OK. This is getting really weird.
Obama bowed to Tampa’s mayor this week.
The caption reads: U.S. President Barack Obama bows to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio at MacDill Air Force Base on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010 in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Edmund Fountain, Pool)
At least it wasn’t a full waiter’s bow.
First the media hacks were bowing to Obama. Now Obama is bowing to dictators, emperors and the Tampa mayor. This is getting weird.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
The former Constitutional lawyer, or senior lecturer, cited the US Constitution last night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence… not the Constitution. The B-Cast posted the video:
Modern Conservative reported, via Free Republic:
In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama said:
We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….
Um, wrong founding document, Mr. President. It is in our Declaration of Independence that we read:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech.
After tripling the national deficit in one year, last night Democratic President Barack Obama promised he would not leave Americans with a mountain of debt.
Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense… To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust -– deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve.
Today ALL 60 democrats in the US Senate voted for the largest increase in debt in US history.
The Hill reported:
Senate Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion increase in the federal debt limit Thursday, seeking to push off another politically painful debt vote until after the midterm elections.
All 60 Democrats and no Republicans voted for the debt limit increase. The measure, which the House has yet to vote on, would put the debt ceiling at roughly $14.3 trillion.
Of course, this surprises no one.
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) urged the president to veto this record increase in debt:
U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, today issued the following statement on Senate passage of legislation to increase the nation’s debt limit by $1.9 trillion – from $12.4 trillion to $14.3 trillion:
“It took this country 230 years to reach $10 trillion in debt. Now, in just 15 months we’ve added more than $2 trillion more. The president was right last night when he said we should not leave Americans with a ‘mountain of debt.’ To hold Congress to that challenge, he should veto this debt increase, which is larger than the size of the entire federal budget in 1999. If this increase in the national debt becomes law, it will leave our children and grandchildren a country they cannot afford and a government they cannot control. Until Congress and the president take steps to bring this alarming debt under control, we should not increase the debt limit.”
Axis of the Right takes a closer look at today’s record debt increase.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities said Monday they are considering a petition to tear down a statue of US President Barack Obama as a boy, only a month after the bronze was unveiled in Jakarta.
The statue of "Little Barry" -- as Obama was known when he lived in the capital in the late 1960s -- stands in central Jakarta's Menteng Park, a short walk from the US president's former elementary school.
Critics say the site should have been used to honour an Indonesian and 55,000 people have joined a page on social networking website Facebook calling for the statue to be removed.
"We've been discussing for the past two weeks what to do with the statue... whether to take it down, move it elsewhere or retain it. We're finding the best solution," Jakarta parks agency official Dwi Bintarto said.
Members of the "Take Down the Barack Obama Statue in Menteng Park" group on Facebook say Obama has done nothing for Indonesia.
"Barack Obama has yet to make a significant contribution to the Indonesian nation. We could say Obama only ate and s (expletive) in Menteng. He spent his subsequent days living as an American," the web page says.
"For the dignity of a sovereign nation, Barack Obama's monument in Menteng Park must be removed immediately."
(AFP)
No corruption-scented no-bid contracts…except for Barack Obama’s own cronies, that is. James Rosen at FNC has the scoop:
The Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a prominent Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.
Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.
The contract, awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, Inc., a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi, will pay the firm $24,673,427 to provide “rule of law stabilization services” in war-torn Afghanistan.
A synopsis of the contract published on the USAID Web site says Checchi & Company will “train the next generation of legal professionals” throughout the Afghan provinces and thereby “develop the capacity of Afghanistan’s justice system to be accessible, reliable, and fair.”
The legality of the arrangement as a “sole source,” or no-bid, contract was made possible by virtue of a waiver signed by the USAID administrator. “They cancelled the open bid on this when they came to power earlier this year,” a source familiar with the federal contracting process told Fox News.
“That’s kind of weird,” said another source, who has worked on “rule of law” issues in both Afghanistan and Iraq, about the no-bid contract to Checchi & Company. “There’s lots of companies and non-governmental organizations that do this sort of work.”
Contacted by Fox News, Checchi confirmed that his company had indeed received the nearly $25 million contract but declined to say why it had been awarded on a no-bid basis, referring a reporter to USAID.
