This Associated Press story about Obama and his budget agenda is probably the most dreadful piece of literature ever written;
“Breathtaking in its scope and ambition….”
“Perhaps the only things as high as Obama’s goals are the hurdles they must clear.”
“…a sprawling road map that will require several hard-fought pieces of legislation.”
“We’re struck with how bold and courageous a budget it is….”
“Washington veterans say that if anyone can overcome the hurdles, it is Obama.”
“The country wants it, the economy needs it, businesses large and small know that they can’t afford not to have it…”
“The president’s agenda is vast and ambitious….”
They don’t mention that the president’s agenda is built on a foundation of clay. In order to afford these changes, everyone has to continue making the exact same amount of money they earn now. In order to increase taxes on the top 5% of wage earners, Obama will ahve to raise taxes on families making more than $160,000 – the group in the $250,000 plus range only make up the top 1.5% of wage earners. Now, how many people are goingto continue making the same amount of money, if it means more will go to taxes – even at the $160k level.
In my own case, I figured out that although my wife’s income was about a 1/3 of our total income, it was responsible for more than half of our taxes – so she quit. How many others will discover that they’re working for the government?
It also depends on the stimulus bill which he just signed in making gains on the recovery – that is impossible. The market has fallen since Obama’s election because no one with an interest in investing in America thinks it will work. Obama thinks he can “will” a healthy economy – he’s learning like Bill Clinton did in 1993 that’s not possible. Those of us with our money on the line aren’t going to toss it in the pot without good reason. He hasn’t given us a good reason yet.
“We’re struck with how bold and courageous a budget it is,” said James Horney of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supports the president. “There are a whole lot of things that are going to be extremely difficult because there are very powerful vested interests out there that will fight them.”
Powerful and vested interests like the American people. Is it any wonder that newspapers are folding across the country when they all draw their content from sources like the Associated Press?
In President Obama’s radio address today, he struck out at the half of the country who oppose his massive $3.6 trillion budget proposal casting himself in the role of populist crusader vowing to “fight for families” – you know that same drivel that lost Gore and Kerry their elections. From the Washington Times;
“I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly video and radio address.
Mr. Obama’s language was combative and confrontational, as he promised to fight for “American families.”
“I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I,” he said.
Well, it may represent change, but change for the sake of change isn’t always good, is it? But that’s what he won his election on – nebulous change. It’s funny, but I didn’t see any Washington lobbyists in Lafayette Park yesterday. There may have been, but I only saw regular Americans who took the afternoon to express their displeasure with Obama’s proposals. There weren’t any lobbyists in Lansing or St Louis – those were just regular people who see the folly in Obama’s plans. Just because you’re in charge, that doesn’t make you right.
“The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people,” he said.
It also worked for people who went out and worked for a living without waiting for a hand out from the government – in fact, your whole plan depends on those who work to continue working just as they always have, while you suck them dry of any ambition or pride while you buy votes with the lazy and indigent masses looking for hand outs. Where’s your “fairness” now?
Last night I wrote about one moonbat who was disappointed that Obama was continuing the policies of his predecessor in regards to the war against al Qaeda in Pakistan. This morning, Drudge’s headline is;
In the linked article, Jewish leaders are surprised that Clinton has done an about-face from the Clinton who needed Jewish votes to keep her seat in the Senate. Mort Zuckerman complains;
On Thursday, as Secretary of State she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious.
“I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state,” said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council.
Did they really expect anything to be different? Her husband came into office with a liberal agenda and when he got spanked by reality, he abandoned it all to “become” a small government president who suddenly championed government reform.
Wasn’t anyone paying attention to the fact that Obama was promising gun owners that he wouldn’t take their guns days after he promised church groups he was going to take gunowners’ guns? Didn’t anyone notice that he alternately promised to end the war to one group and vowed to continue the war to others?
Say what you want about President Bush, but when a certain event would occur, we knew how he’d react because we knew what his principles were. There are no principles in the Democrat Party. Well, no principles beyond attracting votes. That’s why the troops lost their privacy at Dover AFB – there are more Leftists who want to exploit flag draped coffins than there are military personnel who don’t. Leftsts win.
That’s why compensation and benefits for the military are going to get cut – there are more people who don’t give a shit about them than do. So if you want to guess how the current administration will come down on any issue, check your local liberal rag. Looking for principled decisions will be a long and fruitless search – trust me.
I guess everyone on the Left hasn’t been Obamatized yet. Meet Tom Santoni whose bio reads;
…a long time human rights and economic justice activist, a professional musician and stained glass artist specializing in peace symbols, and a member of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace.
He left out that he works part-time a public library. You just know someone with those kinds of creds is a deep political thinker, right? Well here’s part of his thoughtful indictment of The One;
Some highlights;
In a blatant and unmistakable act of war against a sovereign nation, Barack Obama, four days into his administration on Friday, January 23, 2009, as commander in chief of US armed forces, ordered the US military to launch Hellfire missile strikes on homes in northwest Pakistan, killing dozens of civilians including at least three children. The military was aiming to bomb al Qaeda and Taliban “suspects,” but there was some unfortunate “collateral damage”. Oops.
Yeah, Dianne Feinstein blew the whistle on that one – those drones are based in Pakistan and operating with the full knowledge of the pakistani government, so it’s hardly a “blatant and unmistakable act of war”.
But then Mr. Stainglass Peace Symbols starts making sense;
Anyone who doesn’t think Obama should be impeached who supported the impeachment of the previous administration for these same crimes is dealing in double standards and hypocrisy. Everyone who voted for Obama has blood on his hands, especially after he made repeated campaign promises to increase already bank-busting military spending, double the number of US forces in the unwinnable US war and occupation of Afghanistan, continue to develop and deploy Reagan’s Star Wars missile “defense” system, and to “go after suspected terrorists wherever they are.”
Ooops – someone else figured out that Left is a bunch of hypocrits. Word is spreading. Lemme know when ya’all feel like you’ve been used like tools. Yeah, it’s going t be a long four years for everyone.
By now you all have heard. Would it surprise you to learn that the Gold Star Mom that started all this is with Code Pink?
From CNN:
One of the family members who favors lifting the ban is Karen Meredith of San Francisco, California, who wrote Obama urging him to order the change.
Lt. Ken Ballard left for Iraq on Mother’s Day in 2003. He came home in a casket on Memorial Day 2004.
“I wanted the nation to grieve with me, and if we don’t see those images we don’t know that these young men and women are dying,” she told CNN.
“And to me its an honor to have an honor guard at Dover when they’re bringing these men and women back through the mortuary. But we’ve never been able to see those pictures of the honor being given.”
She’s become friendly with advocacy groups like the Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Code Pink. She was asked recently to appear at a counter-military recruitment event, but begged off because it took place on Mother’s Day (although she is quick to note that Mother’s Day started as an antiwar holiday).
She recently participated at a gathering in Berkeley and also traveled to Arlington West, a project by the Santa Barbara Veterans for Peace to re-create the grave sites of soldiers killed in Iraq. Later this month, on Memorial Day, the anniversary of Ballard’s death, Meredith plans to return to Washington to again visit her son’s grave at Arlington.
Gold Star mother Karen Meredith came here from Mountain View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.
Karen Meredith, Gold Star mother: “Sometimes things don’t feel quite right to me. They don’t feel wrong, but maybe that’s how they do it in the marketing business.”
ABC7’s Mark Matthews: “You feel you’re part of a marketing business?”
Karen Meredith: “Possibly. Yeah I think so.”
Here is her blog here. She can’t make it a full para on any given post without mentioning her loss. And everyone should know about her loss.
Paul Rieckhoff thinks this is a swell idea as well:
““Less than 1% of the American population has served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There has never been a greater disconnect between those who serve in harms warm and those back home. All too often, the sacrifices of our military are hidden from view,” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The sight of flag-draped coffins is, and should be, a sobering reminder to all Americans of the ultimate sacrifice our troops have made and the high price of our freedom.”
