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
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