Its not getting better out there:
Regulators have shut small banks in Georgia and Michigan, bringing the number of bank failures this year to 117 amid the struggling economy and a cascade of defaults on loans.
But the stock market is higher and the banks are making great profits! Ummm…is this really what you liberals voted for?
Some more hopeychange:
All of those twentysomethings who voted for Barack Obama last year are about to experience the change they haven’t been waiting for: the return of income tax bracket creep. Buried in Nancy Pelosi’s health-care bill is a provision that will partially repeal tax indexing for inflation, meaning that as their earnings rise over a lifetime these youngsters can look forward to paying higher rates even if their income gains aren’t real.
In order to raise enough money to make their plan look like it won’t add to the deficit, House Democrats have deliberately not indexed two main tax features of their plan: the $500,000 threshold for the 5.4-percentage-point income tax surcharge; and the payroll level at which small businesses must pay a new 8% tax penalty for not offering health insurance.
This is a sneaky way for politicians to pry more money out of workers every year without having to legislate tax increases. The negative effects of failing to index compound over time, yielding a revenue windfall for government as the years go on. The House tax surcharge is estimated to raise $460.5 billion over 10 years, but only $30.9 billion in 2011, rising to $68.4 billion in 2019, according to the Joint Tax Committee.
This is just another way for liberal Democrats to steal more of our money without the inconvenience of having us know they’re doing it. Never underestimate the rank dishonesty of a liberal politician – remember, Obama ran as a centrist – they will lie, right to your face and while you know they’re lying, if they think they can get away with it. This is what comes from having people who don’t believe in absolute right and wrong – if you don’t hold to such a thing, then there’s nothing wrong, and so lying to advance your cause is just cleverness…and a way to beat down those fools who believe that lying is wrong. Pelosi and Obama have said that their health care experiment will not cost any additional money. That is a lie, and they know its a lie – and so they are restoring to scams like this to plug the gap.
It really is “welcome back, Carter”. 28 years after Ronald Reagan saved us from a second Carter term, the people who were young, liberal zealots at the time (and Obama was one of them, though not in any official position at the time) are determined that Carter’s plans be carried out. How else can we explain the kowtowing to enemies, the insults to friends, the massive new spending, the crushing tax increases pending and, now, this back door way to pick our pockets? Heck, now that Daniel Ortega is setting himself up as re-dictator of Nicaragua, Obama will even leave his successor a Sandinista tyranny, just like Carter did. All we need are the really bad clothes and a revival of disco and our misery will be complete.
Hmmm…
Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is out as keynote speaker for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party’s annual fund-raising dinner next week because party leaders dislike her stance on health care reform, county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel said today.
Landrieu, a moderate who recently described herself as “extremely concerned about a government-run, taxpayer-funded, national public plan,” has not committed to voting to cut off a likely Republican filibuster and forcing a vote on the legislation.
Democrats need 60 votes to invoke “cloture” and force a vote.
“We just didn’t want to have a keynote speaker who’s not committed to cloture. It would have just been wrong,” said Siegel…
Well, Senator, you can always join Lieberman as an Independent.
It has just been announced that the unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent.
Can anyone here tell me how many jobs “saved or created” that comes to?
Can anyone here tell me why the White House still thinks the stimulus was a success?
Anyone? Anyone?
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Is unemployment now a leading, rather than lagging, indicator? Perhaps it is, in the new, global economy.
UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan: Remember this, liberals?
On the eve of Friday’s jobs report that could see the unemployment rate reach 10%, these are words that the president’s speechwriters probably wish they could rephrase.
“Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American Dream slipping further and further out of reach.”
President-elect Barack Obama, Weekly Address, Jan. 3, 2009.
Well, we did exactly what you and your dimwitted, liberal leaders wanted – and it failed. Admit it. Now, lets cut some taxes and spending and MoveOn.
And, of course, if unemployment remains in the double-digit range for the next 12 months (and it is expected to), then this will come in right handy next November.
UPDATE: Obama on the stimulus, back in February:
[…] the biggest measure of success is whether we stop contracting and shedding jobs, and we start growing again.
So, we can all agree that the stimulus was a total failure.
Krauthammer gets it very right:
…November ’08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ’09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.
The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm — deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years — because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his “New Foundation” for America — from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.
Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama’s hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt — the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters — as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.
Some rump…
The stars aligned perfectly for the Democrats in 2008 – there was not one additional thing which could have been added to give them a better advantage. And yet their vote total, while a solid win, was fairly modest. The sort of result you’d expect from two evenly matched parties who slugged it out with enthusiasm. Actually, the GOP was in terrible shape in 2008 – short on money, lacking enthusiasm, with an unexciting standard-bearer; and yet, had just a couple things gone right, McCain would be President right now.
But Obama and his Democrats choose to treat their victory as a mandate for change – and not just a mandate for any, old change, but for very ardently leftist change. This in spite of the fact that one of the prime reasons they won was because they hid their leftist agenda behind a fog of centrist rhetoric and the MSM played cover for them. They didn’t win on a leftist platform, but immediately proceeded to govern on one. The reaction we’ve seen is completely natural – the people are not leftist; never have been, never will be. We’re Americans.
