 5,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.
The mere fact that someone can't believe that an elevator would fail in a building that was slammed into by an airplane hurts my brain. Its someone who believes in a perfect world.... where nothing fails, even under the most extreme circumstances. Again, if it were an actual kid, I'd have no problem. Kids have trouble grasping simple concepts. Adults shouldn't. Planes that smash into buildings are annihilated. Buildings that are hit by commercial aircraft suffer severe damage.
Elevators that have a plane fly through their shaft can fail.
The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats' healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.
Neat. Now the Hill article makes it clear that they are only temporary, and that its just for one part of the health care law. However, how shitty can a law be, when you have to issue 1,372 temporary waivers for companies affected by it? For that matter, how fair can it be?
Great article by NBC. It turns out that Mayor Daley can keep 1 million worth of campaign contributions that he never spent. So the next time you pay for parking, allow yourself to wonder out loud about that parking meter scandal... and how Daley sold the rights to parking in the city to LAZ.
The other day, I found myself in another stupid Facebook debate with someone didn't know their facts.
I should be used to this by now. But it never fails to get to me when someone who leans to the left insists that I'm uninformed while saying something that's provably not true.
This all started when a friend posted a link to a Paul Krugman article. I called Paul an idiot (my bad) and then stated why he was an idiot: That all of the spending he championed failed to bring down the unemployment rate.
Now I'd reprint the debate verbatim if I could. But as it happens far too often, a friend of my friend kept using insults until the original friend blocked us both from her Facebook account. So by trying to correct the record with facts, suddenly, I'm the asshole. Even though I wasn't the one calling her other friend names.
I know. I know... I'm losing the point of why I wrote this. Paul Krugman was for spending shitloads of money through the government. We all agree on this. He believed that it would result in a lower unemployment rate. It is also true that Krugman was upset that only $787 BILLION dollars was being spent on the stimulus program. Krugman believed this to be small. Which makes sense. I mean, if you're going to be a Keynesian economist, why wouldn't you believe in spending more money? Ideally, by spending 50 Trillion Dollars, we'd go into a huge economic boom that would never be matched! Right?
My friend's friend insisted that Krugman was right. That the stimulus was too small... which is why it had no effect. He said that Krugman readers would know that Paul predicted that the stimulus bill would fail to reduce the unemployment rate. But Paul didn't say that. In fact, Krugman said:
Unemployment is currently about 7 percent, and heading much higher; Obama himself says that absent stimulus it could go into double digits. Suppose that we’re looking at an economy that, absent stimulus, would have an average unemployment rate of 9 percent over the next two years; this plan would cut that to 7.3 percent, which would be a help but could easily be spun by critics as a failure.
Wow. A 7.3% unemployment rate would be spun into a 'failure' of Obama's $787 economic plan. Presuming, of course, that the president didn't have a fawning media that would change his every failure into rainbows and unicorns.
In case you didn't know this (or were arguing with me on Facebook), the nonfarm unemployment rate for April of 2011 was 9.0%. I created this handy chart to show you what's the stimulus plan results have looked like, vs. the predicted results. Note that the uptick in unemployment in April has not been added.
A lot was made when a Fox affiliate accidentally put Obama's name in the screen crawl when Osama was killed. Keep in mind, it was an affiliate. But more importantly, they were not the only one to do so in the news.
When someone says a phrase like, "Every scientist agrees" or "All economists will tell you", it grates on my nerves. Because economists don't agree. If they did, there would be one economic theory and we'd all follow it. Scientists have a similar problem. The job of a scientist is to challenge conventional wisdom and question knowledge as we understand it.
Naturally, when I heard Obama say:
Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach...
...I laughed. It presumed a world full of Keynesian economists, economists who believe in government intervention. Luckily, Politifact debunks this notion:
"...But we do know that Obama is wrong when he says there is "no disagreement that we need action by our government." Clearly, there is disagreement. We rate his statement False."
The Drudge Manifesto is not a great book. However, it has one moment in it that was well worth reading. Its the story of how Drudge found himself sitting on the political story of the decade, and how he realized that it truly was a big deal.
In the Drudge Manifesto, Matt describes the moment before he pressed the return key. He had double checked his facts, and apparently, his gut told him that the reaction that he was getting from everyone confirmed that it was real. Still... he knew that the moment he touched the return key, he was making a huge accusation.
Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
I used to write for a college newspaper. We never had anything that big to write about. Yet, every time, before you sent a story off, you'd reread it to make sure you weren't saying anything you'd regret later. Not just because of lawsuits. (Libel is a huge issue in the newsroom) You didn't want to write anything that you would have to retract later.
So when I read that part in the Drudge Manifesto, it gave me chills. Imagine having the biggest story of the year. The political story of the decade. You don't have an editor to look over your shoulder. Its just you, and your keyboard. And your accusation is against the most powerful man in the world.
I love a lot of things about my country, but the freedom of speech is probably what I value the greatest. There is something very comforting to me that Drudge was able to break this story with minimum repercussion (barring the democrats, themselves, who first called it an outrageous lie, and then openly defended the president having an affair with a 22 year old).
As I sit here behind my own keyboard, I'm reminded of both the privilege that I have, and the responsibility that comes with it. With that in mind, from here on, I promise to renew my commitment to make sure that what I post is not only relevant, interesting, and topical... but that I can say without hesitation that I believe it to be 100% true.
ABC news caught up to Obama, and asked him about one of his biggest flip flops since Gitmo. When asked if it was a mistake to vote against the debt limit as a senator, the president said:
I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a Senator versus the vantage point of a…President. When you’re a Senator, traditionally what’s happened is this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars… As President, you start realizing, "You know what? We-- we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith in credit of the United States." And so that was just a example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.
That's a very long winded way of saying that as a senator, he was trying to take political advantage of a situation. But now that he's a president, he has to be an adult.
I'm glad that the president is acknowledging his mistakes. (Even if he is doing that whole "I'm better then most people" thing, while doing it) What appalls me is that at no point does he recognize how completely craven it was for him to "play politics" with trillions of debt.
I just wanted to remind everyone who first bought up the controversy about a presidential candidates citizenship:
"I would like to see Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a presidential candidate, but I heard that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The Constitution requires that a president be a "natural born" citizen of the United States. Is Sen. McCain barred from the presidency? – Steven R. Pruett, Falls Church, Va."
That was in 1998. The writer wrote to a political beat reporter for the Washington Post named Ken Rubin. Ken answered, in part:
"McCain has an adoring media on his side, and a reputation as someone who will make the difficult choices. What he shouldn't have is any question about his eligibility to be president."
An adoring media on his side. Huh. That sounds familiar. Anyway, the point is, Barack isn't the first person who's birth has been questioned, as the report points out. (There's more there... I won't belabor it. Read the article.) The biggest difference is that this adoring media finds race to be the motivator, but when McCain's detractors were questioning his citizenship, everyone understood it to be about: 1) politics and 2) whether or not he was a citizen
When you start suggesting that you should "hang bankers", you're just a tiny bit away from being a complete idiot.
It feels like it was just yesterday that the left was complaining about the violent rhetoric of the right. I love how the bankers point out how inconsistent Max's arguments are.
I've been watching a steady stream of misinformation and straight out lies about Glenn Beck lately. No matter what you think of the man, its not cool to lie about him.
So let's start with the lie. Which, naturally, starts with Media Matters:
Beck failed to ask Hagee about controversial statements, instead asked him if Obama might be the Antichrist
Reading that, one might conclude that Glenn Beck actually thought that it was a valid question to ask Hagee if Obama was the anti-Christ. Right? That can't POSSIBLY be taken out of context.
I mean, Huffpo carried it too! And those sounds formed a question that sounded out across the airwaves unto disbelieving ears. That question: "Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ."
We are not making this up. Glenn Beck, serious newsman, needed to find out if Barack Obama was the Devourer of Worlds, Son of Harlots, Bearer of the Mark of the Beast. John Hagee had to be thrilled by the question: somehow, Beck managed to make Hagee look reasonable.
You'll note that on that link, it says 'video not found'.
Huh. I wonder why.
Beck has a video.
You should watch it. It pretty much proves that both Media Matters and Huffpo can. Not. Be Trusted.
US DEBT: Jan/2001 $5.7 Trillion Jan/2007 $8.6 Trillion
In the 6 years of Republican control, the debt was raised by 2.9 Trillion.
Jan/2009 $10.6 Jan/2011 $14.0
From 2007 to 2009, the debt rose by $2 Trillion. 2 Trillion. In 2 years of Democrat control of congress.
Now that was NOTHING compared to the drunken spending that would ensue after a Democrat took the presidency.
By this year, this January, our debt is 14 Trillion.
In two years, the president and congress have raised the debt by 3.4 Trillion.
Now I'm watching Democrats calling Republicans hypocrites.
Democrats and Obama have raised the debt by more in two years then the Republicans and Bush did in 6 years... and democrats have the balls to call the REPUBLICANS IRRESPONSIBLE?
