Obama predicting the stimulus would prevent double digit unemployment

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.

From AP:

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.

Huh.

But wait. Maybe AP misunderstood what Barack said at George Mason on Jan 8th, 2009?

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.

Hmm. I guess not.

But that was just one speech... right?

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.

MYTH: President Bush was never questioned by reporters on the Iraq war

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?

Pre-publicity for Occupy Wall Street

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.


September 6th, CBS news:

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

Huffington Post, September 2nd:

A group of activists plans to bring 20,000 people to occupy Wall Street for months.

CNN, September 16th:

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.

New York Magazine, September 16th:

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.

HuffPo, again, on the 15th:

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."

It goes on. And I'm sure you get the idea by now.

John Stewart, on Solyndra

He gives the administration a lot of leeway for "good intentions". Having said that, he also nails them to the wall on Solyndra.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Its genuinely hilarious, and refreshing to see the left make fun of the left in government. Even if he did have to throw Fox News into the mix.

"Pass This Bill"; Obama... and jobs

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 winner quits Physics group over Global Warming

The headline kinda says it all.

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.

From his letter:

Dear Ms. Kirby

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.

A Brief History of Social Security being called a Ponzi Scheme

The latest talking point between the left seems to be that calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme is a new thing.

This proves to me that the left has the shortest memory of any creature on earth.


In 2007, Krugman, quoting others:
(Chris Matthews, & Russert)

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.”

Mr. Russert: “Yes.”

From the American Thinker Magazine, 2005:

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...

Geez. That's back in 1994!

The Cato Institute, in 1999:

Why is Social Security often called a Ponzi scheme?

If anyone tells you that this is something new, please copy and paste. Freely.

FY 2008, the budget passed by Dems

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.

Oh Good. The president is going to do something about jobs. Again.

If a mechanic kept promising to repair your car, and kept messing it up, would you keep paying?

In 2009, Barack promised to create jobs and reduce the deficit, in an address to congress:

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.

Then he promised to attack jobs in 2010.

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?

Oh.

Look, its 2011. We don't need more promises/ plans/ from the guy who spent $787 Billion and couldn't keep unemployment under the 8%.

At some point in time, do you stop listening to the mechanic who keeps promising to fix your car?

Or are you different?

Do you give your keys to the mechanic, again, pay again, and presume that this time... he's going to get it right?

Going back in time: What Obamanomics was supposed to do

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.

In These Times, on Obamanomics:

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?

Barack: Don't raise taxes during a recession

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.

Huh.
That was August of 2009.
What changed?

A light bulb moment, and how to save $30 million in the US budget

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

According to the CBO, this will save $30 allocated to the Dept. Of Energy:

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.

Defence Secretary Panetta: You're in Iraq because of 9/11

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...

US government spending

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 gets it right... again

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.

Why is that so antithetical to the US government?

"Misinformed" viewers believe that Republicans were against TARP, and are correct

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

I already addressed this one a while back. So let's go over the votes for TARP:

The first vote on the bailout was September 29th, and the final tally is as follows:

	Ayes	Noes	PRES	NV
Democratic	140	95
Republican	65	133		1
Independent
TOTALS	205	228		1

The second vote on the bailout was October 3rd, and that tally is as follows:

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Democratic	172	63
Republican	91	108
Independent
TOTALS	263	171

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.

I wonder if PIPA would ask that question?

Presidential gaffe: "The Internets"

As Real Clear Politics points out:

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.

$278,000 per Stimulus Job

The Weekly Standard did the math, and that's what it works out to be. At least using the numbers of the White House economic advisers:

...the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion

I think that $278,000 per job created or saved is a great bargain. Don't you? I mean, in US government terms...

Fact Checker gives Obama Two Pinocchios

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.

"Where Are The Jobs?" is a skewed question

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

Uh huh.