Hat tip to Right Werds, Korrekt Speech.
Check out this video and tell me you still think Obama does not share some responsibility for this current financial mess we are in.
In fact, it was John McCain who tried to introduce legislation to prevent this mess and the Dems, led by Senator Dodd, prevented the Bill he cosponsored from even getting out of committee.
Visit Hot Air for great info on the topic.
.. to learn that my outrage over Obama’s laugh line about lipstick on a pig was actually “phony outrage”.
This guy just can not admit a mistake and then compounds it by insulting those among us who clearly believe he was going for a laugh by making fun of Palin.
We’ve all met verbal bullies in our life. I’m not talking about someone who beats the heck out of you in a debate… that actually takes some real skill. I’m talking about the schoolyard punk who only goes for the laugh when surrounded by his entourage, knowing the laugh is assured.
Well… now that I have all this misplaced outrage, I need to find someplace to redirect it. I know, how about this from the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste:
FoxNews– … ( the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste) gave the Democratic presidential nominee a 10 percent score last year and a lifetime score of 18 percent. Biden, Obama’s running mate, scored 0 percent last year and an overall score of 22 percent.
Higher scores mean stronger resistance to federal earmarks.
Well, isn’t that just grand. Obama and Biden have more in common than their tendency towards plagiarism, they like to spend other people’s money. And just how do they spend that money?
Since taking office, Obama has requested $740 million in federal earmarks for Illinois, including $750,000 for a visitors center, $713,000 for soybean disease research, $401,000 for a juvenile delinquent prevention program and $250,000 for obesity prevention.
At the Democratic National Convention last month, Obama promised to take action against wasteful spending.
“I will also go through the federal budget line by line eliminating programs that no longer work,” he told 84,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver.
But this year, Obama voted against cutting $23 billion in federal programs rated ineffective by the Office of Management and Budget.
Ya, sure. He’ll cut wasteful spending… when pigs fly… no offense intended.
He’s been a senator how long? Three quarters of a BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!! Are you kidding me?
Trust me… this ain’t phony outrage.
Let’s not forget his twin:
Last year, Biden requested $120 million in earmarks for Delaware, including $2 million for an oyster bed revitalization effort, $656,000 to retrofit apartments with sprinklers, $500,000 for a (Nature Society) nutrition program and $246,000 to renovate an opera house.
What exactly is a Nature Society nutrition program and why are 500,000 of your dollars and mine going to pay for it? That’s our money folks. Not some imaginary pot of gold that politicians like Biden and Obama can dip into whenever the mood hits them.
On the other hand:
John McCain is a “hero” to U.S. taxpayers for his lifetime record of resisting earmarks, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden are “hostile” and “unfriendly,” a government spending watchdog group has concluded.
In its new report, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste gave the Republican presidential nominee a 100 percent rating for his votes in the Senate last year, and a lifetime score of 88 percent.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was not included because the ratings only evaluate members of Congress.
The Democratic ticket has repeatedly criticized Palin for seeking earmarks for her city and for her state, including her initial support for Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”
But mayors and governors do not fund these projects - members of Congress do. In 2005, Obama and Biden both voted for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” defeating a bill to spend that money on Hurricane Katrina relief instead.
“It’s a little like, don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house,” Schatz told FOX News.
“Democrats won in part in 2006 saying that earmarks were part of a culture of corruption,” Schatz said, referring to the 2006 elections that gave Democrats a narrow majority in Congress. “But they view it as a currency of re-election or they’d be getting rid of them. So until they say no, they’re just as bad, if not worse than what the Republicans did when they were in charge.”
So let’s recap… Obama says he’ll fight waste, McCain has actually done it.
I’m betting McCain will continuing doing while Obama continues saying… it’s in their nature.
Bider: as in “to bide one’s time”.
I thought Pelosi and the Dems reached a whole new level of blocking the will of the people when she not only refused to allow a vote on energy legislation because she wanted to save the world (her words), but then closed up shop a bit early, ordered CSPAN cameras shut off, and turned out the lights on a protest by Republicans on the floor of the House, showing just how tolerant liberals are of free speech when they don’t like what is being said.
Does anyone else see the irony of Pelosi leading the House after the drama of a house falling on her sister? But I digress…
OK… so the House adjourned and the Senate adjourned and everyone went home for a much undeserved vacation (wish I had a job where we could all just leave for a month after having accomplished virtually none of our goals).
But wait, not so fast… did they adjourn?
Nooooo…. they are no longer actually conducting business, but that wasn’t enough for the Dem leadership in the Senate. It wasn’t near enough to just simply go on vacation with unfinished business. Not nearly enough to leave unfinished work on crucial spending bills.
No.. they needed to make sure they stopped as much of the business of the federal government as they could without actually having to expend any energy.
The Dem leadership in the Senate has kept the Senate in session, but not really, so that President Bush can not exercise his authority to make recess appointments of judges and other federal positions.
Folks, it doesn’t get much more political than this. In addition to a complete suspension of confirmation hearings, debates, votes, etc during this in-session quasi-recess, Harry Reid is making sure that the President can not make recess appointments while Reid and his cronies are sunning poolside.
From the AP-
What happens if the Senate is supposed to meet and there aren’t any senators around?
The show must go on, as the chamber demonstrated Friday morning, even if a staff aide has to wield the gavel.
Nancy Erickson, a Democratic aide who serves as secretary of the Senate, stood in Friday for a tardy Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.
<snip>
Friday’s Senate meeting was one of a spate of pro forma sessions designed to block President Bush from making so-called recess appointments of administration officials without requiring Senate confirmation.
<snip>
A strict reading of Senate rules suggests that Friday’s session might not have been entirely legitimate since the rules say the secretary can preside if a president pro tempore hasn’t yet been chosen. President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., was elected last January.
Setting aside the fact that a non-senator had to gavel the Senate into session because no senators were present; setting aside the fact that this may be a violation of Senate rules; the real story here is that the Senate is in session in name only and for the express purpose of blocking the President from making recess appointments, apparently the most important thing Harry Reid has on his plate at the moment.
Our US Senators have become so lazy that they don’t actually filibuster to filibuster, they just have to say they are filibustering; and they don’t actually need any senators to show up to have a session, they just have to say they are having a session.
I have an idea… maybe we don’t have to actually pay their salaries, we can just say that we did. Works for me…
Barack Obama 8/4/2008 - “I believe we should immediately give every working family in America a $1,000 energy rebate, and we should pay for it with part of the record profits that the oil companies are making right now.”
Barack Obama upped the ante today, promising to tax the profits of every corporation that makes a profit during his administration and give that money to anyone who does not have any visible source of income.
By law, company owners, aka stockholders, will continue to have the privilege of buying stock, but all dividends will be transferred to a fund to assist those who can not afford to purchase stock, all capital gains will be taxed at an appropriate rate to ensure that greed is no longer rewarded and the neediest among us, especially those most likely to vote their conscience in November (ie: vote for Obama), will receive a weekly social dividend check in compensation for their long suffering under the repressive regime that has controlled this great country for more than 200 years.
Barack Obama… buying votes the old fashion wayed: with other people’s money.
Maybe that’ll shut her up.
AP: President Bush has been a “total failure” in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.
Pelosi shot back in unusually personal terms.
“You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject,” Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for “challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again.”
Don’t ya just love liberals who have no other way to defend against justified criticism than to resort to personal attacks. The president has lost credibility? What about Pelosi and Reid leading the Congress to an all time, in the entire history of our country, low public opinion rating of NINE PERCENT! She is sweeping up after the president’s mess? What the hell has the Congress accomplished under her steady hand? Have they kept any of their campaign promises? What mess have they swept up?
Pelosi has been a fount of insightful statements lately:
“Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas.”
“I’ve been in Washington long enough to know a political stunt when I see one,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “The good news is the American people won’t be fooled. If the President wants to lower gas prices, he should stop hosting press conferences and start taking action.”
Spot on Nancy. Way to go Rahm. The American people weren’t fooled by all this talk of increasing supply to address demand and lower prices. Who among us are stupid enough to believe that increasing supply would lower prices. You’d have to be a total moron.
Gotta hand it to her though, she sure has chutzpah going on the attack so soon after being proven a complete idiot. Just days after Pelosi declared the president’s call for offshore drilling a hoax, Bush announced the lifting of an executive order banning offshore drilling and oil prices dropped. DROPPED Nancy… the prices dropped from just a hint that we may be tapping into our immense reserves of oil off our coast; imagine what would happen if Congress got off their collective butts and did something useful for a change.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended Bush.
“What the president said is a fact - this is the longest a Congress has gone in 20 years without passing a single spending bill, so it’s clear that the speaker is feeling some frustration at their inability to do so.”
Pelosi’s counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, long ago took off the rhetorical gloves. Last month, he ridiculed Republicans who sided with Bush on a Medicare bill.
“Who would be afraid of him?” Reid, D-Nev., said as many senators looked on. “He’s got a 29 percent approval rating.”
Which is 20 POINTS HIGHER THAN YOURS… or maybe this will make it clearer for you, it is 3 TIMES HIGHER THAN YOURS, in fact, the president’s rating actually is in the double digits while your rating is in the SINGLE DIGITS… Nine Percent folks… lower than most dictators.
Last week Reid and other Democrats dropped any pretense of trying to fight the president on battles they were likely to lose - even on the most important part of their jobs, which is passing spending bills that keep the government running.
Of the 12 annual appropriations bills, Congress is likely to pass one or two and send Bush a temporary spending fix for the rest. That would have to suffice until a new president takes office, Reid told reporters.
Folks… Reid, Pelosi and the Democrat controlled Congress have thrown in the towel. Maybe we can’t dock their pay for poor performance, but we can certainly fire them for refusing to perform at all. Unfortunately, if election polling data is correct, although we Americans think Congress stinks, we apparently don’t realize the Dems are the source of the odor.
Pray all branches don’t go to the Dems in November. If that happens we could be facing a decline not witnessed since Jimmy Carter “led” us into a pit we were fortunate to climb out of during the Reagan years.
How come…
… folks (mostly Libs) want to drive down dependence on foreign oil, reduce energy consumption, reduce emissions, and stop ”global warming” and when the one thing in a free market that will help them reach there objective occurs (higher prices lead to lower consumption), they complain about the higher prices?
… folks (OK, mostly Libs again) complain that first time home buyers are squeezed out of the market because of rapidly rising real estate prices then complain that folks are losing value when the prices drop… do we want lower prices so houses are more affordable or higher prices so that people make money on their investments.. or does it depend on who the president is at the time?
… reversing a tax cut does not equal a tax increase while a tax cut does not equal reversing a tax increase? Aren’t they the same thing spun left or right? Why is it that returning to the tax rates of the past (as HRC has indicated she may do, returning to the higher marginal rates of the 50’s & 60’s.. as high as 70%) not equal a tax increase. When has a higher tax rate ever translated into a tax cut for the middle class.. and who is the middle class? As far as I can tell.. the middle class is the cut off point whereby the number of votes purchased through tax cuts is offset by the number of votes lost via tax increases.
Did you miss this article when it was published in the WSJ? I did.
Clicked a historical link over at Bottom Line Up Front and found the link to the WSJ article which was written by a former high-ranking KGB agent. What he confirms s what many of us have long believed: our enemies use our mass media as a powerful conduit for their propaganda:
The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman–the leader of the new “occupation power.” Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.
The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the “butcher of Hiroshima.” We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering “shark” run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a “Yankees-Go-Home” petition, at the same time launching the slogan “Europe for the Europeans.”
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.
The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America’s commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O’Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a “deserter.” And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, “Give Bush the Boot.”
<snip>
Now we are again at war. It is not the president’s war. It is America’s war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don’t know either. But I do know that if America’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: “We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West.”
Exactly! Unfortunately, all that matters is who wins the Whitehouse and Congress… not who wins the war.
