Obama Administration

Either/Or

Retired Spook85 Comments

A few days ago President Obama again called for Congress to eliminate federal subsidies for oil companies and said Congress could either stand with the big oil companies or with the American people.  This has been one of the hallmarks of his administration: posing either/or scenarios, which got me to thinking that it would make an interesting exercise for our regulars, particularly our conservative regulars.  You Progressives are welcome to play as well, but it’s going to mean that you’ll have to first admit that Obama and his fellow travelers are routinely engaged in divisive tactics.

Sharpen up your Google skills, and let’s see how long a list we can compile of instances where Obama or someone from his administration has said “we can either do A, or we can do B”.  Video links are preferable, but direct quotes from a reliable news source are also acceptable.

 

“Hello, Is This Thing On?”

Leo Pusateri54 Comments

Obama lifted his political skirt today as the media is now awash in how in a supposedly ‘hot mic’ unscheduled moment he told Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to pretty much ‘chill out’ and that he’d have much more ‘flexibility’ after winning his second term.

The main question to ask here, of course, is “Flexibility to do what?”

Well, perhaps candidate Obama can give us some clues:

In the full video, then-candidate Obama later stated that he is fully committed to the policy as outlined above, and that he will “keep (his) promises.”

But before you go dismissing out of hand the notion that Barack Obama keeps any of his promises, consider this:

Obama promised that health care ‘reform’ will pass; it did so, even though via the auspices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, we indeed did not find out what was in the bill until it was passed.

During the campaign, then-candidate Obama also promised that under his policies, the cost of electricity/energy will “necessarily skyrocket.”

That too, has become reality.

There are some promises, of course, that Obama chose not to keep; and one could argue never intended to keep. One was that you’d be able to keep your doctor and your health plan under Obamacare; another that the public would never be forced to pay for an abortion under Obamacare; you know, lipstick-on-a-pig type stuff.

But make no mistake. Obama is a dyed in the wool socialist. Any promise he has made that will serve to further his neo-socialist agenda, and in the process compromise America’s economic and military security (remember, America is arrogant and needs to be taken down a few notches), you can bet your bottom dollar (that is, if you have any dollars left when he’s done with the economy) he will keep.

So, sleep peacefully under Obama’s second term, knowing that he fully intends to bring the United States into the community of feckless, neutered, third-world nations.

How’s that hopenchange working for you, anyway?

obAMATEUR Continues His LIE – He Is Responsible For Increased Drilling

tiredoflibbs76 Comments

obAMATEUR stepped up his rhetoric on oil production and gas prices. Rightly or wrongly, the American people are blaming Obama for the cost of their latest fill-up. So obAMATEUR’s solution? Mislead the American people and pepper them with over-the-top rhetoric. For example, yesterday he tried to emphasize his (non-existent) drilling record: “So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. We’re drilling all over this country. There are a few spots we’re not drilling. We’re not drilling in the national mall. We’re not drilling at your house.”

Clever. But unfortunately those are not the FACTS. Just last weekend, Obama addressed the nation and stated that “[u]nder my Administration, oil production in America is at an eight-year high. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs, and opened up millions of acres for drilling.”

Once again, let’s dispel these myths. (Myths, hell. They’re LIES.)

Oil production is at an eight-year high?

The US Energy Information Administration has finally put this one to bed. After looking at data from 2003 to 2011, production on federal lands under obAMATEUR was lower than all but one year of the Bush administration, and it hit rock-bottom in 2011. In fact, production alone dropped by 6% from 2010-2011 to its lowest level in nine years.

We’ve quadrupled the number of oil rigs?

I guess it is easy to claim that you’ve increased something, when you literally put a halt to it early in your administration. In 2010, after the BP oil spill, take a look at this gimmick pulled by the obAMATEUR administration … from the Institute of Energy Research, “The obAMATEUR administration would like you to think that major strides have been taken to increase drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But, that is hardly the case. The administration has been touting the four drilling permits it has issued, but in reality, but these are not new permits—they have only reissued four permits that it suspended last year.” Also remember that the obAMATEUR administration held just one offshore lease sale in all of fiscal year 2011. President Bush’s energy plan called for five.

We’ve opened up millions of acres for drilling …

Under “the one we have been waiting for”, the federal government has leased less than half of the offshore acres that President Clinton did. In 2010 the federal government issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984. Our Dear Ruler is also blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

You are being LIED to and you drones just suck it up like ambrosia.