Other groups disagree:
But a spokeswoman for a military family group expressed disappointment. “This is a complete disregard for the will of America’s military families and the need for their privacy during this solemn moment,” said Meghan Tisinger, spokeswoman for Families United.
My Opinion:
Had I died over there, my Dad would have made the decision (my mom died the day I joined the Army.) Now, I love my Dad, but we discuss 2 things, New England Sports Teams, and the weather in Maine. My Dad was a delegate for Ted Kennedy. To his credit, my Dad would NEVER openly say something about the War in front of me. And when I had a flag flown over Bagram on the day the Pats won the Super Bowl, my dad refused to fly it from the front porch, but instead went out and hired a guy to put a huge flag pole in the back yard. My Dad loves me, loves the country, but he’s a liberal, and he knows little about what I would have wanted. I would like to think he would have told them to screw off, but I don’t know. I sincerely hope that SRP from now on includes some sort of living will type document where the troop gets to voice his opinion on whether to be pictured or not. I also wonder what happens when one divorced parent supports, and one does not. Or the Mom and Dad want the pictures taken, and the Spouse does not. How do they iron that shit out?
SHIT: I called and asked my dad. I shouldn’t have asked.
“There’s no one left to call me ‘Mom,’ ” Meredith told a teary-eyed congregation at First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco on Sunday. “He left the day after Mother’s Day, and he said he’d make it up to me when he returned. Today is my third Mother’s Day that I will not pick up the phone and hear his voice.”
Karen Meredith (center), who lost her only son in Iraq, hugs activist Pablo Paredes as Sean O’Neill, who served twice in Iraq, stands by at San Francisco’s First Unitarian Universalist Church. Chronicle photo by Brant Ward
Military deserter and anti-war Left poster boy Pablo Paredes has been denied conscientious objector status. His request for Other than Honorable discharge in lieu of a court-martial trial has also been denied.
Like a dog with a bone, the mainstream Left, is still clinging to the Bush impeachment imprisonment farce. The call went out yesterday from that centrist organization After Downing Street for AG Eric Holder to name a Special Prosecutor for the perfectly reasonable investigation;
We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial [sic] investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.
Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or “truth” commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.
I like the last paragraph best. They “see no need for…lengthy or costly” prosecutions – “Awright, boys, let’s string ’em up!” Oh, and the “groups” that endorse this message look like America (below the jump);
In the Wall Street Journal this morning they recount the story of fully profitable Northern Trust who accepted $1.6 billion in TARP money and last week decided to continue with their sponsorship of a PGA event called the Northern Trust Open. It probably wasn’t a good idea to test the regulatory waters like that in the current political environment, but John Kerry’s reaction is a bit over the top.
Senator Kerry’s solution to this “idiotic” decision is to outlaw fun. “Kerry’s TARP Taxpayer Protection and Corporate Responsibility Act,” the Senator’s press release announced, “would prevent any recipient of TARP funds from hosting, sponsoring, or paying for conferences, holiday parties and entertainment events.” Penalties would include fines and forced reimbursement of TARP funds. A bank could still throw a party for customers, provided it gets a “waiver” from the Treasury Secretary, who has 30 days to issue his golf and chardonnay diktat.
Having spent some time among the moneyed class, I know that there is a return on an investment like Northern Trust’s wining and dining clients and employees, otherwise, trust me, they wouldn’t do it. Yeah, it was probably wrong to do it just now and give some ammo to the emotional Democrats (who are well-versed in the concept of tossing money around just for fun – but not for you and me).
However, Kerry’s solution is just ridiculous – it’s the governmental equivalence of asking teacher if you can go outside for recess. It’s also indicative of how Democrats see the world full of circumstances that they can regulate. And I’m pretty sure the Secretary of Treasury has nothing else to do but investigate and approve every little event some financial institution wants to involve itself in.
I wonder if Kerry would like that kind of scrutiny on his own office expenditures.
Yeah, you really don’t need to watch the President’s speeches anymore. you can get crib notes from the media hours before the speech happens, along with their impressions of the president’s abilities – hours before he does anything. notice the date in the corner of the article;
But the media isn’t biased. Any of you Obama voters feeling like suckers yet?
