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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Visuals Are Bad All Around

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  February 1st, 2010 at 10:40 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Bart Stupak is learning a valuable lesson in dealing with Barack Obama.

The visuals all around on this look bad — especially with the Winter Olympics coming up.

Congress funds a $1 million scholarship fund at Northern Michigan University for aspiring Olympic athletes. Robert Costa notesthe scholarship was renamed in 1998 for Bart Stupak’s son who had committed suicide.

Stupak, you will remember, insisted that Obamacare not fund abortion, even against the wishes of Barack Obama.

On Monday morning, when Obama unveiled his budget he had killed the B. J. Stupak scholarship for aspiring Olympians. The Olympics begin in ten days.

Classy.

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COMMENTS

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  • corky

    It should be illegal for anyone to name anything for an employee of the United State government, or any of their family members, as long as they are in government–and for some period after as well.

    And this is why politics sucks:

    This “cut” should be something we Redstaters should support. Same thing for Medicare cuts.

    Instead, we will probably use it to score cheap political points.

    (Not saying Erik is necessarily doing this cuz he never said he was against this cut but…)

  • smitch61

    What the hell is congress giving money to any school for any aspiring olympians…..I live in Michigan too…… It should be cut. God only knows what Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin have here in their name.

  • redtillimdead

    Stupak is a roadblock to ObamaCare. He is the main reason the Senate bill can not pass the House. Obama needs revenge.

  • mbecker908

    he’s got bigger cajones than the entire Republican Party in DC.

  • homefree1

    The federal government has not business funding these type of things. It is this kind of largess that got us into this trouble to begin with. Time to cut all such programs from the peoples budget.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    I sneeze $1M in Federal funding every week. $1M will pay for a grand total of *3* people.

    How about we focus on things that matter? Cause when we go all absolutist over $1M, we look foolish.

    This is political payback, and it cost WAY more than $1M to just find this program in order to kill it. Not that I think it is actually dead, the executive branch can’t defund anything.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    Cutting “such programs from the people’s budget” will have no noticeable effect. This $1M represents .000000033% of the budget. If we were talking about time, it would be about 1 second saved out of a year.

    And don’t bother with the line about “but all of them added together”, cause that’s a strawman. All of them together won’t approach the unfunded liabilities in the entitlement programs.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    He may be looking to ride his meaningless Stupakid (Stupak sham – how the Stupid (er.. Stupak) Amendment was all a sham vote and Forest for the Trees, + Hyde – setup backdoor challenge to Hyde (Abortion funding restrictions)) Amendment to the MI Governorship… They (Democrats) hope that the BarackLash might pass them by if they can somehow slice off enough Pro-Life Independents while convincing their Pro-ABORTION base to go along with the nomination as the only chance they’ll retain control.

  • Flagstaff

    But it’s the Chicago Way.

  • proudgop

    he already announced he won’t run for Governor

    He may be right on pro life issue I still would like to see Republican pick up his seat

  • Carol Tarasewicz

    The One is vindictive, isn’t he? It is not the money, it was a direct slap from Obama to Stupak, but he can’t defund anything. Congress is supposed to fund things, or did Obama take that away, I’m sure he’ll try it.

  • ModernAgeFan

    Look at this from the President’s point of view. Republicans can’t fault him for cutting the budget, because that is what we want. And Obama gets his revenge against one of the people that delayed the passing of the health care bill in the house. It shows just how petty Obama can be. The money is barely a drop in the bucket but it helps to send a message to everyone listening. Cross Obama and he will find a way to hurt you, because in Chicago they always keep score. This is a good lesson for any Republican out there that might think about working with this administration in any meaningful way.

  • JSobieski

    I realize that killing Obamacare was not his objective, but unlike a lot of so called Blue Dogs, Stupak, who is not a Blue Dog, did not sell out his principles.

    I would still vote against him if I lived in his district, at least with him, you can believe him when he says what his principles are.

  • zbigreddogz

    If he ran against a really good Republican, I’d vote for the Republican, but I’d have to be convinced the guy is a man of substance and principle.