While Bush was President, the Democrats (and their willing propagandists in the media) never failed to bludgeon him with the full blame for rising gas prices.  Pelosi (and her mindless regurgitating drones) maintained that it was the “Two Oil Men in the White House”.  Now that they are in charge and their “man” is in the White House the LIES and the EXCUSES fly – “the President has no direct control of the oil/gasoline market”.  But as I said, Bush was totally responsible, while their “leader”, who has no tangible and realistic energy policy, is completely blameless.  The libs favorite talking point is that it will be a decade before drilling can have an impact and in the same breath, their “green and renewable” energy is a viable solution all of which is more than a decade away from fruition.

Again, you are being LIED to drones, why to you regurgitate the dumbed down talking points?  In your case, ignorance is definitely BLISS.

Hat tip: Neal Boortz

Thou Shalt Not Have Strange gods…

Leo Pusateri76 Comments

Eleven million taxpayer-funded dollars.  Supposedly to help 400 people in Detroit find jobs.  Even if every one of those 4o0 people found a job, that would be $27,500 in taxpayer money spent, per job.  Ludicrous enough, no?

Well, what if only TWO (2) of those 400 people found jobs?

A chunk of an $11 million stimulus grant meant to provide low-income Detroit residents with clothing for job interviews reportedly aided just two people — far short of the 400 job-seekers the money was meant to help.

The findings were part of a new audit on the city’s Department of Human Services, according to The Detroit News.

That, my friends, comes to a cost of $5.5 MILLION dollars.  Per job.  Nice return on investment there, Barry.
Fast forward to yesterday (emphases added):

In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline.The White House victory came after the president started personally calling Democratic senators Wednesday night. The vote underscored the extent to which rising gas prices and energy supply have become a central political issue.

So, to Barack Obama, a stimulus program that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions, and which is a failure by any clear-thinking person’s standards is hailed as a success; while killing a program that creates at least 25,000 jobs, all without a dime of taxpayer money, is somehow considered a ‘victory.’

To Barack Hussein Obama, nothing can be successful; nothing can be true and real unless it is a direct machination of government. No matter how big the failure a government program is, it is still a success, because to a statist like Obama, nothing is possible, nothing is real unless it has its underpinnings in government.

To Obama, Government is reality. The government is the source of all that is good and just in the world.  The private sector is what is contrived. To Obama, the private sector is an anomaly; an abomination that must be controlled so as not to infringe upon the government’s influence in people’s lives. The god of Government is a jealous god. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before it.  Even religion itself takes a back seat to Obama’s real religion.

(image credit here)

After all, in order to appease the god of Government and to gain its good graces, one must certainly give alms:

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

….

Obama has appointed 59 ambassadors who were not career Foreign Service officers, and of those, 40 percent were bundlers.

Welcome to the church of Obama.

God help its heretics.

On Dalliances With The Devil…

Leo Pusateri49 Comments

It seems that the White House is now dictating what Catholic Doctrine really means…and Cardinal Dolan isn’t liking it:

The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.

Welcome to the almighty church of Obama… Mr. Hussein, presiding.

They told the Church what to do in Maoist China… Communist Russia, Cuba… and even killed those who wouldn’t comply and staffed churches with their ‘state approved’ clergy. Obama is a Marxist. That’s what he does. What kills me is that the liberal Catholic priests and bishops actually SUPPORTED Obama, being the useful idiots that they are, even though it was widely known that Obama would be the most pro-abortion president–ever, and that he voted THREE TIMES AGAINST the born-alive protection act. But they thought their dalliance with the devil would be worth it if they could attain their unattainable ‘social justice’ nirvana fix here on earth. The same folks who brought you “liberation theology” are the same folks who have run our seminaries for too long now; the same element of folks who tolerated pedophiles in the priesthood; the same folks who not only turned a blind-eye to Marxism but encouraged it.

Even given the above, the Catholic church acts surprised–shocked–I say– when the openly Marxist President Obama starts telling them how to run things. This is a direct result of the Catholic Church worrying too much about establishing a non-attainable ‘heaven on earth’ via ‘social justice;’ via their support of Obamacare and other neo-socialist endeavors, and not enough about what was and should continue to be their true mission– the salvation of and preparation of souls for eternal life with Christ in Heaven.

I have had contact with some ‘priests’ who during the 2008 elections knew of Obama’s pro-infanticide predilections, but chose to support him anyway because of the ‘greater good’ that would supposedly result from his proposed social programs.

It was regrettably the ‘useful-idiot’ Catholic vote that helped Barack Hussein Obama first achieve presidential power.