Added to this and intensifying the effect has been the stunning incompetence of President Obama. I was discussing this with a friend yesterday and our hope is that Obama is a puppet…because if he’s not, then he’s just a plain and simple idiot. If Obama is lucky, hardly anyone saw that presser in the wake of the Ft Hood attack – my wife saw it live and was just disgusted by it; listening to it on the radio later I was stunned at the complete obtuseness of the man. To talk up Indians while America is in shock over mass murder is, well, just the most amazingly dumb thing imaginable. But this isn’t the first time such things have happened. I’m actually a bit worried that Obama simply will not get the hang of being President and that we’ll be stuck with a moving disaster until January of 2013.
Be that as it may, the playing field has tilted back towards the center/right. But it has not tilted back towards the GOP. The Republican party still has a long way to go to earn the trust and respect of the American people – even though the GOP is likely to score some impressive gains next year, it won’t matter much unless the people actually trust the GOP to do the right thing, once back in power. The people are in the process of taking back their government – our job, as Republicans, is to simply assist them in this task and then carry out the long-needed reforms being demanded. We do that, and we’ll route the left for good in this nation.
Remember that census worker found hanged with the word “fed” scrawled on him? Remember how our liberal friends were hinting darkly at the growth of evil, mean, wicked, racist, knuckle-dragging conservatives out to get Obama? Well, it wasn’t quite like that:
Investigators probing the death of a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest increasingly doubt he was killed because of his government job and are pursuing the possibility he committed suicide, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said no final conclusions have been made in the case. In recent weeks, however, investigators have grown more skeptical that 51-year-old Bill Sparkman died at the hands of someone angry at the federal government.
But, hey, why let something like facts get in the way of a good story?
And more power to him – after all, it was Obama (0-2 in helping Democrats win elections in 2009) who told Patterson to get out:
The governor is now taking to the air waves to convince New Yorkers he deserves to stay in office.
“What it’s geared to do is talk about his very good record over the last year, the things he’s done for the state, including closing a $35 billion budget,” said veteran political consultant Bill Lynch.
The ads are aimed at improving Paterson’s low poll numbers and sending a message to other Democrats, including President Barack Obama, that he is determined to seek another term in office.
“Once people know the things he’s done for this state they will start to look at him differently,” said Lynch.
Paterson, whose popularity currently hovers in the 20 percent range, was seriously wounded when Obama let it be known he didn’t want Paterson to run because Republicans like Rudy Giuliani consistently beat him in the polls. But Obama’s recent lack of success in backing local candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, has empowered Paterson.
The normal way to put this is “rats deserting the sinking ship”, but however else you want to characterize Patterson, “rat” isn’t it. He’s been a loyal, liberal Democrat for decades and Obama cut him off at the knees. Small wonder that Paterson has decided to ignore The One’s advice and do his own thing. Its better, in the end, to go down fighting than to surrender with out a fight. I think we’ll beat Patterson next year – but we’ll have beaten a fighter, not a mere poodle for Obama and the Democrat bosses.
Kill the Bill Rally: Gateway pundit has the details.
A terrible event – but I don’t want anyone to call it an “act of violence” or “a terrible tragedy”. It was an attack – one or more men decided with malice to attack a US military base. We need to get right down to the bottom of this – and, liberals, if the stories of accomplices in custody are true, this is where harsh interrogation might be needed: whoever was involved in this most emphatically does not have a right to remain silent.
UPDATE: AP sources: Fort Hood suspect drew attention of authorities 6 months ago for Internet posts (via Twitter)
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey describes what he calls Obama’s “My Pet Goat” moment, his address to the nation about the attack:
It took Obama almost two full minutes from the time he began speaking until he got around to mentioning the shooting at Fort Hood — the reason everyone tuned into Obama’s speech. The nation wanted some leadership at a time when it appeared that a terrorist attack may have taken place on American soil — and Obama was apparently more concerned about giving a “shout out” to his friends at the Tribal Nations Conference. Indeed, he tells the audience above that he’s been inconvenienced out of delivering his lengthier remarks because the shooting has intruded itself on his daily business.
Its like they’re just determined to be stupid and hateful:
The Vatican expressed “astonishment” and “regret” at Tuesday’s decision from the European Court of Human Rights that crucifixes in public school classrooms are a violation of freedom.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, gave a brief statement today to Vatican Radio in response to the decision.
“The crucifix has always been a sign of God’s offer of love, of union and of welcome for the whole of humanity,” the spokesman said. “It is to be regretted that it has come to be considered as a sign of division, of exclusion and of limitation of liberty. It is not this, and it is not so in the common feeling of our people.”
The Italian government protested the ruling, having contended that crucifixes — often hung in Italian public schools — are national symbol of culture and history.
Father Lombardi echoed this idea.
He called particularly grave “the desire to set aside from the educational world a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in Italian history and culture.”
The Jesuit added that “religion makes a precious contribution to a person’s formation and moral growth, and is an essential component of our civilization. It is mistaken and myopic to want to exclude it from the educational realm.”
“It is astonishing then that a European court should intervene weightily in a matter profoundly linked to the historical, cultural and spiritual identity of the Italian people,” the Vatican spokesman stated.
What’s next? Tear down the Gothic cathedrals? After all, hard to escape the Christian imagery there, ya know?
This is just more liberal/left stupidity – the sooner these cretins die out and are replaced by the residual, but growing, Christian population of Europe, the better.
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