And it really is shocking – after the flood o’fibs over the past two years that they’ve actually worked up the gumption to call him on it – from SF Gate:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle’s report is accurate.

If the White House has indeed decided not to ban our reporter, we would like an on-the-record notice that she will remain the San Francisco print pool reporter.

Figures, though, that the first time they do call the White House out on a lie it is because a reporter is involved…still nothing about the other lies, such as Obama’s assertion that his economic stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%. But, one step at a time…

From Zero Hedge:

…the real threat of inflation is not the current printing of money which Bernanke et al have been doing. It is the previous printing of money which has been taken out of circulation (by being held in foreign central banks as a reserve currency). The threat is as great as its ever been. The amount of money in foreign reserves is about one third or more of M2, or every dollar which is held by US bank account(s) (business or retail), and all currency combined.

There are signs that this dollar regime will be ending. The cracks have been apparent for some time, but we just blew a big hole in the US Dollar dam. This week, China has announced that they will reduce their US dollar holdings by more than 1.7 Trillion Dollars…

The really scary part of this is that we’re already getting some pretty hefty inflation while a vast amount of US dollars are held out of circulation in foreign banks – given this, the prospect of those foreign banks dumping their dollars on to the global economy is a bit frightening.

One thing to be pointed out here – I don’t think the “dollar regime” is ending. The United States economy, in real terms, is so gigantic and trade with the United States such a massive part of overall global trade that the world can’t make any other currency the reserve currency of the world. You’d have to find an economy as large as ours which carries on was much trade – especially import trade – as we do. The European Union made a bid for this with the Euro and we can see how that worked out. Sure, some international transactions are in Euros rather than dollars, but they are probably just the transaction which used to occur in marks, francs and lira. As long as we’re the big boy on the economic block – and we will be for a very long time, even if we don’t get our act together; don’t believe BS stories that China will over-take us in 2016; 2116, if they’re lucky and we’re stupid, but no sooner than that – the dollar will retain its place at the pinnacle of global currencies

But this does not mean we can’t have a lot of trouble. And I think we’ll be lucky to have only 8% inflation per year over the next three years. Foreign governments will be dumping US dollars – partially out of worry about the dollar’s value but mostly because they need to spend money in their own economies…China to try and keep growth going as the bubble bursts, Japan to rebuild from the quake/tsunami, Europe to try and bail out the PIIGS…etc, etc, etc. The bottom line is there are far too many US dollars out there right now and the sides will have to balance…either we’ll have to massively cut the amount of US currency, or prices will have to inflate until items of real value are correctly priced in dollar terms. The really bad news for us is that with our economy soft (and perhaps heading right back in to recession), our wages will remain flat while the dollar cost of everything we buy will go up.

This is what comes from trying to use fake money and borrowing to run your government and economy. Only the production of tangible items of value creates wealth, and only careful savings out of the surplus can provide funds for investment. There really is no free lunch…but we here in the United States are trying to have our third free dessert long after the free lunch is gone. It will all have to be paid for – and hopefully our ultimate wages from all this will be a bit more wisdom, and a return to hard work, sobriety and thrift as the hallmarks of our economy.

UPDATE: Back in 2008, and Obamaton opined that she was voting for The One because she didn’t like paying $4 for a gallon of gas…

From Reuters:

Security forces killed more than 60 people across Syria on Friday during demonstrations demanding the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, and the United States imposed new sanctions on key figures…

Sanctions won’t really do anything – there isn’t a lot of trade between the United States and Syria, so US sanctions will have a minimal effect on Syria’s behavior. Meanwhile, it appears that Syria’s security forces are at least back-stopped by non-Syrians and so the government has an armed force willing to use quite brutal measures against Syrians…as has been demonstrated by the on-going massacre. I’m afraid that only force will do…unless the Syrians can get on top of this, themselves.

Pity they aren’t the right kind of civilians…if they were Libyan, we’d be all over this…for at least a week or two.

From DaTechGuy:

That’s my translation of this Think Progress piece.

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

I guess Think Progress and those who commented on that story think Mother Nature made sure those GOP voters got what they deserved…

And, at any rate, they are just dead bitter-clingers, right?