As a Catholic, it will be a sad day, indeed, should the Catholic vote allow Obama a second term.  It will not be a day that I left the Catholic church; rather, it will be a day that the Catholic Church left me.

The Stock Market and the Economy

Retired Spook40 Comments

A couple days ago in the Energy Open Thread, our resident progressive clown equated the stock market doubling during Obama’s term (as opposed to “tanking” at the end of Bush’s second term) to be a dynamic he wanted to see more of in a second Obama term.  I have no idea how many regulars here follow the markets closely, but I do, so I got a chuckle out of Bozo’s uninformed comment.  It also got me to thinking that the damage Obama’s and the Fed’s monetary and fiscal policies have inflicted on the average American had the makings of an interesting discussion.

In the course of my research, I ran across an op-ed from a little over a year ago that spells out in layman’s terms precisely what’s happened.

Does the United States still have a stock market?  Not really. In a real market, when there are more sellers than buyers, prices decline. And vice versa of course. That is called “price discovery”; or used to be. Since January of 2010 investors have withdrawn a net total of 81 billion dollars from U.S. stocks and funds, this week marking the 33rd consecutive week of outflows, while stock prices have staged a missile launch upward that started in mid-July.   Floyd Norris of the New York Times confirms that outflows have remained at record high levels over the last four years.  (as a side note, that outflow trajectory continued through most of 2011 as well) Some of the funds withdrawn resulted from industry insider selling, and much of that was re-invested in commodities and emerging markets. But a substantial amount, according to Charles Biderman, CEO of Trimtabs, was withdrawn by middle-class Americans to pay monthly bills.

In an unprecedented interview on CNBC, Biderman stated that the Federal Reserve is no longer denying the fact that it has been rigging U.S. markets nor is the Fed making any effort to hide it. An unrelenting and counter-intuitive rally has ensued, with stock prices gapping up at 4:00 AM night after night and never looking back. Even before the Fed initiated its POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) injections of outright treasury buys in a program euphemistically titled “Quantitative Easing 2” (a.k.a printing money out of thin air) the Fed’s daily zero percent loans of taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan were used almost exclusively to buy stocks – and then sell them again within minutes or even seconds. Investment banks use high frequency trading computers (HFTs) programmed to essentially steal money, one penny at a time, from any retail investor foolish enough to believe he could make money by trading or investing in stocks. Their computers, operating at speeds no human with a laptop could match, front-run orders, ensuring a profit on every trade. Wall Street investment banks have the right, unlike everyone else, to trade in increments of 1/1000 of a penny, allowing them to deny order fills by keeping the price 1/1000 of a penny below the bid. It is one of many questionable and even illegal practices engaged in by what the internet bears cartoons refer to as the “the Goldman Sack” and “the JP Morgue”.  The web cartoons have gone viral, as they say, and served to educate the uninitiated in the grand-theft-stock-market game being run by the Fed and the Wall Street gangs.

The writer concludes with this:

Where will the U.S. economy be when QE2 ends?   It will be where it is now, as the Fed’s money printing, while raising the costs of essential food and energy, has had no notable effect on job numbers or salaries. What it does do, with every uptick in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is increase the wealth of those who are already wealthy.

To get a mental picture of just what this current crew in power has done to our monetary base, one really has to see it in chart form.  In July, 2009, Richard Anderson, Vice President of the St. Louis Fed, had this to say about the mercurial rise in the monetary base (which has continued almost uninterrupted since):

Monetary Policy Implications of Nontraditional Programs

In several speeches, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has emphasized that nontraditional policy focuses on reducing stress in specific financial markets, that is, on credit easing. The focus is apparent in the types of securities purchased, including commercial paper, mortgage-backed securities and privately issued asset-backed securities.

Be this as it may, the programs nonetheless have greatly increased the monetary base—and portend, if not promptly reversed when economic activity revises, higher future inflation. When will confidence return to the economy, such that banks feel able to accurately assess the riskiness of loans and borrowers feel confident in their ability to repay? When confidence returns, will financial markets be roiled as the Fed reduces its assets and the monetary base? Finally, the Fed now has an additional policy instrument not previously available: the payment of interest on deposits at the Fed.5 Can it be used to forestall undesired increases in bank lending?

Recent increases in the monetary base are far greater than any previously in American history (even adjusted for the size of the economy), surely a “noble experiment” in policymaking. Will these policies be successful without accelerating inflation? The epitaph to this curious case of monetary base expansion is yet to be written.

The one truly amazing aspect of everything that’s happened in the last 3 years is that they’ve been able to keep the ball in the air as long as they have.  How much longer?  A functional crystal ball would come in real handy about now.

Can I Hear An AMEN?

Leo Pusateri57 Comments

I am a Catholic– A fallen-away Catholic, but a Catholic, to be sure. I believe in the infallible tenets of the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, Transubstantiation, and other Church doctrine; but I could no longer abide the turn for the worse in these past four decades in how the middle-heirarchy of the Church, mainly Bishops (and errant Priests) led the Flock astray, by promoting a godless, unattainable socialist utopia on earth via the “social justice” movement. They would get in bed with anyone to make it happen, including the most pro-abortion President in the history of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. They were more than willing to walk over the corpses of dead babies if it were to achieve their godless, earthly dream–

And then I saw this article, on Red State this morning, and I said AMEN!!! Someone gets it and isn’t afraid to excoriate the Bishops who have led their flock astray–

These are just a few of the paragraphs– I encourage everyone to read the whole enchilada– this NEEDS to be said to save the Catholic Church!

Quote:
Back when there was a New Ledger, I wrote a now long-forgotten piece excoriating the Bishops in this country for complicity in its passage, for not speaking up, for not excommunicating the public officials who actively fight for the abortion license despite the infallible teachings of our Church — and by extension, for enabling a culture of license that enables the Culture of Death. (Piece stolen here; TNL no longer publishes essays.)I stand by every word, and would like to add a few things. Let me start with the most basic one.

You can all, each of you, and I say this after a week of prayerful meditation and with all of the respect I can give, go straight to the darkest pit in the lowest valley of the Ninth Layer of Hell and burn there.

It was easy to sell out the unborn, wasn’t it? To just wish away an infallible teaching that — let’s be honest — has been such a headache since a Catholic Supreme Court Justice helped its mass breaking, and Catholic Democrats abandoned everything else to protect that breach, right? To let others commit a sin that our Church treats as so grave that it incurs the automatic sanction of excommunication? All in return for a goal you’ve shared with your Democrat masters since the 1940s — a chance to drive healthcare costs through the roof with the fig leaf of social caring. All so you could work with the sorts of people who are elected to office by publicly calling you theocrats and misogynists for more-or-less upholding the two-thousand-year-old Tradition of our Church.

Thirty pieces of silver must buy one Hell of a lot more for you than it does for me.

Who among you has stepped forward to say, Whoops! Or, We are infallible on matters of faith expressed through the Tradition or through an ecumenical Council, but we can err on policy, and hoo-boy, did we blow this one. Who among you spoke out last week and said, Attention my flock: I must now inform you that the Democratic Party has proven once and for all that if you vote for a Democrat in this country, you engage in material cooperation with evil. We will now be holding weekly mass Confession to handle the backlog until it clears.

Because that is truth. In 2009 and 2010, nominally faithful Catholics who value all of the policy choices you do — labor unions, forced charity, high rates of taxation, urban ghettoes, and of course, universal “health care” — and who claimed to be ardent defenders of the unborn sold out to a one, sacrificed millions of babies and betrayed the infallible teaching of their faith so they could get one gigantic step closer to the social justice you so crave.

And for that, for that moment when they put aside their baptismal and confirmation vows, repeated every Easter, and their recitation of whatever version of the Nicene Creed you’ve settled on this week, your response was … applause. Silence. Satisfaction. A professed willingness to work with the Administration.

You made all of this possible. For almost my entire life, you have given my fellow Catholics every reason to believe they can freely sin, and hey, no problem, so long as they favor higher taxation and government spending. They can murder the unborn, and I have had all of two homilies, two, in my entire time as a Catholic, which is to say from birth and for the thirty-five years after, in parishes and dioceses across the country, in which a priest has said, If you have had, caused, or aided in obtaining an abortion, and you take communion today, you will go to Hell. You look out into your emptying pews, terrified of the wood you see and the flesh you don’t, through families of one, two, or sometimes amazingly three children, and think, Well, at least they’re still coming, as if you do not understand the connection between these things.

This–the ENTIRE ARTICLE– is what should be read from EVERY pulpit this Sunday!

Artist Depicts obAMATEUR Trampling the Constitution

tiredoflibbs37 Comments

obAMATEUR Tramples the Consitution

Discuss, have at it.

