I though the stimulus was working.
Sean Hannity brings us some video of Joe Biden this week contradicting everything we have heard from the White House so far. According to Joe Biden, the American economy is not in a recession, but a depression.
We’ve got the video. And we owe Hannity a big thanks because you and I both know everyone else would bury this but for Sean and Fox News. No wonder the White House has declared war on them.
H/t to Justin Hart too.
RRRAAAACCCCIIIIISSSSSSTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s what the MSM had to say in comments about Rush Limbaugh’s recent bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams. According to some guy I overheard at the mall, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that Limbaugh owning the Rams “is exactly the same as slavery, but fatter.” And then there’s what Helen Thomas probably said, “Rush to what window? With a ram? Where’s my sweater?”
So in honor of the controversy, I’ve compiled a top ten list of some completely ridiculous but totally true and not fake quotes of famous people who are not (or so they claim) Rush Limbaugh. These are, like, so teh true. For really real. Really. No … really.
9. Howard Dean reaches out: “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”
8. California Democrat Diane Watson thinks interracial marriage is icky: “He’s married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.”
7. Howard Dean thinks service positions are for minorities, not big fancy white people: “You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? … Only if they had the hotel staff in here.”
6. Joe Biden explains why southern Democrats should vote for him: “My state was a slave state.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, whose decision not to seek a third term as governor sparked immense speculation among Republicans about a 2012 campaign, announced today he will launch the “Freedom First” PAC in early November, granting him the opportunity to curry favor among the party faithful by raising and transferring sums of money to state and federal Republican candidates.
After launching a website last week describing Pawlenty as “extreme,” the Democratic National Committee today characterized the potential 2012 contender as a “part-time Governor” after news surfaced he was to launch a political action committee.
“Tim Pawlenty is quickly becoming the definition of ’say one thing and do another’. Today’s news about Pawlenty starting a political action committee is just the latest in a series of broken pledges by the Governor - first breaking his pledge to not raise taxes on the people of Minnesota, and now breaking his pledge to finish his term ‘strong’ as Governor,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.
“This is just more evidence that Pawlenty is, at best, a part-time Governor who cares more about his national political ambitions than the people of Minnesota,” he said in an email to reporters this afternoon.
While the formation of PACs are indeed a signature of budding presidential campaigns, Democrats have not always been of the opinion they somehow represent a “broken pledge” or a dereliction of duty, as one political advisor close to Pawlenty noted.
Then-Senator Hillary Clinton filed a statement of organization for her leadership PAC, “HILLPAC,” on January 5, 2001, spending eight years as a “part-time” Senator before leaving her post in 2009.
On June 25, 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama announced the formation of “Hope Fund,” whose donations to politicians in key 2008 primary states raised questions of legality on the level of coordination between the PAC and the Obama campaign.
And four days after the official formation of Obama’s “Hope Fund” PAC, then-Senator Joe Biden filed a statement of organization with the FEC for his “Unite our States” PAC, in anticipation of his campaign for president in 2008.
Via @baseballcrank, promises, promises:
Vice President Joe Biden said today that if Democrats were to lose 35 House seats they currently hold in traditionally Republican districts, it would mean doomsday for President Obama’s agenda.
Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats.
“If they take them back, this the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do,” the vice president said at a fundraiser for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) today in Greenville, Delaware.
Giffords, Giffords, Giffords: where have we heard that name before? Right: she was one of the Democrats who ran and hid from her constituents during the August town halls. As I recall, she was so scared of them that she only felt safe on a military base - which was an impressive display of cowardice, even for a Blue-in-Red Democratic Member of Congress.
Yes, definitely, she needs to be one of the Thirty-Five. I’m thinking that it’s going to be Jesse Kelly for this one: his website is here and you can contribute here.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Contra Allahpundit. As one of Jake Tapper’s commenters noted, that way nobody else would have been able to get a word in edgewise. Looking at the body language, that might have been for the best.
This really is iconic for Dizzy City, isn’t it? Four guys sitting around trying to pretend that their casual meet-and-greet-with-smiles-that-don’t-reach-the-eyes aren’t being filmed by umpteen billion different members of the media. No wonder the cameras kept moving around: the people that weren’t having cold beer were just as much part of the story as the people that were.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
I’m quite positive there have been Presidents and Vice Presidents to use Jesus Christ’s name as a swear word.
I’m also quite sure Joe Biden is the first one to use the Lord’s name as a swear word in an interview.
Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue if the Vice President of the United States used the name of Islam’s supreme being as a curse word? They rioted all over the Muslim world when a Danish newspaper cartoonist penned a series of satiric pieces on Mohammed, so making “Allah” a curse word would likely incite far more serious violence. And does anybody doubt that the editorial pages of The New York Times and other liberal newspapers would instantly demand an apology before further damage is done to A America’s supposed standing in the world.
So where is the uproar over Vice President Joe Biden’s incredible use of “Jesus Christ” as a curse word?
In an attempt to defend the trillion-dollar health care overhaul bills currently being marked up in Congress, and to shift attention from his own actions to those of his predecessor, President Barack Obama (D-IL) declared in his July 18 radio address that “The same folks who controlled the White House and Congress for the past eight years as we ran up record deficits will argue — believe it or not — that health reform will lead to record deficits. That’s simply not true.”
Leave aside for the moment the fact that any deficit-spending records set in “the past eight years” were wiped out by Obama himself within a single month of taking office, and that the President’s ire was misdirected (it was the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, who made that indictment of the health overhaul bills currently in Congress).The fact is, Obama’s claim to suddenly care about deficit spending at all is belied by his actions and his administration’s statements on a range of issues, from nationalized health care to the so-called “stimulus” package.
In that radio address, Obama urged legislators to “seize this opportunity – one we might not have again for generations – and finally pass health insurance reform this year.” He issued what was intended to sound like a warning along with that plea, saying, “I want to be very clear [that] I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade.”
While this statement was carefully worded to sound to the American people like an admonition to legislators against producing a health care overhaul bill that isn’t revenue-neutral, the phrase “deficits over the next decade” is a direct reference to the recommended “Pay-As-You-Go” (or “PayGo”) policy Obama asked Congress to pass in June.
James Lileks is either less merely elementally offended by the Vice President that we’ve been saddled with, or else he’s better at hiding it:
It takes years of yoga to learn the posture necessary for speaking clearly with all your feet in your mouth. But for some the skill comes naturally, which brings us to Joe Biden. Those who saw Dick Cheney as an evil genius crouched silent in the shadows of the Oval Office like Nosferatu must enjoy Biden’s high profile: he’s out there daily with the sunny enthusiasm of Ronald McDonald opening another store. And, quite often, telling everyone to have a Whopper.
Read the whole thing, and no need to point out that Whoppers come from Burger King: remember, this is Biden that we’re talking about, here. Unlike Lileks, I’m not convinced that the VP’s unrehearsed comments represent the thinking of this administration, mostly because I’m not convinced that there’s anything that represents the thinking of this administration. The slapdash strategy of the White House towards pursuing its goals - which apparently can be summed up in two words: ’sign something‘ - could be easily making the Vice President’s utterances look more important than they actually are. After all, we’ve become accustomed to having someone who should be taken seriously being in that spot - so when POTUS is giving us rhetoric with the semantic content of tapioca pudding, it seems natural to assume that VPOTUS at least is providing something with more heft to it. Whether this is a justified assumption, or not.
Still, either way… you know, ‘they told me that if I voted for John McCain‘ we’d end up with a Vice President who kept mucking up things on a fundamental level - and they were right.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Anyone who remembers, say, his campaign pronouncement that a Kansas tornado had left “ten thousand dead” and “an entire town destroyed” (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve people) knows that President Barack Obama (D-IL) hasn’t been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.
However, his dogged refusal to deviate from his standard talking point of “150,000 jobs created or saved” by the $787,000,000,000.00 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the “stimulus package,” or, my personal favorite, “Porkulus”) is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching by observers.
Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now. On May 27, “White House economic advisers” announced the “stimulus” had “created or saved 150,000 jobs” since its inception 100 days before — an average increase (or savings) of about 1,500 jobs a day. Twelve days later, on June 8, Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) made the same proclamation on a conference call with reporters: the stimulus had “saved or created 150,000 [jobs]” to date.
Theoretically, there should have been about 18,000 more jobs than that, given the twelve day interval between the May 27 announcement and the June 8 call, but never mind that. Just for good measure, despite the fact economists and simple observers who had the virtue of being awake alike were throwing up their hands in disbelief that a presidential administration would actually make such a claim about something as obviously incalculable as a “saved” job, Biden added the assertion that there had been “no ‘reasonable’ challenges to the estimates.”
Last Wednesday, July 8 — a full 30 days after the Biden conference call, and 42 after the initial 100 day claim of “150,000 jobs created or saved,” Mr. Obama’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget announced the “stimulus” had — you guessed it! — “created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February.”
Is the White House’s well-oiled communications machine coming undone less than six months after President Obama took office?