It is a very revealing look in to the mind of liberals…everything is political to them. There is no aspect of life they won’t relate to politics and then go on to see if they can wring some advantage out of it. We saw this when Giffords was shot, we’re seeing it with the tornado disaster. Keep that in mind whenever someone says “truce” with the left…

WARNING: NSFW VIDEO

Yes, very crude. Certainly, he shouldn’t have said it. But, seriously, you want a President with that sort of attitude, don’t you?

From NRO’s The Corner:

…Tamar Jacoby, head of the open-borders business lobby ImmigrationWorks USA, revealed at a conference yesterday the strategy that succeeded in a number of states. As related to me by Jerry Kammer, who was at the event:

Here’s a quote from Jacoby’s comments yesterday that I mentioned to you. Her main point was that business is becoming increasingly mobilized, though many still prefer not to be out front and have their names in the paper. She said business has done a good job of pointing out the damage SB1070 has done to Arizona’s economy and leveraging that concern to defeat E-Verify. She said the principal business strategy against E-Verify has been “to get the public so concerned about 1070 that the states retreated totally. It hasn’t worked everywhere, but that has been the main way that things have worked this year.”

In other words, her comrades lobbying the state legislators used SB1070, and the reaction to it, as a bogeyman to kill E-Verify mandates…

And killing E-Verify allows those corporations who do wish to use low-paid, servile, illegal labor to continue to do so. Thank you, liberals – because you went ballistic over the provisions of 1070 which are just a re-statement of 80 year old federal law, you’ve managed to ensure that illegals continue to be exploited and, of course, that Americans have their wages pressured downwards by competition with illegal labor. I guess it is too much to ask you guys to think before you react, next time…getting liberals to think, at all, is an impossible dream.

But this is actually an old story – how the leftist base is continually mobilized allegedly to serve the interests of the people when they are actually serving the interests of an entrenched government and corporate Ruling Class. All of those safety and environmental regulations? They make it harder for a small, new company to break in to the market place. All those regulations regarding business licenses? Makes it harder for a one-man company to operate. All those environmental restrictions on land use? Ensures that those developers who already own land can charge a premium for building homes on it. And on and on and on.

Basic health and safety can be ensured by a few, inexpensive regulations. But if you’re trying to control the market place and ensure that only a few, favored companies dominate it, then you erect a host of regulations and taxes which can only be navigated by corporations with legal departments and lobbyists. And the best way to get that morass of regulation is to keep ginning up scares in the public so that action is demanded…with the actions always working out to a restraint of trade against new comers to the market. It was not for nothing that the Founders wrote “Congress shall make no law” in our Constitution…knowing, as they did, the depths of chicanery possible among men, the best defense was simply to prohibit the government from doing things. We have to get back to that.

A free market, you see, isn’t just a place where GM is free to compete with Ford…it is only free when Fred down the street can start making a car and trying to sell it. It must be possible for any one to enter the market any time they like, or it isn’t a truly free market. And if we do have a free market, then we will get what we want – because there will be a host of bright, energetic people looking to make a buck by satisfying desires. We won’t be forever waiting on some monster of a corporation to get a taxpayer subsidy to provide us what some bureaucrat in DC thinks we should have.

Freedom under law should be our goal – the freedom to do as we wish within strict limits imposed by few and easily understandable laws. What we’ve got right now is an inability to do what we wish, while the laws are so complex that no one really knows where they are, and thus things like the mass employment of illegal labor goes on unchecked on one hand, while an honest, law-abiding citizen can get tied in knots if he so much as makes a mistake on his tax return. We need to return to a system where everyone can know what the law is, and all those who violate the law are swiftly punished. We need, in short, an America where illegals cannot come, but the newest legal immigrant just over from Mexico is able to do any economic activity he wants without let or hindrance from another. Its the difference between some jerk of an employer firing Americans to hire low wage illegals and a legal immigrant coming to America to start a construction company. Which do you really want?

From Gallup:

More than half of Americans (55%) describe the U.S. economy as being in a recession or depression, even as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reports that “the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace.” Another 16% of Americans say the economy is “slowing down,” and 27% believe it is growing…

The government can put out all the (carefully engineered) statistics it wants and the FOMC can put out all the happy talk in the world, but the American people feel the economy every day – and with wages flat or down, unemployment still high, housing prices still collapsing and gas and food prices rising, not too many of us are feeling confident in this “recovery”.

