ODS

TJIC shows his best form ripping the current President and Big Media:

So why, exactly, is this being spun as an Obama victory?

Measured as a percentage of total economic output — the gauge that economists say is most meaningful — the deficit would be 10 percent of gross domestic product… well below the records set during World War II.

Fascinating!

The deficit was 25% when we assembled the largest armed forces in the history of human civilization, and conquered two continents at once.

…and with Obama’s socialist experiments, we’ve only run up a 10% deficit!

That is news – he’s doing a heck of ajob!

Just go read it.

You'll never, ever hear Obama say "I want my life back!".

Quoted from: a comment on a photo of the current President playing golf on Father’s Day.

My anarchist nature is loving the transparent collapse of the established order under Mr. Obama:

Nobody likes the bumbling crony capitalists at BP, least of all countermoonbats, considering that they gave more money to Comrade Obama than to any other candidate in the past 20 years and were lobbying to enrich themselves at the price of our country's ruin through the Cap & Tax conspiracy. But the rule of law applies to everyone, even lizards low enough to crawl into bed with Obama and then get knifed by him. Like Congressman Joe Barton, I find it alarming in the extreme that the President of the USA can exploit an accident to shake down a corporation for a $20 billion slush fund.

I missed the current President’s speech last Tuesday. Neo-neocon assigned some mandatory reading from the follow-on commentary. Here are my two highlights from the assigned column:

Let me get this straight: as oil gushes forth, we are to use this disaster as a teachable moment to go the wind and solar route. OK, but fairly or not, the message to the shrimpers and hotel owners of the Gulf is: “Your misery has some didactic value for the rest of us, since after your Gulf is destroyed, we will shut down your rigs to ensure permanent poverty follows your misery.”

Neo-neocon poses a question:

Who would have been the best president to handle the oil spill crisis?

Whatever else you may think of her, I think the answer has to be “Sarah Palin.” She’s got the experience dealing with the oil companies, and the requisite gumption to do so.

And, if they were being honest, the left would have to give the same answer: Sarah Palin. And that fact must enrage them no end.

Awesome!

I had forgotten about Palin’s genuine experience in this area:

What irony that Obama now represents more value to the Republicans than to the Democrats.

Quoted from: Commenter “Curtis” at Neo-neocon

Remember Iraq?

The current President has been quietly continuing the Bush Administration policy in Iraq. So quietly that it has dropped out of the headlines. No daily body count, no handwringing about unwinnable quagmires, no sensational exposés about the brutality of U.S. forces. It’s almost like a war was won and nobody noticed.

So, what’s really happening?

General Odierno, the top U.S. commander there, says (pdf):

he’s impressed with progress the Iraqi security forces have made, particularly since the new security agreement took effect in January. “Today, they are in charge everywhere in Iraq,” he said. “We no longer conduct large-scale operations in Iraq. They do. We support those operations.”

Fun clips from the current President reading from his own book, Dreams from My Father:

Ignorant like you: [swf file="OBAMA_IGNORANT.mp3"]

B.O. ain’t your bitch: [swf file="OBAMA_FRIES.mp3"]

Over his head: [swf file="OBAMA_COMPLICATED.mp3"]

He’s got your number: [swf file="OBAMA_NUMBER.mp3"]

Got nothin’ on Barry: [swf file="OBAMA_THAT_GUY.mp3"]

These are almost certainly the best parts, but if you really want to be sure, the paperback version of Dreams is going for 18¢ in the Amazon.com marketplace. Yes, that’s change…

Via: April Winchell

The Failed Obama Administration™ has issued another absurdity:

President Barack Obama is getting behind a national policy to boost fuel efficiency and cut greenhouse-gas pollution from medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

Obama said Friday he's asking the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department to come up with what would be a first-ever policy for such trucks in model years 2014-2018.

Such a move, he said, will bring down the cost of transporting goods, reduce pollution and spur growth in the clean-energy sector. The government will also work with the public and private sectors to develop technology for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, Obama said.

In the comment discussion on his post about trying to quantify the effects of racism, Cobb writes:

[T]he weight of the destruction done to the world by socialism and communism that have taken over from the demon of racism. And where modern American white supremacy's damage has been 5,000 lynchings, Stalin's victims are in the millions. And so that now terrorizes me. It set me up to be a patsy for liberty. I deal with racism of course, but I consider myself particularly robust in that regard and I don't have reasons to fear. I say of course we have a black president, I understand perfectly well where he comes from because I came from many of the same places. But does he understand Stalin out there? And the sad fact is that he didn't, and thought his blackness, his muslimness, all of that our generation knows would be sufficient. It's not.

