barack obama – Page 92

Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.

This ad comes from Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform, and it’s aimed squarely at the Florida legislature’s attempt to emulate the Obama administration’s recent lower-class tax hike:

The argument here is actually very simple: cigarette taxes are in fact taxes, not ‘user fees’ or any other kind of bureaucratic nonsense. People like to pretend otherwise because it’s easier to pass something that’s not called a tax, and because in this particular case the the average member of the group that Rasmussen likes to call the Political Class probably doesn’t smoke anyway. In other words, if it’s not affecting them personally, it’s not their problem. This is not a particularly inclusive attitude, but then nobody was accusing the Political Class with an excess of empathy anyway.

Continue reading Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.

And to think they considered RFK Jr. for EPA head.

That would have been one fascinating Cabinet meeting. Up to the point where RFK Jr screamed ‘TRAITOR!’ and tried to murder the President.

That wasn’t a joke.

So let’s start off by reviewing the basic statement:

“Clean coal is a dirty lie,” says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it “indentured servants” of the coal industry.

Let us stop here, for a moment. This isn’t about clean coal, per se. That debate is actually irrelevant to this post. Also irrelevant – for this post – is whether Kennedy meant anything racial by use of the term ‘indentured servant.’ You can decide for yourself whether that was a code phrase for ‘slave.’ But what we have to establish here is that Robert F Kennedy referred to the President of the United States as an indentured servant to the coal industry. So conceded that it happened?

Good. Let us move, as they say, on. Continue reading And to think they considered RFK Jr. for EPA head.

EFF is very alarmed that Obama is… Obama, really.

When I read articles online, I sometimes play a game called How soon will it take me to say something aloud to the monitor? (yes, I have dumb names for some of the things that I do): doing it can give me an idea of how goofy the article is. In this one (“In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s“, via Instapundit), I didn’t make it past the first sentence:

We had hoped this would go differently.

Umm, why? Continue reading EFF is *very alarmed* that Obama is… Obama, really.

No stop at Normandy.

RS’s Mark Impomeni lets us know that we’re snubbing the French for a change:

Reports out of London indicate that President Barack Obama declined an inviation from French President Nicholas Sarkozy to visit Normandy’s Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer on his way to Strasbourg for the NATO summit last week. The Daily Telegraph reports that White House officials travelled to France last month to discuss the visit with their counterparts on Sarkozy’s staff. But one American official familiar with the negotiations said that President Obama never had any intention of making the stop over.

The Telegraph also indicates that the French claims that Obama will be in Normandy for the 65th anniversary of D-Day have not been corroborated by the White House.

[rubbing head with hands] Continue reading No stop at Normandy.

How is that ‘Digital Libertarians for Obama’ thing working out for people?

(Via Instapundit) I don’t know off the top of my head whether Cory Doctorow actually drank that particular Kool-Aid, but there’s an astounding amount of whining and denial taking place in the comment section to his critical post about Obama and wiretapping. Between the “the Master loves us and would never betray us” contingent and the “they’re all pawns of the establishment!” contingent, there’s endless opportunities for schadenfreude. Which we should restrain ourselves from indulging in too deeply… for quite cynical, pragmatic reasons, such as “some of these people can be encouraged to vote their class interests.” Which is to say, Republican: because right now the dig-libs are going to get a much better level of pandering from us than they’re going to get from the Democrats. The latter isn’t even bothering with lip service at this point.

Yes, that means “selling out.” As Michael Flynn once noted, that means the same thing as “growing up.”

Moe Lane

PS: Besides, the way things are right now if the dig-libs decided to infiltrate county and state GOP organizations they wouldn’t just get away with it. The existing power structure would give them all free sodas.

Crossposted to RedState.

Strange New Respect for Keith Olbermann.

Who knew that a cow college grad could be so biting?

Well… OK, most of the country knows that cow college grads (sayeth the state school grad) can be so biting. But if it’s true that Keith Olbermann called the President “Cal Worthington Obama” in response to the President’s gentler touch towards Wall Street in comparison to the auto industry* (via Hot Air Headlines), well. I will have to raise my opinion of Olbermann’s potential wit. Or at least the wit of his writers.

Anyway, Greg Pollowitz also included this video of Cal Worthington’s greatest hits:

I personally managed to stay on my chair and not howling with laughter up to about the bear.

Moe Lane

*Mind you, Greg Pollowitz reported that Olbermann’s more worried about the poor UAW than those awful auto executives.

Crossposted to RedState.

Wagoner out at GM.

Just to get into the spirit of the thing, I had somebody translate my post on the subject into something perhaps a bit more fitting for the mood.

“Barack Obama, il leader statunitense, oggi licenzia Richard Wagoner, il direttore del colosso automobilistico General Motors. Il funzionario Steven Rattner, del comitato ministeriale Gruppo Autoindustria, e’ impegnato con la sopravvista della GM. Assistente al Rattner sara’ Fritz Henderson, finora un manager a GM, da oggi il direttore.

Secondo il Sig. Obama, la crisi economica necessita che gli impiegati della GM dovranno subirsi a “sacrifizi.” Il Duce degli Stati Uniti ha promesso un avvenire piu’ favorevole per i lavoratori, e giustizia sociale per tutti.”

Crossposted to RedState.

Obama calls upon campaign backers for ‘town hall’ questions.

Raise your hand if you’re surprised by this.

If you have raised your hand, real quick: why are you surprised?

…while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

(Via Hot Air Headlines)

I mean, you are aware that this administration pre-screens all journalists’ questions asked of it, right? It’s not exactly surprising that they might do the same for what is an ostensibly more ‘unscripted’ venue. Or that they’re picking softball questions. Or that they’re being extra-careful to minimize the possibility of a chance of a hint of the suggestion of an inkling that there may be any discernible change to our War on Some Drugs policy. It’s just business as usual, in other words. Business as usual, and only disappointing if you had unreasonable expectations in the first place.

Moe Lane

PS: “Right now.”
The correct statement to make here is that he’s getting away with it right now.

Crossposted to RedState.

Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

Well, that may be unfair: as Andrew Malcolm notes, if Obama hadn’t spent the last month trying to convince people that his 3.6 trillion dollar budget was a good idea it might have slipped even further than the recent Gallup poll shows that it has. Which means that he’s saved or created – what? Five, six points on the polls?

Looking at the poll itself, it’s interesting to see how an outside-the-margin of error result can be framed as ‘holding steady.’ 46/26/30 for/against/don’t know enough last month versus 39/27/33 this month, and support for it has slipped down the Republican/Democratic/Independent line. Although possibly the most embarrassing part of this whole thing for the administration is that the aforementioned media blitz – personal, online, televised, radioed, phone called, and for all I know, messenger pigeoned – didn’t have a better than a margin-of-error effect on the American public’s awareness of the issue. Admittedly, they were already pretty aware, but the Obama administration was looking for a win here, not a no-decision.
Continue reading Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

NRCC raises 6 million in March Dinner.

Bobby Jindal can draw a crowd, it seems.

NRCC raises $6 million for annual dinner

The National Republican Congressional Committee raised more than $6 million for tonight’s annual March Dinner, surpassing its goal for the event.

95 percent of the GOP House Conference contributed to the event, the committee announced.

For those following at home, that will mostly wipe out the NRCC’s existing debt, assuming that they apply it accordingly; it’s also about a million more than their goal of $5 million. This dinner’s usually a good fundraiser for the GOP; in fact. The Democrats’ first fundraising dinner is of course tomorrow, and is for the DNC: President Obama will be the highlight of the evening.

If you want to go to that, by the way, tickets are still available.