Asked if he or his firm had been aware that the contract was awarded without competitive bids, Checchi replied: “After it was awarded to us, sure. Before, we had no idea.”
Checchi has donated to Team Obama, MoveOn, the DNC, and ActBlue, among other left-wing entities.
Flashback March 2009:
michellemalkin.comObama promises to limit no-bid contracts
Says $40 billion could be saved every yearWASHINGTON – President Obama ordered an overhaul yesterday of the way the US government awards defense and other contracts, saying that more competition is needed to drive down costs and declaring that “the days of giving government contractors a blank check are over.”
Obama joined Senator John McCain, his Republican presidential campaign rival, and other congressional figures to promise taxpayers savings of as much as $40 billion a year, in part by limiting no-bid contracts.
Even in good economic times, contracting reform would be overdue in Washington, Obama said, but with the recession, “It’s time for this waste and inefficiency to end. It’s time for a government that only invests in what works.”
The president announced an executive memorandum that directs his budget director, Peter Orszag, to work with Cabinet and agency officials to come up by July 1 with a way to review existing contracts for waste or fraud.
By the end of September, Orszag is to come up with new rules designed to make it more difficult for contractors to cheat taxpayers by strengthening oversight and ending unnecessary no-bid contracts and “cost-plus” contracts that allow price tags to escalate. The new rules would also make some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors.
Obama spoke to 6th Graders in Falls Church, Virginia on Tuesday January 19, 2010.
He brought his TelePrompter. He sure wouldn’t want to go off message when speaking to 6th graders.
How sad.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
Yep, that was the spin out of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ mouth this afternoon.
Just a few short days ago, President Obama was up in Massachusetts mocking Brown’s truck and casting him as a fat-cat crony of Wall Street.
Today? Gibbs asserted with a straight face that the same kind of “anger” that brought Obama into office also buoyed Brown’s candidacy.
See? Brown’s voters are just like Obama’s. Brown’s win is Obama’s win. Black is white. Up is down. Ignorance equals strength.
Oh, yeah: And elections have consequences.
***
Video of the spin straight from the horse’s mouth, via Allahpundit.
michellemalkin.com
As America struggles economically, it was a heck of a good year for political lobbyists.
K Street’s top 25 firms cashed in on the aggressive legislative agenda unleashed by the new president and bigger Democratic majorities in Congress in 2009 to post double-digit growth of about 10 percent over the previous year.
Despite economic uncertainty and the promise by the Obama administration to clamp down on the influence industry, the majority of top lobbying firms posted higher numbers in 2009, with 11 firms showing dramatic growth. …
While most old-line firms posted limited to flat growth, several midsized lobby shops, as well as a handful of relatively younger lobby shops, posted dramatic increases in revenue.
The Podesta Group, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Holland & Knight and Alston & Bird all reported more than 40 percent increases in billings. K&L Gates, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti and McBee Strategic Consulting posted gains of more than 20 percent in 2009.
With several big-ticket legislative items moving through Congress, in particular financial services regulatory reform, lobbyists said they expect more of the same this year.
Remember when Obama campaigned on refusing to take money from lobbyists? When he refused to have lobbyists in his administration? When he ordered his own party to refrain from taking lobbyist contributions?
Obama’s was supposed to be an administration “not run by special interests.” Yet, lobbyists are thriving in Obama’s America.
By the way, if one of the lobbying firms in the article above sounds familiar, it’s because Obama appointed the founder of the firm to run his transition team:
John Podesta was Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff, and he also ran the Obama transition team after the election. Obama wanted to eliminate lobbying so badly that he put one of K Street’s top lobbying firm in charge of setting up his White House team — and John’s group prospered handsomely from it, apparently.
Hope for change.
sayanythingblog.com
Go for it.
(Daylife)
Barack Obama will campaign with Harry Reid in Nevada next month.
Roll Call reported:
President Barack Obama will appear with politically embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in Las Vegas next month, according to a White House official.
That’s weird. I thought Reid wanted to win?
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There’s the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.
This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.
In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.
Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.