Here’s my feeble attempt to summarize Cobb’s viewpoint. Racism used to be the biggest problem in society. It still has negative effects, but nobody can actually measure them. Without measurement, we cannot make a proper response. Nor can we assess our effectiveness.

Back in late 2008, when Congress passed the TARP bank bailout, I posted about the proper term to describe the developing relationship between government and industry:

Pundits speaking for the huge popular majority opposed to the plan seem to have decided to call it socialism, or a nationalization of banking and real estate. There is a political philosophy which combines those terms. National Socialism. Or, in a word, fascism.

Now that Barry has been elected and enjoyed a kindred Congress, I am more convinced that his vision for society is not properly called socialism. An article at The Freeman takes up the question, “Is Obama a socialist?”

The current President has decided his government can kill U.S. Citizens without trial:

The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill a U.S.-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, who is described by a key lawmaker as America's top terrorist threat, officials said on Tuesday.

The decision to add Anwar al-Awlaki, of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to the target list followed a National Security Council review prompted by his status as a U.S. citizen.

Officials said Awlaki directly threatened the United States. "Awlaki is a proven threat," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's being targeted."

The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stipulates:

The current President seems to have a flexible relationship with truth. And in that statement, I display a kinship with his philosophy.

The word at the crux is “seem”. I have made it a habit to qualify many of my perceptions with words like “seem” or “appear”. This habit was cultivated, in part, to recognize that as only one mind, I cannot embrace all that is true. I can only know what I know, which is not necessarily all that exists.

But I diverge from the President in my conclusion that there is an absolute truth. What seems true to me, or to him, or to anyone, is rooted in fixed concepts. Barry denies (appears to deny?) there is any fixed truth underlying each person’s perception. Everything is relative.

And nothing is real without someone to perceive it, and put that perception into linguistic terms. There are no absolutes. This is what is called “post-modernism”:

Maxed Out Mama, who always looks deep into the data, sees cause for optimism:

If one tried, one could make a case that the economy will continue decent growth in 2010, or one could make the case that the economy would subside once more in the later part of 2010. There are indications both ways. Usually, that is an encouraging sign.

I won't try to make any case. In my view this is somewhat fragile and the final trajectory for 2010 depends most on government policy and fuel prices (which will control a lot about spending power).

Income tax withholdings (WIET) are up compared to this period last year. But, last year was horrible. It appears Main Street is no longer collapsing. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Main Street is still in a fragile condition:

With two recent murderous crazies in the news, expect each to be linked to Tea Partiers, conservatives and/or anything lefty culture finds disturbing. It will become part of the informal codespeak of lefties around the country. Never mind the facts, as anyone who opposes the lefty narrative and leftoid agenda is, by definition, exactly the kind of nutjob who would fly an airplane into a building.

Since reason and verifiable fact do not matter much in the Age of Obama, I enter this as counter evidence about who the real criminals in the U.S. voted for:

Neo-neocon didn’t have the stomach to watch last night’s State of the Union address. I endured the whole thing. Setting aside the particulars of the implicitly contradictory wish list Barry set forth, I think the current President is cracking up.

He has lost his slickness, even with the teleprompter. His demeanor struck me as similar to the Seinfeld character George Costanza when caught in his own web of lies. Barry would make a joking jab, then smile a bit too big, as if he was looking for approval. His speaking style, when not in full campaign mode, is full of odd pauses. Last night, what was odd became awkward.

The current President said:

job losses have diminished substantially since the depths of the recession when the economy was hemorrhaging jobs a rate of 700,000 a month.

"It is true that we, as a country, are in a very different place than we were when 2009 began," Obama said, saying there was evidence of a "positive trend" in the November employment report released on Friday.

Here’s what he’s accomplished in his first year:

Lefties, Greenies, and the current President tout a new “green” economy as a solution to today’s dysfunction. Escaping the carbon cycle will save the polar bears. Eliminating fossil fuels will clear the air and cut the legs out from under “evil regimes” that “don’t like us very much”.

We’re being manipulated and coerced into spending huge sums of borrowed money on a raft of unproven ideas aimed at taking the U.S. toward a vision of blue skies and unicorns.

It sounds beautiful. Until you look into the details behind the technology that will drive the Clean Energy Economy: