For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.
Neat.
Congratulations to the Washington Free Beacon, and Elizabeth Harrington in particular, for good research!
I'm just going to suggest that if one of your fundraisers is running for an exit at your convention... it doesn't bode well for the ethics of your party:
Lets talk about the United States budget for Fiscal Year 2009.
The left has tried repeatedly to blame Bush for the FY 2009 budget, and most of the time, this would be completely legitimate. After all, when Obama came into office, it was in the middle of FY 2009. So logic would dictate that whatever budget was in place when he came into office, he had no say over. Moreover, one would think that the previous president had his voice in the FY 2009 budget.
But then you'd be wrong.
Let me explain. As soon as the Democrats came into office, they started ignoring Bush's budget. By the time Bush turned in his FY 2009 suggestion, it was dead on arrival.
Then the Democrats proposed their budget.
They loved their budget compared to the president's budget, because it didn't involve cuts:
When the Democrats proposed their budget, Bush similiarly declared it dead. This is from Feb 2009, Bloomberg:
Democrats postponed work on the appropriations bills last
year after they were unable to reach an agreement with former
President George W. Bush on how much to spend on domestic
programs. Bush had demanded lawmakers freeze most domestic
spending. Most federal agencies, except those related to defense,
have been funded by a stopgap measure that expires March 6.
Democrats did vote on the "idea" of the budget in March of 2008. However, it was a non binding budget... meaning, it meant nothing. According to USA today:
Democrats gave final approval on Thursday of a
budget blueprint for 2009 that rewards domestic agencies and the
Pentagon with generous budget increases while leaving wrenching
decisions about curbing Medicare costs and increasing taxes to the next
president.
The House approved the $3.1 trillion budget plan
by a 214-210 vote; senators passed the measure Wednesday. The nonbinding
measure does not go to President Bush but instead sets guidelines for
future action by Congress.
The House-Senate compromise relies on
questionable assumptions to predict a small budget surplus by 2012 after
seven years of deficits under the Republican president.
Wait... what was that?
The next president actually will inherit a
deficit in the $400 billion range, or higher, under current estimates.
Some Wall Street economists fear record deficits of up to $500 billion.
Republicans lamented the lost opportunity to
tackle the biggest budget challenge: the rapidly spiraling cost of
Medicare, Social Security and the Medicaid health care program for the
poor. The Democratic plan would not impose any cost-cutting on them.
Democrats are generous, however, in the near term
with the annual spending bills passed by Congress. Over the five years
of the Democratic plan, appropriated spending would rise $241 billion.
In line for large increases are education, energy and public works.
It appears as though the Republicans were solidly against the Dems non-binding budget proposal.
And of course, the vote in the Senate:
Where you'll find that only 2 Republicans voted for it.
So instead of freezing spending, Democrats passed parts of the budget piecemeal in order to keep the government going. But that's not all. Democrats waited until Obama got into office, and then passed the final portion of FY 2009 under him... in March 2009! Again, via Bloomberg:
The U.S. Congress gave final
approval to a $410 billion spending bill that includes an overall
8 percent budget increase for some federal agencies and thousands
of congressional pet projects.
The Senate approved the so-called omnibus measure on a voice
vote, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature.
Moments earlier, the bill cleared a procedural vote 62 to 35. The
House approved the plan Feb. 25.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said
before passage that he was “very” surprised at how long it took
lawmakers to reach agreement on the legislation. He said the bill
will provide needed funding increases for federal agencies that
saw too many lean budgets during former President George W.
Bush’s administration.
Please note that Harry Reid wrote that there were "too many lean" budgets under GWB. Now, with Obama in charge, he was much happier, and fatter.
HR 1105 caused a little bit of a ruckus over the pork laden in it.
But you might wonder who actually voted for it?
Well, here's the roll call of the House:
Of the 62 "Yeas", only 8 were Republicans.
Which means this bill swept through, despite Republican opposition.
If you say that either Bush or Republicans were responsible for the FY2009 budget, you are beyond wrong. You're in that special category of dishonesty or ignorance.
On Jan 3rd, 2007, the DJI was at 12,800.18 That's when it started plunging downward. On November 4th, 2008, the day that Barack was elected, the DJI was at: 9,625.28 The DJI was at 8,228 when Obama took office.
The next time you read about Democrats who are upset about Republicans raising money in shady ways for their campaigns, remember this story.
The Democrats went to Canada. Why? Because if you're not actually physically in the US, you aren't constrained by US election financing laws.
Sounds ridiculous, but its true. Uber reporter Lynn Sweet has the story:
The Giannoulias Democratic Illinois Senate campaign confirmed Monday--after prodding from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee--that Alexi Giannoulias was in Canada on Sunday attending a fund-raiser at a trial lawyer convention in Vancouver that would benefit his Senate campaign.
It kinda makes sense that trial lawyers would figure out a way to escape restrictions on their fund raising.
I don't want to quote it too much, because I don't want to spoil it. However, this line is genius:
This misplaced griping stems not from Obama's failure to "think big" but from a misreading of the political climate: Liberals thought they'd be popular.
Exactly. The left is still trying to figure out why, even though they took over, they still aren't popular.
Blumenthal is an asshat. So is everyone who didn't call him out on this earlier. Kudos to the New York Times for doing so. It seems that Blumenthal spoke many times about his non-existent service in Vietnam:
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
What an asshole. What a world class asshole. I can't believe that anyone would tell crowd after crowd of veterans about serving in Vietnam when he hadn't. What kind of asshole does that? Well, the democrat who is trying to take Chris Dodd's vacant seat. That kind of asshole.
TPM is one of those groups who thinks that the only reason why Obamacare has a bad rap is because they aren't pushing the message right. They say:
Last summer, members were caught unprepared and were faced with angry voters, loud protests and televised meetings that portrayed them in many cases as fumbling and unsure of how to talk about a bill that didn't actually exist yet.
Its kind of a blunt assessment from a blog that before blamed the chaos on Tea Party members yelling. Now they admit that congress critters didn't know what they were saying.
The Democrats actually put out a whole set of Talking Points for their lemmings... er.. congresspeople, to mimic. If you want to ask them a question, be prepared to hear a pre-recorded message.
Never let it be said that I won't publish the same crap the Democrats are pushing. Let's take one talking point, from 'four key points':
Is fully paid for – costs $940 billion over a decade. (Americans spend nearly $2.5 trillion each year on health care now and nearly two-thirds of the bill is paid for by reducing health care costs).
It is not fully paid for. The only way it could possibly be paid for is if they reduce medicare by $500 billion over ten years. Who believes that they would do that? They also pay for it by taxing anyone who doesn't get health care insurance.
