$1.2 BILLION on walking and biking?

Ugh. More waste from a government that is now 90% of its GDP in debt.

From the Telegraph in the UK:

The Obama administration more than doubled spending on cycling and walking initiatives to $1.2 billion (£810 million) last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars.

We are now 13 TRILLION in debt. I bike everywhere. I mean, I covered about 40 miles in one day a week ago. I run about 5 miles a day, 3 days a week during the summer.
I did not need the government to help me do that.
Can we stop pretending like a $1.2 billion dollar program to get people 'out of their cars' is worth it? Please?

Recapping, Obama to date

Dear Democrats,

You guys wore t-shirts with your politician's face on them a little bit more then a year ago.

You guys were THAT PROUD of him, because he told you that he would be out of Gitmo within months, that he'd leave Iraq right away, that he wouldn't use 'unconstitutional' signing statements, that he'd "sunshine" bills for several days online before voting on them, that he would pass a health care bill that would NOT make insurance mandatory (and that would make it cheaper!), and that he would not let careless offsea drilling occur.

We're still in Iraq.
Gitmo is still open.
Unconstitutional signing statements were signed within months of him taking office.
He blew off that sunshining BS right away.
The health care bill will not only make things more expensive, but its mandatory for you to have insurance now.
The #1 recipient of BP contributions (Barack) got rid of a decades old long ban on offshore drilling, and a year and a half into his administration, the worst oil spill ever has occurred.

I'm not writing this because I'm angry at you, or because I wanted the president to do those things. I'm just trying to remind you of how gullible you were for a nice sounding story, and 'hoping' that you won't fall for rhetoric again.

There were enough alarm bells going off with Barack before the election that you should have taken a second look at him. Here we are, a year and a half in, and roughly 44% of voters strongly disapprove of him.

Please, please, please... take a moment before you go to the ballot box the next time. I know you didn't like Bush. But this is the thing: the reason why Republicans liked him is because he did things that Republicans liked.
Can you say the same thing about Barack?
Yes?
Will you please look at that list, above, again?

Flashback, Geitner: The economy is improving

Now, keep in mind when he said this:

"The U.S. economy is showing signs of improvement more quickly than had been expected, while aggressive efforts by policy makers around the world have blunted the risk of a much deeper global recession, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday. "

It was July of 2009.

He also pledged:

"....that stimulus measures would be quickly unwound as soon as the crisis had "definitively receded." President Obama is committed to bringing the deficit down to around 3% of gross domestic product once a recovery is firmly established and to limiting future spending commitments through budget rules, Geithner said. "

Uh huh.

Can we start saying "liar liar pants on fire" yet?

If Obama were a security guard

Picture, for a moment, that Obama was a security guard.

A massive theft occurs under his watch. When it happens, Obama blames the security guard who was fired 15 months ago. He tells us that the former security guard had lax security measures and poor security practices, which is why things were stolen under Barack's guard. He further tells the owner of the stolen goods that he's really going to get tough now. That he's learned from this theft, and he won't get fooled again.

How would you react?

Buy that Cop domain

I hate most traffic laws, because they have nothing to do with safety. Yes, I get why speeding is illegal. -And this guy probably should have just paid the ticket. However, this was a pretty good way to get back.
ABC news reports that this guy went to pay his ticket at the police web site.

When he saw that the site's content had been replaced with a notice saying that the domain name was on the verge of expiring, he saw an opportunity. He waited a few weeks until the name had officially lapsed, and then he pounced.

Beautiful.
He bought the domain.

When Democrats attack!

I want to start by saying that we don't know the whole story.
I don't know who Rep. Bob Etheridge is. I know that he's from North Carolina and that he's a democrat. That's all.
I loved what O'Keefe did, but he gathered a lot of evidence of ACORN workers giving questionable advice before he posted it.

This, on the other hand, might be very selective editing:

A Democratic congressman apologized Monday after video posted online showed him swatting at a video camera and demanding that two men taping him identify themselves.

So naturally, I wanted to see the video for myself.

Wow.
Honestly... there can be a reason why he went off like that. I mean, if they started hitting him or something off camera. Or if they started talking about his personal life, or made fun of his wife. Otherwise, he really has a lot of explaining to do.
He's a congressman. You can't do that to someone who is just asking you questions.

More "unexpected" news

How often does bad news have to be unexpected before it becomes expected? From Bloomberg:

U.S. Hiring Disappoints, Jobless Rate Falls to 9.7%

Yep. After months of bad unemployment news, and more and more spending that created no jobs... its disappointing that the unemployment rate has not gone down.
But here is the kicker:

Private payrolls rose by 41,000, Labor Department figures showed today, trailing the 180,000 gain forecast by economists. Including government workers, employment rose by 431,000, boosted by a jump in hiring of temporary census workers. The jobless rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent.

So the vast majority of the jobs created were in the Census... which means that the jobless rate is going to skyrocket this fall.

$18 Million to redesign a website?

My first website was pretty lame. So I took a week and redesigned it.
Now granted, I don't have to integrate searchable databases, create pie charts, or do java scripting. But here is the good news: you can hire a team of people to do that for a few months, and it might even cost you a couple hundred thousand dollars or so.

OR

If you're the government, you can run up a bill of 18 MILLION DOLLARS to do the very same thing.

It's really embarrassing to me that we spend this kind of stupid money every day, and that people do not march on Washington to complain about it.

Jon Stewart on Assquest

Barack is looking for some ass to kick.
Jon Stewart's comments on it.

Social Security going broke in real time

From Business Insider, a chart that should make you kinda frightened. Regarding Social Security, the payouts are starting to exceed the payroll tax that is meant to pay for Social Security benifits for those who are currently receiving them:

These lines were not expected to cross for at least another five years. This is the cost of the protracted recession and the failure of the economy to generate new jobs. The 2008-2009 increase in benefits was at a nosebleed level of 9.5%. That level has collapsed to 3.9% in the 2009-2010 period. This is the result of a “0%” COLA increase for 2010. The flip side is that those receiving checks are getting squeezed as their costs rise and income is stable. In the real world COLA is a joke. As this evolves it will just be a drag on consumption and extend the weak economy.

Ugh. The sad thing is, this is all very accurate. On top of our down economy, SS is actually broke now. Its no longer a theory that SS was a horrible ponzi scheme. Its a reality.

Federal Debt? Its not $13 TRILLION

Just so you know, when Obama entered office, the debt, as of January 16th, 2010, was:

$10,628,881,485,510.23

Right now, according to the article in the Washington Times:

Calculated down to the exact penny, the debt totaled $13,050,826,460,886.97 as of Tuesday, leaping nearly $60 billion since Friday, the previous day for which figures were released.

Thank you Democrats. You irresponsible assholes.
In 16 months, you've added 2.5 Trillion to the debt. And that isn't even including the Health Care mess you have coming our way.

But is it true?

I read that a BP spokesperson had said this quote:

Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp

And something smelled, well, fishy to me about it.

It didn't help that when I googled the phrase, every lefty website in America had it. But when I restricted the hits to "News" websites, only commentary articles appeared from very left leaning organizations stating that it was 'reported' that he said the phrase above.

So I started digging.
Newsweek reported it as 'fact', in an article about the spoofed twitter feed on BP's PR. So I kept digging, and followed Newsweek's link.

Newsweek used a blog as their source. Oooookay. This kinda explains why Newsweek is going out of business. So then I followed the blog, and found this article:

Five years after Katrina, the return of disaster capitalism?

Disaster capitalism?
Pardon, but when you read a quote like that, it should give you pause. It did me. Anyway, if you find a real link to a real story where the PR spokesperson said that, please let me know.

Universal Health Care will never have rationing

Remember when they said that?
Obama is in the process of finding a new guy to put in charge of Medicare, and CNS found an old quote of his:

'The Decision is Not Whether or Not We Will Ration Care--The Decision is Whether We Will Ration Care With Our Eyes Open'

Who didn't see this coming?

The utter double standard of the left

Picture this:

A year into his presidency, George W. Bush announces that he's expanding offshore drilling. His decision removes a ban that spans decades.
In his speech, he tells us:

Under the leadership of Secretary Salazar, we’ll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security. And we’ll be guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence.

A couple of months later, an oil rig blows up, killing 17 people.

'Bush' avoids any press conference where questions can be asked about the rig for the first month of the impending crisis. Instead, he issues reassuring messages telling us that the government is taking care of things. On May 3rd, he says:

Your government will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this crisis

In the meantime, it is discovered that 'Bush' has received the most amount of cash from BP of any candidate in the previous election. The candidate recieving the 3rd most amount of cash is a 'Republican' senator from Louisiana.
It is then revealed that president's administration did not inspect the oil rig as it was supposed to. AP, using a Freedom of Information act, discovers that part of the inspection report on the rig seems to be "whited out" without any explanation.

Under pressure from the press, 'Bush' takes questions regarding the oil spill. During his press conference, the president denounces the 'scandalous' relationship between the agencies that regulate the oil industry, and the people who drill for oil. In response to a question about how involved he is, he tells the press that he is "briefed every day" on the progress in the gulf.
When he's asked why the government isn't more involved, he tells the press that the technology of BP is superior to what the government has.

As oil begins to wash ashore, the president goes on vacation. Right before the president leaves, he gets his photo taken with two different sports teams for photo ops. His announced vacation plans are cut short to include a 4 hour visit to the oil slicked coast. While there, he says that 'mistakes are possible...but a lack of urgency about plugging the leak and restoring the region is not'.


As a side note, the president will be skipping the tradition of the president laying a wreath in Arlington on memorial day, with two wars going on overseas.

The president I'm talking about - of course - is not president Bush. However, it begs the question:
What would the reaction be of the left if the president were not named Obama?
Why isn't the left really, really upset at the clear financial connection between the current president and BP?
-And just as importantly, why isn't the left upset that the president is going on vacation during this crisis?

The WH is finally getting blamed for the BP spill

Which only makes sense, since they were the ones who pushed for more drilling. If Barack's name was Cheney, people would be marching down Michigan Avenue with his picture on it with his hands soaked in oil.
From Nola.com:

More than month into the spill -- and with no end in sight -- this past weekend may mark the moment when anger and frustration about the spill overtopped BP and began to splash on the carpet in the Oval Office.

Outside of the really bad pun, Nola.com is very accurate. There finally is some blame being put on the administration for not 'doing enough'. Now I should start here by explaining that I'm not one of those people who blames an administration when anything goes wrong. Further, I literally don't think its the administration's problem. But since they (Barack, etc.) went around blaming Bush for that hurricane in New Orleans, its only fair to blame this administration for not responding to this disaster in a timely manner.

The president's polling is down. Again.

Its happened once again. According to Rasmussen, he president's poll numbers are down.

Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. That is the lowest level of approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of his performance.

There could be many reasons why his performance numbers continue to plummet, but this could be a big one: the president approved of more drilling just months before a major oil disaster happened in the gulf. Oooops.
Oh, and it gets worse for Mr. Obama. It seems that he was the biggest recipient of BP cash before it happened. According to Open Secrets:

During the 2008 election cycle, individuals and political action committees associated with BP -- a Center for Responsive Politics' "heavy hitter" -- contributed half a million dollars to federal candidates. About 40 percent of these donations went to Democrats. The top recipient of BP-related donations during the 2008 cycle was President Barack Obama himself, who collected $71,000.

You have to hand it to Open Secrets. They are normally associated with exposing financial connections between Republicans and corporations. But they were completely up front about who was taking in money They even give a complete break down here:

Senate	Obama, Barack	$71,051
Senate	McCain, John	$36,649
Senate	Landrieu, Mary L	$16,200
Senate	Stevens, Ted	$10,150
Senate	Begich, Mark	$8,550

Those are the top five. Note that number one is Barack. Number 3 is the representative from the state where oil is coming up on their shore.
Is it any wonder that Barack's numbers are declining? Some democratic regular voters are finally figuring Barack out. It took long enough.

Government payrolls are up

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

There is no surer way to bankrupt a country then by spending more money on government benefits while personal income declines. Or, as an economist in the article points out:

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. "This is really important," Grimes says.

Grimes is completely correct. As private income goes down, there is less money to fuel government programs. As government programs increase, it becomes harder to get rid of them. Once government programs swallow up more of the GDP, it simply becomes unsustainable.

If the Huffpost didn't leave out facts, they wouldn't print anything

So an acquaintance linked me to this Huffington Post article:

"If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush's presidency."

Something sounded strange about that... so I followed the link to the National Journal, where the article came from:

More jobs might be created this year than during George W. Bush's presidency.

It sounded suspicious to me. So I read the article looking for the magic words "census jobs". The article does not mention them.
That made me curious as to what the job report (listed in the article above) actually said:

Job gains occurred in manufacturing, professional and business services, health care, and leisure and hospitality. Federal government employment also rose, reflecting continued hiring
of temporary workers for Census 2010.

Hmmm. Sounds like the Census is creating a lot of that job surge. Just as I thought.
But I wasn't satisfied with that. Because my friend's friends tried to suggest that Census workers weren't included in the job numbers.
The following is from a PDF that the commerce department sent out in February of 2010:

According to Census Bureau operational plans, the number of hires for temporary 2010 Census jobs is estimated to be about 800,000 during April and May of this year. For several techincal reasons, including the very short term tenure of these jobs, the number of 2010 Census hires will not be fully reflected in either the monthly levels or changes in non-farm employment
reported by the BLS. Based on the experience in the 2000 census, the BLS figures may show the number of temporary census jobs peaking at a level closer to 635,000 in May.

Read that paragraph again. It suggest that a whole lot of jobs might be temporarily created in May. And then the level of jobs will go down again.
Now I just happened to find out recently that the Census kind of, you know, over-hired this year. Which means that they are not only done hiring, but they are trying to figure out what to do with all of their staff.
Which means that in the next two months, we might see another surge of unemployed folks out there. I presume then that the Huffington Post will notice the Census jobs.

Obama calls Tea party members Teabaggers. Gibbs demures.

From Real Clear Politics:

REPORTER: Are you able to get an answer on Fred's question about the teabagger quote, if the President is aware that people are offended?
GIBBS: Again, I have not seen the book. I can't imagine I'm going to ask the President that, but I will -- I will entertain it. I will check.

No word yet on if the reporter ever got his answer. I'm going with 'yeah... the president said it, all while denouncing the incivility of others'

KBR gets no bid contract

Just so that we're clear on this: George Bush is no longer president.

KBR Inc. was selected for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011 for military support services in Iraq, the Army said.

So why is KBR getting the contract?
Well, it could be one of two things:
1) KBR is the most qualified to do the job
2) The current administration, while criticizing the former one, is just as compromised.