Even that is not the worst part. He could have said, “I know. I promised these things, but let me try to do them one at a time.” You want to deal with health care? Fine. Issue No. 1 with health care was the cost. You know I think it was 37 percent or 33 who were worried about coverage. Fine, I wrote an editorial to this effect. Focus on cost-containment first. But he’s trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much. This is not leadership.
thedailybeast.com
Back in January 2009, before he signed his failed $787 billion stimulus bill into law, Barack Obama told America that everyone must sacrifice for the greater good. Everyone must have “some skin in the game.”
With the nation still mired in a deep recession that has millions of Americans experiencing economic ruin, the Obama administration marked Barack Obama’s one-year anniversary as president by displaying a photograph of First Lady Michelle Obama wearing a $2,763 designer coat as the ‘White House photo of the day’ on the front page of WhiteHouse.gov. Remember: We all must have “some skin in the game.”
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
Barack Obama blamed the Massachusetts massacre on George W. Bush.
Senator Scott Brown challenged President Barack Obama to a game of basketball tonight during his victory speech in Boston:
Republican Scott Brown has been running ads in Massachusetts where he is out driving around in his old pickup truck while campaigning for US Senator something Marcia Martha Coakley refuses to do.
On Sunday Barack Obama slammed Scott Brown and his truck several times in his Bush-bashing campaign speech for Martha Coakley.
A GMC CanyonMaybe Obama forgot that the US now OWNS General Motors.
You’d think he’d want Americans to “Buy GM” not “Bash GM”?
You’d think.
More… Scott Brown gave an excellent rebuttal to Obama’s truck bashing:
“Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck,” Brown said in a statement. “My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.”
BOSTON -- They just don't get that inside is out here. President Obama's emergency rescue mission to save Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley could prove to be the final nail in her already-closing political coffin as this race -- Coakley's ongoing circus of gaffes aside -- is shaping up to be a bitter fight between the blessed insiders and scorned outsiders.
And between those winners chosen by the federal government and independent outsiders who just want to be left alone to earn what they deserve.
And so it was a bit jarring to hear Obama -- with his innate connection to the passion of voters -- stand here yesterday and try recycling bits from his juggernaut, outsider campaign that made him a part of history.
It worked for him two years ago, but not today. Not now that he and his fellow Democrats control every conceivable lever of power in Washington.
And certainly not for Coakley, who has built her entire campaign around being the chosen successor to the "Kennedy seat."
She has drafted Ted Kennedy's widow into her campaign, relies on the entire Democratic machine here and in Washington and even had a Haitian priest pray to the Good Lord above yesterday that she win the election.
Then here comes Obama trying to sell her as some kind of outsider willing to take on the man.
It's like he doesn't get it. He is "the man" now.
Obama told the crowd here yesterday that he needed Coakley in Washington because she is "independent."
Really? Does anybody actually think that the reason Obama wants her in the Senate is that she would even dream of casting the deciding vote to kill the Democratic health-care bill?
Absolutely not. The only reason Obama came here is because he needs somebody bought and paid for. By him.
If Obama really is looking for the independent, he most certainly won't find him amid the Boston political glitterati gathered around Coakley.
nypost.com
Halleluiah.
It took Barack Obama months to find himself a church but he felt right at home today at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church.
Barack and Michelle Obama thanked the pastor for his warm welcome today at church in Washington DC after he bashed Bush and the GOP from the pulpit.
Of course, during his own sermon Barack Obama blamed Bush for the national deficit that he tripled in 2009.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
Thus doubling down on the promise he’s breaking by not allowing the health care bill to be debated on CSPAN as he also promised.
(CNSNews.com) – White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs, who has avoided answering questions on whether health care negotiations should be broadcast on C-SPAN, declined to say yesterday whether President Barack Obama would advocate posting the final negotiated bill on the Internet for 72 hours before it is voted on by the House and Senate.
“I don’t know the exact answer to 72,” Gibbs told CNSNews.com on Wednesday. “I know that there have … I think health care has been the most covered story by the news media in 2009.”
What baffles me is why Obama would even choose to break this promise. Obviously, by the time the bill goes to him for signature, there’s not much anyone can do to stop it. Posting it online for 6 days isn’t going to change a thing.