Let’s see, for example …. just recently Barak Hussein Obama ignored the religious freedom and “practice thereof” (1st Amendment for you products of government schools) of millions of Americans by FORCING them to disregard their religious beliefs, through the actions of the Dept of HHS regulations by not extending an exemption, and to provide insurance which covers contraceptive medications and other procedures by Catholic business owners, Catholic hospitals, etc. etc.

Also notice that it does not take effect until after the election, since he is too much of a coward to defend his position during an election year.

Of course the usual liberal and drone reaction (especially wally’s) will be:

 Here is a little reminder for us conservatives when trying to argue with drones (like wally):

Well, what do you know…….another failed promise!

tiredoflibbs83 Comments

If you will recall, the obAMATEUR promised in 2009 that he would “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.”

How has he lived up to that promise?

Not only has he broken that promise, but he has crushed it.  For the first three years of the obAMATEUR’s presidency, he increased our deficit by over $1 trillion every year: $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010 and $1.3 trillion in 2011. The CBO has recently crunched some numbers and it looks like the obAMATEUR is on track to have another banner year of $1 trillion+ deficits.  The CBO predicts that the deficit will rise $1.08 trillion in 2012.

To put all of this into perspective, the largest deficit that our country had ever run before 2008 was $458 billion (and the liberal looters and their obedient drones whined about “saddling our children and grand-children with debt” and obAMATEUR called this “UNPATRIOTIC!”).  Thus, even though obAMATEUR’s deficit for 2012 is projected to be the lowest of his administration, don’t be fooled.  It will be, by far, the largest deficit ever recorded between 1947 and 2008.

What’s the result of this big-government spending?  The CBO estimates that the jobless rate will rise to 8.9% by the end of 2012 and to 9.3% in 2013.

Now the leftist mindless drones will, of course, chime in with “it’s Bush’s fault” and the “he inherited the economy” dumbed down talking points.  But this pResident raised baseline budgeting by almost 25% in his first two years.  This increase had nothing to do with the stimulus, the “venture capitalist” failed spending or his other schemes like “cash for clunkers”, etc. etc. The baseline spending increases had nothing to do with Bush or the “economy he inherited”.  He is a tax and spend liberal! – plain and simple.  Now before you drones get your panties in a wad about the tax part of the previous statement.  This pResident has increased taxes on every income group in this country (alcohol and tobacco taxes, taxes to finance his health-care plan, etc. etc.).  Plus, the CBO says taxes are going to go up as a result of this pResident’s policies.  And he is a “spend-thrift” liberal, he has outspent and accumulated more debt than all Presidents from Washington thru Clinton COMBINED.

By his own words, the obAMATEUR is the most UNPATRIOTIC pResident in history!!!

More on tax fairness

Retired Spook120 Comments

Tiredoflibs beat me to this topic in the previous post, but I’d like to expand on the issue of tax fairness.  Anyone who has been listening to the radio or watching any news show on TV is aware of the Left’s latest class warfare tactic.  In the last couple days we’ve heard Lefties from Al Sharpton to network news anchors ask the question, “is it fair for millionaires to pay less than Warren Buffet’s secretary who, like most average Americans pays 30% in income taxes?”  When Reverend Al asked Congressman Tim Huelskamp that question on Sharpton’s MSNBC show, the Rev simply wouldn’t accept the Congressman’s answer that his premise wasn’t true.  Talk about comedy gold.  And what’s even more pathetic is that Sharpton is delinquent on almost as much in federal taxes as Romney paid.  How is that FAIR, Al?

A little research completely refutes this new Leftist assertion that the average American pays an effective federal tax rate of 30%.  In fact, according to the IRS’ own data, 97% of Americans pay an effective federal rate of less than 13%.  And, what’s even more interesting about the IRS charts that NewsBusters links to are the demographics of “the wealthy”.  The charts show that there were (as of 2009) 235,413 Americans who had adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more who paid $177.5 billion in income taxes on taxable income of $623.538 billion.  So if we increase the tax rate on those “rich” back to the 39.6% Clinton era top marginal rate that so many of our resident Progressives have called for, it would raise an additional $23.3 billion (and that’s assuming 100% compliance) a year in federal revenue — enough to run the federal government for about 2 days.  That’s barely a rounding error, but I guess it would be fair — right?  No?  OK, how about if we DOUBLE the top marginal rate on those making over $1 million.  That would raise an amount equal to about 17.6% of the current deficit or enough to run the government for about 18 days.  I think what’s FAIR is to say that we have a SPENDING problem, not a TAXING problem.

Folks, it’s time to take the gloves off — call a spade a spade and a liar a liar.