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.