At this point, I don’t think Americans could really get much angrier about the bill. Democrats are going to pay the piper at the polls for this bill regardless, so why exacerbate the situation by breaking this promise? Why stick yet another thumb in the collective eye of the American electorate when it could be rather easily avoided?
Maybe breaking promises has just become a habit Obama can’t break. Like smoking.
sayanythingblog.comBack in January 2009, before he signed his failed $787 billion stimulus bill into law, Barack Obama told America that everyone must sacrifice for the greater good. Everyone must have “some skin in the game.”
Now we learn that the the Obama White House has held one party every three days in first year of Obama reign.
Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) reported:
gatewaypundit.firstthings.comLet the good times roll” – and roll they have at the Obama White House, while nearly 11% of the workforce remains unemployed, nearly four million Americans are losing their homes, and terrorists ride the open skies.
In fact, according to the Chicago Tribune, the stylish Ms. Rogers and the party-hearty First Couple hosted no less than 170 parties and social events through December 3 of 2009. And that does not even include the 17 parties and 11 open houses – feting more than 50,000 guests – ABC News reported the Obamas hosted throughout the Holiday Season.
For those not counting, that means by January, 2010, Ms. Rogers had staged one gala White House event every three days throughout the first year of the Obama Administration, making the once austere Executive Mansion look more like party central.
There are more unemployed youths in America today than at any other time since World War II.
Americans for Tax Reform reported:
The New York Post yesterday ran with this staggering story on newly released figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
“The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.”
“The number represents the flip-side to the Labor Dept.’s report that the employment rate of 16-to-24 year olds has eroded to 46.6 percent — the lowest ratio of working young Americans in that age group, including all but those in the military, since WWII.”
Almost fifty five percent of young Americans are unemployed. The figure is just mind-boggling. And yet the Administration continues to throw more of our money down the drain on this failed so-called ’stimulus’. Despite the fact that every country that has tried to spend its way out of a recession throughout history has failed. Without exception. And stimulus packages are failing all around the world now.
Barack Obama took 68% of the youth vote in 2008.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
Claire McCaskill 2009: “It’s Unfair to Take Potshots at President.”
Claire McCaskill 2006: “Bush Killed Black People on Rooftops.”
Obama’s Joker Senator Claire McCaskill today told CNN:
“I think it is unfair and, frankly, political to take pot shots at the president as we respond to this failure in our systems that we’ve got to get fixed.”
Of course, Claire is certainly not the one to go pointing fingers.
Back in September 2006 Claire McCaskill told a group of local elected officials, which included white and black Democrats, that she would remind people over the course of her campaign against Republican Sen. Jim Talent that:
Of course this was not only a vicious attack but it was untrue.“George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black.”
At least, there are no public records of “poor, blacks dying on rooftops” before military rescuers could get to them. Just like there are no records of blacks in New Orleans eating corpses to survive! According to the State of Louisiana there were no statistics taken on the number of poor, black deaths on rooftops in New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina.
Today Claire McCaskill lectured Republicans about taking unfair potshots at the president.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.comIf he was a Republican this would be the headline for the next 10 weeks…
Obama was warned about the threats to the homeland in a Christmas briefing before he flew off to his golfing and snorkling Hawaii holiday vacation.
Newsweek reported:
President Barack Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the US, Newsweek has learned. The briefing was centered on a written report, produced by US intelligence agencies, entitled “Key Homeland Threats”, a senior US official said.
The senior Administration official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that nowhere in this document was there any mention of Yemen, whose Al-Qaeda affiliate is now believed to have been behind the unsuccessful Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a transatlantic airliner with a bomb hidden in his underpants. However, the official declined to disclose any other information about the substance of the briefing, including what kind of specific warnings, if any, the President was given about possibly holiday attacks and whether Yemen came up during oral discussions.
According to the senior official, the holiday threat briefing, one in a series of regularly-scheduled sessions with top counter-terrorism officials, was held in the White House Situation Room on December 22. Present were representatives of agencies involved in counter-terrorism policy and operations, including Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA and National Intelligence Directors Office were represented by deputy agency heads: CIA deputy director Steven Kappes, and David Gompert, the principal deputy to National Intelligence Czar Dennis Blair. Also present was Michael Leiter, director of the National Counter-terrorism Center, a unit of the Intelligence Czar’s office which was created after 9/11 to ensure that intelligence reporting about possible terrorist plots was shared quickly among all US agencies who might have some capability to do something about it.
It looks like Obama was too busy getting ready for his vacation to warn the American public.
UPDATE: Obama finally linked the Christmas bomber to Al-Qaeda today…
More than a week after the attack.
gatewaypundit.firstthings.com
This year saw the birth of the tea party movement, the rise of administrative radicalism, and a suppression of information unlike ever before seen. Were it not for the new penny presses, blogs and the investigative citizens who author them, much of this information would be six feet under. When the media goes state and becomes nothing more than an echo chamber for the government, the task of sharing truth falls to the original keepers of liberty: the American people.
These are the most Underreported Stories of 2009:
1. CLIMATEGATE
Al Gore needs something to sustain him and his big pimpin’ life down at his ginormous, energy-sucking mansion in Tennessee. Thus the green market was born, a made-up market chock full of products like carbon credits and other Willy Wonka (but not as cool) ish items for people to buy as a way to feel good about themselves and their contribution to the planet without having to actually do anything. They don’t need a God! They need a Prius!
Celebrities Botoxed within an inch of their lives began popping up in PSA’s about global warming, about how we need to drive inefficient clown cars that run on electricity (which is still produced in coal-powered plants but hey, whatever) to save the planet. Musicians like Sheryl Crow crowed about using just a square of toilet paper to remove waste that has a greater street value than her latest album. All the hubris manifested in regulations handed down from congress upon the automobile industry, the coal industry, et al., until finally! Cap’n Trade appeared in the House.
Cap’n Trade will rape and pillage your energy bills and even boss you around when it comes to remodeling or rehabbing a home. It’s almost like … congress has nothing better to do.
Then … there was Climategate. Russian hackers revealed emails from a British university (whose edicts on global warming are included in the U.N.’s decision-making process on climate) which showed that the scientists basically had no idea what they hell they were talking about but they did know that their original assessment of increased global temperatures was unsupported by data, thus, “hide the decline.”
2. THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
I feel bad for the staffer that had to check Nancy Pelosi’s pants after over a million tea party protesters marched past her window on September 12, 2009.
The tea party movement sprung from plain old disenchantment, disappointment, and outright anger at being fleeced by a government who mistook their primary job as being “spend cash mon-nay” rather than execute the Constitution. What began as a few groups of several hundred people gathering in the cold back in February morphed into a movement so big that now talk of PACs and third parties (total crap idea, that latter) are commonplace and a Republican candidate has no hope of winning an election without the tea party support.
The most misreported and misunderstood thing about the tea party is its political leanings. The tea party has no political leaning. It stands straight for limited government, low taxes, and liberty for all. Disagreement with those tenets is an accidental admission of socialism on the part of the antagonist. The beauty of the tea party movement is that it is independent and thus a true check and balance of the Republican and Democrat parties. It’s not a pawn of the GOP, thus untouchable in criticism of the Democrats – I view it as an unattached conscience of the Republican party.
The tea parties have been smeared, and while some haven’t helped against the charges of astroturf due to their worship of both God and money, the movement is pure.
A new version of the Minuteman has sprung from this movement: the patriot activist with the Gadsen flag on her shoulder and a video recorder or camera in her hand.
A guy with a history of terrorist activity (the FBI had been watching him for months) and bent on mass murder screams “ALLAHU AKBAR!” before shooting a pregnant soldier point-blank at a military base and the media would rather cover its genitals like a dog and cower in the corner rather than define the terrorist as a terrorist.
Rather, the media interviewed people who said that shooter Malik Nadal Hasan had “trouble fitting in” and isn’t it so sad how he was treated differently because of his religion? Lightbulb moment: hey! Perhaps he was treated differently because he felt prejudiced against his fellow soldiers whom he viewed as infidels who should die?
Hasan had “soldier of Allah” printed on his business cards, for crying out loud.
Nevermind that he was a participant in Obama’s transition Homeland Security team. Oops!
