Halo2

Seriously??

Bernanke Thinks Economy Could Recover Next Year; No One Believes Him

Some veiled optimism from the Fed chief, buried in a stack of doom and gloom.

If actions taken by the administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability — and only if that is the case, in my view — there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery," Bernanke said.

This statement indicates that we'll know within 6-9 months if the trillions of dollars of spending are stimulating the economy or just the Socialists. Huzzah.

By the way, if anyone's keeping score, the DJIA closed yesterday at its lowest point since October, 1997. The index closed at 9.625.28 on November 4, the day BO won the election. The Inauguration Day close was 7,949.09. Yesterday: 7,114.78 (down 735.63 or 9.3% just since the Spending Bill was signed into law).

Hope for change.

A.C.O.R.N. adds B. & E. to the résumé

Hey, they've gotta come up with some way to fill the days between election fraud activities.

Surgin', General

Obama commits 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan

I don't necessarily disagree that the region needs to be stabilized, though I think the locals need to step up first.

However, my prediction is that this is part of a broader goal. I think the administration has doubts that the World Record Spending Spree will actually fix the economy in 3 years. It would be a big boost to locate and track Osama Bin Laden, and I wouldn't be shocked by an election-timed capture or elimination.

Of course, it shouldn't take that long to find ObL, seeing as how UCLA already has.

Halo Halo?

This about sums up how the media sees B.O.

And, no, the "faith-based initiatives" mentioned in the article do not include the Democratic Party. At least, I don't think they do.

Yeah, That's Not Really Going to Cover It...

Teaser/promo on FOXNews tonight:

Tomorrow: Is Uncle Sam going broke? Karl Rove offers his two cents!

More like close to $200 from every living man, woman, and child on Planet Earth to cover the cost of our brand new Pork Law.

All Yours...

Kudos to House Republicans for staying strong, and making a statement. This bag of pork rinds belongs to the Democrats, and so does the fallout. And hey, if it works, they get all the credit (though they currently seem desperate to "avoid" that credit).

Now if the Senate Republicans could only muster up the same spine...

Any Republican who votes for this bill should be evicted from the GOP, forthwith.

On a related note, USA Today has a "breakdown of the billions" and how they will be spent.

Painfully obvious is that the "highlights" don't add up to anywhere near $789,500,000,000. Why? Take a guess.

Layers Of Editors, Epic Fail

The woman who swam the Atlantic? Well, she didn't really so much "swim" it as "ride across it in a boat." She may have taken a dip now and then. Naturally, the AP reported Figge's "accomplishment" last week with nary a word of skepticism. Of course, just crunching the numbers, or even taking a casual look a the numbers, would have made the hoax obvious.

If they can be taken in so easily on a harmless sports story, how gullible are they when they are being willfully deceived elsewhere?

"He's Sending the Wrong Message"

"I voted for him. Now I'm wondering... I think I made the wrong decision."

This woman has my sympathies, renewed. She basically has to relive this tragedy all over again. Needlessly.

I wonder how many Obama voters feel this way.

Also

To you Obama-ites, this is your Vice President:

"But let me move for a second to what I was supposed to talk about. I was asked to talk about foreign policy. You know that old joke, you know, an expert is anyone from out of town with a briefcase? I'm out of town, but I don't have a briefcase, and I know a lot of you know as much and more about foreign policy as I do, but it's like that old joke, I hope you Texans aren't offended, but in Delaware that old joke about the Texan who said ‘I don't now much about art but I know what I like?’ Well, I may not know much about it, but I know what I think, and I know what I think we have to do."

Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Be Careful What You Ask For

To those who voted for Obama but oppose the stimulus package: What else did you expect from Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress?

To those "conservatives" who voted for Obama hoping he would govern as a centrist: Having buyer's remorse yet?

Brother Can You Spare A Trillion?

President Obama is reminding anyone who will listen that voters sent him there to bring change.

Instead of bringing change, he's asking for it. And not just change, but paper money. Big bills. Probably non-sequential, unmarked ones. From you, and your kids, and their kids.

This bill is robbery, no matter how urgently you press for it. The guy in the bank with the ski mask has a sense of urgency about him, too.

The Stimulus Bill Comes Home

Unlike hundreds of other cities, however, Daley said Chicago won’t make its list public.

“Yes, we do, we have our list, we’ve been talking to people. We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you know, the newspapers, the media is going to be ripping it apart,” Daley said.

Translation: I miss the good old days, when we could fatten up on tax dollars without anyone knowing.

I Hope America Is Paying Attention

Interesting article here about the Other White Meat Package currently festering in the Senate. It starts off with the usual about how anyone who doesn't blindly agree with Team O can't possibly be bipartisan:

Any hopes for bipartisan cooperation that President Obama once harbored crashed on Capitol Hill just three weeks into his presidency as Senate leaders strained Thursday to pass his $900 billion economic stimulus bill with the minimum necessary number of Republican votes.

Yawn. Saying it over and over doesn't change the meaning of the word. Then we get a reminder of just how bipartisan the spirit in Washington really is:

After threatening to go through the night and warning that the financial markets could crash in the morning, Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada said a bipartisan group of 16 senators would look for more spending cuts in the bill today

Can you say "Politics of Fear" anyone?