    I disagree with Stupak on many things, but he’s proven himself to be a man that I agree with on some key issues that has more integrity then the VAST majority of Congress. I’d at least consider voting for him unless the Republican was really great.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    is the whole trap, and seeing it already, is Republicans on about “my candidate is the only worthy Governor candidate” BS…. and then the opportunity is missed by people stupidly having latched themselves onto the CULT following issue rather than building a movement to reclaiming the Governorship with “person whomever” as their first choice but the stakes being too high to sit out like a child throwing a temper tantrum you get when folks hang up on Personalities (as we already see too much of on the National 2012 Presidential level).

  • 6eorge Jetson

    then by all means, let’s be grateful for Inspector Clouseau.

    As pointed out by JSobieski, grateful doesn’t mean voting for him, however.

  • marshmom

    And an overinflated one at that. This man is delusional enough to believe that everyone is in love with him as he is with himself.

  • jonreagan

    This shot at Bart Stupak gives new meaning to the word petty, but I’m not surprised at anything this President does. Beyond this sad incident, Obama’s obsession with unfriendly media, e.g., his attempts to silence Fox News, really is reminiscent of RMN’s obsession with a very hostile and liberal press.

    Thin-skinned, petulant, and intrinsically dishonest: Barack Obama has all of Nixon’s undesirable qualities, and none of his good ones.

  • bs

    I have been beating that drum so hard that my ears are bleeding from the noise. We need to stop wasting our time on the nickel and dime stuff. Entitlements are the issue. As I mentioned in my diary on Obama’s alleged “spending freeze”, only 15% of the non-military federal budget is discretionary. The concern needs to be focused on the ever-growing Social Security, Medicare and related entitlement spending. The other stuff is rounding error.

  • bs

    and everything to do with what a petty, vindictive twerp we have inhabiting the Oval Office.

  • discerningconservative

    and everything to do with revenge. That is the real problem. I don’t like ridiculous earmarks as much as the next redstater, but when they are eliminated as revenge for not getting what you want… that is a problem. This arrogant SOB is just bullying people who don’t go along to get along. That is the big problem.

  • JSobieski

    merits better than a “Inspector Clouseau” characterization.

    I would gladly vote the guy out of office and donate money to a Stupak statue commemorating his integrity and celebrating his role in stopping Obamacare..

  • joebgardener

    http://www.zerohedge.com/article/obamas-budget-has-one-small-missing-piece-63-trillion-dollars

    Today, to much fanfare, the administration released its ridiculous $3+ trillion budget (we say + because at that size the one thing certain is that the budget will certainly never hit the target and while we wish it would be lower, we are certain it will end up materially higher), which consists of a “short” 192-page summary section and a 1420 page appendix. We are confident that not one politician will read the whole thing from cover to cover. We won’t either. Not because we don’t care about what’s in it, but because we are much more concerned with what is not included, namely $2.8 Trillion and $1.9 Trillion of MBS guaranteed portfolios at Fannie and Freddie, and an additional $782 billion and $809 billion in company debt outstanding for the two GSEs, respectively. This amounts to a total of $6.3 trillion in liabilities which should be counted toward the budget.

  • mbecker908

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see him order the Marines to seal off the Republicans somewhere. Bush should have done that. Or bombed the Capitol.

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    What really sucks is that BO can use the same logic you are, in saying that the GOP should approve of the cut.

    But the reality is, whether we like it or not, we can still — and SHOULD still use it to point out yet another instance of Obama’s Chicago thug politicking.

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    What If Bush Did It?

    Cutting spending on something is contrary to the Democrat agenda. So the question has to be asked, why did he do it? The answer is pure and simple chicago thug revenge politics.

    We need to hit this, and hard.

  • AceInTX

    this is the price to be paid for going against la familia…this is personal to Stupac because it’s a memorial to the guy’s kid…therefore a perfect way for Rahm, David and the rest of the dons to send a message to any other Democrats that would dare leave the reservation.

    This is more subtle but as unmistakable a message as waking up in blood soaked silken sheets with your favorite horses head in your bed.