Our Ruling Class is still talking up how the “wealth effect” of rising stock prices will make us all feel better and start spending – forgetting that in real terms, stock prices are no higher than they were a year and a half ago. We’re not fooled – sure the DOW is racing towards 13,000, but gold is above $1,530.00 an ounce. We know our money is being eaten away because we can see it day by day at the gas pump, among many other places.

The key to recovery is to start creating wealth – and that means (here goes Noonan’s broken record, again) we have to start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff. Meanwhile, Obama is keeping with the “green energy” tomfoolery while bags of money are passed out to special interests who produce little or nothing of value. We need to drill for oil, mine coal, build nuclear power plants and oil refineries; we need to open up more farm and ranch land; we need to start making the mundane things of modern life – not outsource them to China where slave labor can do a bad job making the consumer goods we buy.

It really is just a matter of vision – Obama has never worked at a productive enterprise and thus doesn’t know what one is. To him, money is made by gaming the system and raking it in, one way or another, via government action. He doesn’t understand that the fairy tale life he leads is ultimately based upon people doing hard, grubby work…and if that work doesn’t get done, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Our economy needs to be geared towards the needs of the producers but is, instead, geared towards the need of Big Government and Big Corporation leeches.

2012 really can’t get here fast enough…

Obama and his Administration have implied that the Mexican drug gangs are largely being armed by legal, American gun dealers within the United States. But the truth seems to be that it is our own, butterfingered government which is providing the weapons. From Fox News:

…According to leaked diplomatic cables, there are three sources (for the drug gang weapons).

1. U.S. Defense Department shipments to Latin America, known and tracked by the U.S. State Department as “foreign military sales.”

2. Weapons ordered by the Mexican government, tracked by the State Department as “direct commercial sales.”

3. Aging, but plentiful arsenals of military weapon stores in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Even though these facts were well-known by the Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, it blamed much of the violence in Mexico on U.S. gun stores.

“More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border,” President Obama said in February 2009…

To be sure, this problem pre-dates the Obama Administration, but it is an outrage that Obama essentially tried to blame law-abiding, American gun dealers for the incompetence of the US government and the corruption of the Mexican government. The article goes on to note how we’re selling weapons to the the Mexican government and corrupt government officials are transferring them to the criminals…and I’ll bet that Mexican weapons orders are placed by the corrupt officials with a mind towards selling them on to the drug gangs. Its a fat business – and as long as the US government is being stupid, might as well keep it up, right?

Mexico’s problems are always America’s problems – uncomfortable as we have been together, there are just too many ties between us for us to pretend we can ignore what goes on there. The violence of Mexico is already spilling over to our side of the border and it will get worse unless we both secure our border and figure out a way to provide aid to Mexico in exterminating the drug gangs. One thing we can’t afford is to just keep on as we are – remember, those arms being sold to the drug gangs can just as easily be sold to terrorists planning to kill Americans. This must be stopped and stopped right away. And that means Obama will have to stop lying about it and stop blaming honest Americans for the crimes of others. It is time to treat this as the serious, national security threat that it is.

Just can’t get it out of his system, I guess; he simply must find the worst anti-human tyranny in the world and then say we’re being the bad guys – from Hot Air:

Via Greg Hengler, why would an American cap a three-day visit to Kim Jong-Il’s national gulag by accusing the U.S. of human rights violations? Well, much like Superman, Carter’s more a “citizen of the world” now than part of the country he used to lead. In fact, he wasn’t there on behalf of the State Department but as part of a delegation from “The Elders,” an elite team of ex-statesmen who travel the world sharing the sort of wisdom that’s made “Jimmy Carter” synonymous with successful foreign policy ideas here at home…

The crux of Carter’s argument seems to be that if a horrific dictatorship is starving its own people, the United States is at fault. This is the same logic used by Carter to usher the Mullahs in to Tehran. Either that, or Carter is still smarting over the fact that we kicked him out in 1980 and this is his on-going revenge.

The disaster just gets worse as more is known – from the AP:

Firefighters searched one splintered pile after another for survivors Thursday, combing the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation’s deadliest tornado outbreak in almost four decades. At least 290 people were killed across six states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where large cities bore the half-mile-wide scars the twisters left behind…

You can donate at the Red Cross here; Catholic Charities here; please add any links to other charities you know in the comments. Time to come together, again, as a nation – our brothers and sisters are suffering.

May God receive those who have died, comfort those who have lost, strengthen those rushing to help. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.