Obama just seems to hate everything…

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

Kind of ironic, given that Obama last year was unable to give up his Blackberry.

It must still be a big diversion for him, as he apparently is playing on Blackberry more than he is paying attention to the economy, or national security threats.

Yeah, smart people have been saying this for over a year.

President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law will increase the nation’s health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation.

A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama’s aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, however, since the report also warned that Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, forcing lawmakers to roll them back.

The mixed verdict for Obama’s signature issue is the first comprehensive look by neutral experts.

In particular, the warnings about Medicare could become a major political liability for Democratic lawmakers in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, “possibly jeopardizing access” to care for seniors.

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!

The man sells out his own values, and apparently has no ability to defend his action and is now taking the easy way out.

Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the congressman who led anti-abortion rights Democrats in the House during health care negotiations, will retire this year, CBS News has learned. He is expected to announce his plans later this morning.

Had Stupak sought re-election, he would have faced challengers from both the left and the right backed by interest groups angered by Stupak’s health care vote.

Stupak negotiated with Democratic leaders down to the eleventh hour for stricter abortion language in the health care bill, but he ultimately voted for it after President Obama agreed to sign an executive order assuring the new laws will keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.

Amazing.

Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.

“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

Ahh, the true spirit of America: everyone wants something for free.  Just think about what will happen when all these people start getting their “free” health care… Not sure what it will look like? Just look at our neighbors to the north. You can expect long waits for crappy care. It’s only going to get worse.

Sometimes, you just have to wonder whether Obama is stupid, or just wants to make America weak.

President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

This is unbelievable. Obama is saying that America will not do whatever it takes to defend itself. And we’re supposed to call this moron Commander-in-Chief. He’s practically inviting our enemies (including al Qaeda) to attack us by giving them the heads up that any attack will not be met with an proportionate response. Whatever happened to peace through strength? if our enemies don’t see us as strong that makes us more vulnerable. So, thanks Obama, you made America less safe.

Obama this afternoon.

President Bush back in 2001.

Some pitches are high and outside. Others are perfect strikes that lift a nation.

Not only has Obama made no plans to visit  Rhode Island, but his FEMA director isn’t visiting either.

Speaking to a Democratic fundraiser in Boston, President Barack Obama corrected himself, acknowledging that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), schedule to be in Orlando, would not be going to flood-ravaged Rhode Island.

“And tomorrow, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FEMA director — FEMA Deputy Administrator Rich Serino, who is a Boston native, by the way — will be visiting Rhode Island to tour some of the hardest hit areas and make sure that we are doing everything we can,” the president told the crowd at the Democratic National Committee fundraising event in Boston

So, the FEMA director is in sunny Florida, and Obama  is, raising money for his party, I guess Rhode Island isn’t a big priority for him

While many out there might look at Google as an unstoppable giant and cringe at the thought of their growing empire, I have to say I have mostly held a generally positive (but only slightly above neutral) view of Google. The search engine is my standard. I use Gmail, Analytics,  and several other tools they offer for free. Good stuff right? Well, recent events have had me question a few things about Google.

Yes, I know that the people in charge are liberal and probably donate to liberal causes and all that, but you know, they are free to do that. I drink Starbucks Coffee and support the company regardless of the company’s political leanings. I would have a problem however, if Starbucks treated me differently on political grounds. Anytime I go in, I expect the same treatment, service and available products as anyone else who goes in, and expect to pay the same price for given product as anyone else. Any other treatment would be discriminatory.  Can we agree on that?

There is, of course the issue of search neutrality. I’ll direct you to a blog post by Melissa Clouthier, I have another angle to approach.

A few weeks ago, my co-blogger here, Mark Noonan, told me that his personal site Noonan for Nevada was unexpectedly dropped from Google’s Adsense program. This, if you do not know is a program that allow blog publishers like us to put contextual ads on our blogs in the hopes that we can generate some revenue.We don’t expect a huge amount of money out of it… Enough to cover the cost of hosting would satisfy me. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to tell him. He never violated their terms of service… what explanation was there. I had no idea.

Well, a mere two days later, I found that my Google Adsense account was also suspended. Herre’s the email I received:

Hello,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

It is worth noting that while you can “appeal” the decision, Google maintain some secrecy on their methods of determining questionable activity. From the link they provided is the following information:

Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we’re unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved.

As you may know, Google treats invalid click activity very seriously, analyzing all clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings. If we determine that an AdSense account may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account to protect our advertisers’ interests.

Lastly, please note that as outlined in our Terms and Conditions, Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity.

I appealed the decision. About three hours later I got a response that my appeal was denied.

Well, that means I am down with Google Adsense. Yet, I have no idea what caused the problem, and thus no ability to determine the cause.

While I am sure that this happens regularly with sites all the time, the fact that Mark and I each got booted in a matter of days suggests to me that that our being booted off of Google’s Adsense program was not random. This can mean a few things, including someone who goes on both NoonanForNevada.com and BlogsForVictory.com deliberated created the appearance of invalid click activity, or Google is systematically dropping conservative sites from its Adsense program.

Prior to being dropped from the Adsense program, I did receive a check (for a sum larger than $100)  … Shortly after the check was deposited my bank sent it back, the money was taken out of my account, and a small fee charged to my from my bank. Great huh? Payment for a period prior to the alleged invalid activity was cancelled, despite my inability to get any information to explain the problems that lead to my removal from the program.

I would like to get back on the Google Adsense progam, but unfortunately I have no recourse at this point. I made one and only allowed appeal. All I can do is write about the situation, and maybe a pattern of this behavior from Google will surface, and we can get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, based on the circumstances surrounding this situation, the simplest conclusion to make is that there is some anti-conservative bias at Google.

Picture are indeed worth a thousand words.

President Obama made his first trip as chief executive to Afghanistan over the weekend to, among other things, visit troops close to Kabul. He spoke to them at Bagram Airfield and we had the full text right here.

The White House released this picture by official White House photographer Pete Souza, showing the president shaking hands and grabbing a soldier’s finger, and the troops’ reactions.

The picture below was taken by official White House photographer Eric Draper of another president, George W. Bush, visiting U.S. troops in South Korea and their reactions.

I think anyone serving in the military abroad would appreciate a visit from President Bush more than a visit from Barack Obama. The difference in the reactions is very telling. This is hardly the first time we’ve seen such a difference in reaction… I’ve seen past video showing different troops reactions, and they tell the same story.

When Bush made recess appointments to three “controversial” nominees in 2007, Democrats went ballistic. Senator John Kerry called it “abuse the power of the presidency.” Senator Chris Dodd said it was “an abuse of executive authority.” Senator Joe Lieberman said recess appointments “show disrespect” to the Senate.

When Bush used his authority to appoint John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, Senator Harry Reid said Bush “abused a presidential power,

When Bush used a recess appointment to put William Pryor on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004, Senator Charles Schumer was highly critical:

“The president is on shaky ground with the hard right and is using this questionably legal and politically shabby technique to bolster himself. Regularly circumventing the advise and consent process is not the way to change the tone in Washington. The only solace we have is that Mr. Pryor will be off the bench in 10 months.”

Yet, that didn’t stop Obama from making 15 recess appointments, including the highly controversial Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Where’s the outrage from Democrats? Oh right… there isn’t any! No accusations of abuse of power. Nothing.

Just thought I’d point that out.