  • http://www.helpawhiteguy.com livefreenh

    He can simply claim that he never read the whole thing, thus absolving himself from any responsibility.

  • AceInTX

    you are right this shouldn’t be funded at all…but the point isn’t that because I guarantee you there are more examples in the budget like this that wasn’t cut….

    the point is this is obviously a petty message being sent that there is a price to be paid for crossing the golden child!

  • renny

    the other NEA, you would see we give grants for art profs to “appreciate Renaissance paintings in Florence, IT” and pay for private piano lessons for a Harlem girl who has to rent a piano and send a high school British lit. teacher to Japan to look for Shakespeare’s influence (this one happened in my own school system, and everyone was overjoyed that she got the grant).

    The whole Rube Goldberg system, mostly invented by Johnson, of grants and more recently earmarks is rife with fed gov’t monies going to private citizens for what those people should pay for by themselves.

    The tax code is 3-feet thick–one person cannot pick up all the volumes together.

    If we end nothing, we should make a major Rep./cons. push to return private responsibility to the ind. and relieve gov’t of paying for personal incidentals.

    The kicker is that the Dems. saw long ago that all this money shoveled out of the fed budget is going to buy votes on a large scale over and over again.

  • Return to Revolution

    Give a narcissistic tyrant the power of POTUS and he can kill two birds with one stone. Not only does he kick Stupak in the teeth, he kicks all associated with the Olympics – also on his enemies list. Just too good an opportunity to pass up.

  • DirtyDave

    I know politics can be rough and pay-backs are hell, but this just seems childish and petty. Small minded stuff from a small mined man.

    Obama may talk a good game, but he really is the drunk loud mouth at the end of a bar who annoys everyone and eventually the bartender has to ask him to be quiet or leave. He stalks out telling one and all he will never come back, but he does the next day because he has not enough imagination to go elsewhere.

    Two years, eleven months to go.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    It was in a narrow sense of the “killing Obamacare (that) was not his objective”.
    And Inspector Clouseau can be an endearing character.

    Note to self: be wary of giddyness.

  • streiff

    things I’ve read in a while.

    The fact that an object or program is named after someone in government is not a reason to either support or oppose the object or program.

    Politics may “suck” for a lot of reasons, but if you’re going down to this level to find objections then I’d submit we have achieved perfection.

  • Alberta
  • rwalkerg

    Obama got ‘dismissed’ by the Olympic committee too!

  • realskinny

    who voted for Pelosi a man of integrity. Period.

  • AceInTX

    but no…this as about Stupack

  • AceInTX

    But this has to be looked at through the prism of the liberal mind…

    Whether the program is legitimate for federal funds…and whether it should be named after Stupack’s kid are totally separate arguments….and I am in total agreement on those points…but they are entirely beside the point Erick is making…

    This is Obama being petty and getting back at Stupack for dashing his legacy of HCR against the rocks…and it’s a warning to other Dems that there is a price to be paid for going against “The One”.

    Whether what I said is dunderheaded or not is a matter of opinion…and opinions are like…

    Well, you know the rest…LOL

  • rangerwife

    …though we want these excessive programs cut (I don’t even know why half of them exist) the $5 million to the NEA for artists to smear crap on pictures of Jesus won’t get touched…nor will the grants to schools for LGBT sensitivity education for our elementary children. It should be a no brainer what should get cut out of the budget, but instead we get funding for scientists to figure out why pigs’ fecal matter smells bad. No joke. Why doesn’t BO cut these useless programs along with the Olympics scholarships? Then it would at least make a little bit of a difference…

    And that’s what really sucks about government. It IS all political, and about which buddies’ projects they are going to fund next with our money. Disgusting.

  • http://havacupojoe.wordpress.com/ Joe

    Obama has to cut funding from hard working young Americans dedicated to a goal that requires their very best efforts over a long period of time. After all his base needs all the help he can provide so they have a reason to get out of bed and make their way to the mailbox twice a month.
    The young people striving to win gold this year are better off without government money. This way when they win they will realize that Big Brother Barack was not needed for them to succeed.