4. ACORN and SEIU
Only in America can you offer to help smuggle in underage sex workers as part of your description as a taxpayer-funded “neighborhood organizer” and still get federal dollars after the scandal breaks. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles exposed ACORN for what it truly is: a malignancy that consumes the life out of depressed areas that it never, ever improves, ever, all in the name of making residents dependent upon the teat of government welfare so as to exploit them for votes later”neighborhood organizing.”
Michael Walsh explains the repurcussions of the dynamic duo’s work:
The Senate voted 83-7 in favor of de-funding the controversial group. The House voted 345-75 to cut ACORN’s funding, and more than 20 states have demanded either a full investigation of ACORN or that they lose their funding. The IRS also ended up cutting their connections to the group.
O’Keefe and Giles made a mockery of the media who retaliated by refusing to cover the story, further hammering the last nail into their own coffin.
Despite all of this, Big Government wrote how after this egregious corruption, Democrats like Roland Burris still found a way to push for continued ACORN funding by slipping a provision requiring such in Harry Reid’s senate fauxcare bill.
SEIU is shares #4 with SCORN (typo and it stays) after several of its purple people beaters attacked Kenneth Gladney (a black street vendor who I’d previously seen selling pro-Obama buttons at Obama’s Arnold, MO townhall) at Russ Carnahan’s townhall in Mehlville, Missouri after profiling him and assuming him to be a black conservative. One of thecountry’s most shocking and underreported race-provoked attacks grew worse when his brother, Keith Gladney, spoke outin his brother’s defense and is said to have been canned from his job two days before Christmas as a result.
At the time of this writing neither Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or President Obama have offered to arrange a beer summit between Kenneth Gladney and Andy Stern.
5. HCR COVER-UP
The majority of the country opposes Harry Reid’s Senate bill but nevertheless, Reid bribed it through. Government media served as a mouthpiece for the administration and its policy on fauxcare, giving the President multiple hours of free network prime-time hours to peddle his snake oil on the airwaves.
The Senate vote marks the turning point in our government where those elected to represent the constituency failed to do the jobs for which they were placed in office. It was a vote of tyranny, not of representation.
Big Government Editor Mike Flynn expounded further on the scandal and reminded readers how Wicks used the Serve.gov portal as a way to funnel volunteers to ACORN and other pro-Obama organizations, at taxpayer expense.
Jinkies! Looks like artists are going to have to work harder and nab more photos that other people have taken so that they can do cheesy, tri-color alterations to them that pass as pretentious, overrated and quasi-Photoshop Level 1 “art” to the people whose discernment went off the rails.
7. DHS, NAPOLITANO TARGET DISSENT
While the Department of Homeland Security and Janet Napolitano were busy marking down the names of veterans, grandmas, and college kids who waved the military-authorized Gadsen Flag or questioned Obama’s policies in public as “possible domestic terrorists,” real terrorists were already in our country, shooting up our military bases and attempting to detonate planes. Michael Savage, himself the target of the British government based upon his dissent, filed suit against Napolitano in April over DHS’s “right wing extremist” report. The charges stated:
“It is a civil rights action brought under the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution, challenging the policy, practice, and custom of the United States Government that targets for disfavored treatment those individuals and groups that are considered to be ‘rightwing extremists.”
Under the Obama administration, the government has brazenly trained its eye on those who respectfully question the government. Liberals who complained over the Patriot Act demonstrated their devotion to party over liberty by going silent as their American brethren were targeting for doing no more (less, actually) than they the liberals did under Bush.
7. KEVIN JENNINGS – FISTGATE
It wouldn’t be right if our current administration broke tradition with nominating completely inept radicals to high positions of power (gotta pay off those political favors!) and lucky for you betting types, that streak wasn’t broken with Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.
Ah yes, the Three Rs and One F of education: Readin, Ritin’ and ‘Rithmetic. Oh, and Fisting. The required credentials for such a post:
Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.
Behold, the comedy gold:
“Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect… defining ’safe schools’ narrowly in terms of ’safe for homosexuality’,” Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told FOXNews.com.
“But at least half of the job involves creating drug-free schools, and we’ve not been offered any evidence about what qualifications Jennings has for promoting drug-free schools.”
Jennings’ detractors note that he made four references to his personal drug abuse in his 2007 autobiography, “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir.” On page 103, discussing his high school years in Hawaii in the early 1980s, Jennings wrote:
“I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned.”
Er … oops? Nobody’s perfect, but it just seems practical to maybe not glorify drug use in your book while trying to get a job which requires you to keep schools and kids drug free. Too obvious?
Oh, but then came the revelations as to what GLSEN’s recommended reading actually included and Katy-bar-the-door. It was discovered that at a GLSEN conference (in conjunction with the MA Department of Education no less) elementary school kids were taught how to engage in sex acts.
Gateway Pundit reported mercilessly – as I’d hoped that anyone who cared about the well-being of our schoolchildren would do – about the “recommended reading” list Jennings chose for GLSEN and young schoolchildren which included graphic descriptions of rest-room sex and more.
State media was silent and liberal sites, such as Media Matters, defended Jennings.
8. VAN JONES
Van Jones signed his political death certificate when he signed a 9/11 truther petition stating that he believed that our own government took down the Twin Towers and not terrorists, the petition brought to light by Gateway Pundit. Of course, under an administration that refuses to even use the language because it may hurt the feelings of suicide bombers and be judged as “divisive,” one can see how Jones might not understand that the terrorists are actually our enemies.
The radical environmental czar (a one-time STORM participant, a Marxist organization) and admitted communist in the Obama administration was forced to resign, further tainting the judgement of the administration, who later admitted to not having vetted Jones well enough.
The disparity between the eerie silence from state media and the raucous exclamations from the blogosphere was expected but sad nonetheless.
9. OBAMA’S LACK OF SUCCESS
Don’t expect to see much media criticism – even if it’s objective and deserved – of our infant Messiah president. The media has a lot invested into him and they unofficially hung the last shred of their validity on his success. It’s not to say that conservatives don’t want a successful president; we define success differently than liberals. Conservatives want the United States to be successful in foreign relations, we want a thriving economy, success in maintaining individual liberty, all the good stuff of which America is made. Conservatives don’t want to see plans to nationalize and thereby socialize the private sector because the very irony of such economic strategy is that it hasn’t been successful in multitude of countries in which it’s been implemented.
Conservatives aren’t the only ones questioning Obama’s trajectory; he’s been sliding in the polls since spring; the majority of Americans disapprove of his march on health care reform; yet the media downplays all of this because they’ve gambled it all on the success of this political neophyte who quit his job as a senator so he could hightail it to Washington. (What was that the left said about quitters?)
The media’s complicity in shoring up a failing president has given an excuse for the current congressional body to repeatedly ignore the will of the people. Blogs are the new penny press; corporate media is dead.
TWO LOCAL STORIES that I’d be remiss not to mention:
1. REP. RUSS CARNAHAN’S BROTHER GIVEN $90 MILLION IN STIMULUS FUNDS
Aside from being Nancy Pelosi’s rubber stamp, it would seem that Carnahan had another motive in voting for an unpopular bill such as cap-and-trade that would be disastrous for a coal state like Missouri, which gets 80% of its energy from the more-efficient-and-less-expensive-than-solar-or-wind coal plants. Tom Carnahan got $90 million dollars of your cash mon-nay to construct his Lego wind farm up in northern Illinois, which he couldn’t have done without massive federal funding. The benefits to Russ Carnahan’s district: 0.
2. Jay Nixon Ozark E. Coligate
Jay Nixon and his administration neglect to inform citizens that E. Coli results in the lake were 19 times higher than state standard. Takeaway: The tests were “apparently communicated to the communication shop, not to the policy shop,” Nixon said.
A salute not to the most evil or corrupt behavior of the year but to the most … cringeworthy. Just as with last night’s movie post, I’m going to think of a half dozen examples as soon as I hit “publish,” but at the moment the beer summit and Sanford’s soap opera seem right on the money. Lame, touchy feely, and riddled with poor political calculation: They were a magic combo. We shall not see their like again, my friends. At least not until, say, January.
Elsewhere, the boss is posting a 2009 “best of” list. She’s on the money there, too.