But wait a minute. Maybe there is some bipartisanship happening there after all...

Even getting all the Democratic votes is touch-and-go. Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is working on an alternative plan with a dozen colleagues on both sides, said "I told them I'd have a tough time voting for it." Asked if he had threatened a no vote, he said, "As a governor, I never said I'd veto. I just vetoed."

Any Democrat voting against Obama on his first big initiative to battle what he called a "catastrophic" problem would deal a body blow to his presidency before it gets fully under way.

So we have Democrats thinking about voting "nay" right there alongside Republicans. Hmm. Folks from TWO parties... someone lookup "bipartisan" again?

And, just in case you were wondering what "partisan" could be, by contrast:

Senate Republicans have followed their House colleagues into full partisan warfare against the stimulus program. Attacking narrow pieces of the bill - from payments to Filipino war veterans to aid for honeybees - as wasteful spending and proposing wholesale substitutes that would slash taxes instead, a largely unified GOP has battered public perceptions of Obama's first major legislative initiative.

Imagine. Those loons thinking that sending money to foreigners overseas won't create jobs here in America. The insanity!

Skipping ahead, there's an interesting point about the real reason Team O is anxious:

GOP critics, and some Democrats, insist that the bill contains enormous new spending and that much of it will come too late to do any good. But that is by design.

For Obama, the stimulus is a giant opportunity not just to address the immediate economic downturn but to begin building the new economic architecture he envisions. He might never again get a chance to spend so much money, certainly not in one fell swoop.

Dare to dream.

Read the rest. Once you get past the whiny "'Everyone' asked for this in November" nonsense, it's actually entertaining, recapping how Hope and Change have yielded to Scorn and Squabble.

Numb3rs

The Washington Post shares Obama's defense of his "stimulus" plan:

President Obama mounted a staunch defense today of the economic stimulus plan now before Congress, chiding critics who want it to focus primarily on tax cuts and asserting that Americans rejected their theories in the November elections.

That's easy to say, and all well and good, but it implies a much bigger consensus than is factual. Remember, we talked about this here.

As a refresher, only 53% of people (who even bothered to vote) picked Obama and therefore by implication his policies. Voter turnout was under 57%, mind you. Simple arithmetic tells you then that of all Americans of voting age, about 30% chose The O. Only 3 in 10.

You could do the same math on any election of course, but I don't recall other Presidents throwing their victory in everyone's face so often. "Hey, you picked me... so whatever I do is your fault."

Yes, Obama won the election. That does not imply universal agreement with everything he does after that point, and he should stop pretending it does.

Barring that, it certainly doesn't extinguish the right of the other 70% to call B.S. every now and then.

Tom Daschle vs. Al Capone

Capone doesn't stand a chance.

New Math

If you add these pork rinds up, you end up with a number somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars.

My fingers got tired, but I came up with something like $234,833,500,000.00

Yes, those are U.S. Dollars.

People Unclear on the Concept

So now the Chief Performance Officer is caught w/ dirty tax laundry.

What strikes me in addition to Michelle Malkin's appropriate question, is what kind of moron do they have vetting these candidates? I mean, isn't it a pretty simple thing to add a question to the job application?

[ ] Please check the box ONLY if you have paid all of your taxes. Seriously.

For the Record

Just wanted to make sure this is noted, before it gets spun, adjusted, and interpreted with "what he meant was...":

"I will be held accountable. I have got four years [first term in office]," the president said. "I think a year from now people are going to see that we are starting to make some progress, but there is still going to be some pain out there. If I do not have this [economic recovery] done in three years, then there is going to be a one-term proposition [will not be re-elected]."
- President Barack H. Obama, aired Feb 02, 2009 on NBC

Set your watches:

Come Again?

WASHINGTON - Americans overwhelmingly want Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, but expectations are low that it will have much of an effect on their own finances or turn the economy around this year.

I'm struggling to reconcile this. People admit it won't help them, but they still want it? These must be registered voters (you know, those easily swayed by sound-bites and blind to trivial things like facts, math, or economics).

About two-thirds of those surveyed predict that a package would make the nation's economy a lot or a little better. When it comes to their own family finances, however, just over half say it either would have no effect or even make things worse.

So, isn't that an admission that this is essentially a socialist bill? It may or may not help the general public, will definitely benefit government, but will make individuals' situations worse? And yet, complacency and tacit approval to run things down the crapper seem to reign the day...

Take That, Chekhov

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. — The world's most famous groundhog saw his shadow Monday morning, predicting that this already long winter will last for six more weeks.

Congressional Democrats and probably a few "Republicans" are determined not to take this lying down. An enormous "Spring Stimulus" bill, intended to "fix" this seasonal problem, is expected any moment. In addition to funding for items like heat lamps, tulip bulbs, and mandatory recalibration of all thermometers to always display 72°F, the bill includes vast provisions for "necessary investments" in free sunglasses and iPods for anyone registered to vote Democrat, art supplies for convicts, and a new law forcing anyone earning more than $50,000 per year to hand their first-born over to someone earning less.

Expert meteorologists the world over agree that the bill will likely extend winter by an additional 8-16 weeks. Future generations are expected to spend half the year in total darkness.