Based on the past few days of mounting criticism regarding Obama’s top achievement — passage of the $787 billion stimulus — it appears that cracks are beginning to form. The administration wants to avoid distractions from its quest for government-run health care, but the mismanaged stimulus, combined with 9.5% unemployment, make it difficult.
Conservatives should not let this opportunity go to waste.
It started last Thursday with news that unemployment reached its highest level in 26 years. Vice President Joe Biden’s admission Sunday that the administration “misread the economy” prompted Obama to interrupt his scripted Russia trip to clarify Biden’s gaffe. “Rather than say ‘misread,’ we had incomplete information,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.
There was more bad news today with a Government Accountability Report that contradicted Obama’s own statements about the stimulus. The GAO report even prompted the president’s die-hard supporters at the Center for American Progress to disagree with Obama whether the stimulus should be used to prevent layoffs or pay for longer-term projects to boost the economy.
Perhaps the strongest signal that the administration is nervous came yesterday afternoon when Biden’s office announced a panicked trip to Ohio in the wake of new polling from Quinnipiac University. Obama’s approval rating in Ohio over the past two months dropped from 62% to 49%. It took an even bigger dip among Ohio independents, falling from 59 percent to 38 percent. The president’s ratings on the economy are even worse.
The annoying bit is that we can’t even put the Vice President in an undisclosed location, given that he’s already gone out and disclosed it. I would write that it’s days like this that make me miss Dick Cheney, except that doing so would imply that I’ve ever stopped doing so since 01/20/2009.
Biden comments drive metal manufacturers lower
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of major metal manufacturers traded sharply lower Monday, a day after Vice President Joe Biden said the White House “misread” the economy, prompting concerns that an economic recovery could be slower than expected.
[snip]
During the second quarter, commodity prices “went through the roof,” and investors snapped up metal makers stocks on word that the economy was “less bad” than before, he said.
But, now, the market has switched its thinking amid broader concerns about the economy, he said.
See here for a link to the interview (Hot Air for the H/T). About the only thing that you can say about it is that at least the White House hasn’t sent out people to retract the economic portions yet - unlike, for example, the VP’s recent comments that could be read as the USA giving permission to Israel to bomb Iran (via Sense of Events). But the ‘pace of the ball is now going to increase,’ at least - and if you know what that actually means, I’m not sure whether to be envious of, or worried about you.
Just another Monday in this, the best of all possible worlds…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Mike Pence offers a little pep talk to conservatives via YouTube. He’s ready to fight are you?
Recent admissions of extramarital affairs by Mark Sanford and John Ensign resulted in heavy media coverage and constant generalizations about Republicans’ hypocrisy concerning family values. The mainstream media’s fascination with GOP affairs is likely fueled, not by a desire to “get” Republicans, but by a worldview that makes it difficult to view those who preach conservative social values as sincere. That said, it’s fair for the media to highlight hypocrisy. I just wish the MSM applied a more bipartisan standard to hypocrisy, such as when sensitivity-preaching Democrats make racially insensitive remarks (e.g., Joe Biden), pro-labor liberals shaft their workers (e.g., Al Franken), or self-righteous greens contribute far more than their share to mankind’s carbon footprint (e.g., Al Gore). Instead, the opposite rule seems to apply: a politician’s history of liberal rhetoric is taken as evidence that no harm was intended by what would otherwise be viewed as hypocritical behavior.
Cross-posted at Politico.
[UPDATE] In honor of Troglopundit’s request for respect for the KISS principle, here goes:
Fred Weiderhold quit rather than tell Congress he was under Biden’s thumb.
If you don’t have time to read the report that apparently triggered the Weiderhold matter (said report is also available via Senator Grassley’s office, as part of his ongoing investigation) - or even Stacy McCain’s article - here’s a quick timeline.
Well, sometimes the story isn’t complex. Please read on - but one last summary detail: the General Counsel for Amtrak is Eleanor Acheson, who is well-connected with the Biden family.
It turns out that former Amtrak IG Fred Wiederhold quit right after Senator Grassley started asking some questions.
As a senior member of the United States Senate and as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance (Committee), it is my duty under the Constitution to ensure that Inspectors General, which were created by Congress, are permitted to operate without political pressure or interference from their respective agencies. Inspectors General were designed for the express purpose of combating waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions. I understand that Inspector General Fred Weiderhold, Jr. has retired today.
Based on contacts that my staff had with Mr. Weiderhold on two recent occasions (April 2, 2009 and June 4, 2009), I understand that the OIG has suffered from repeated and continuous interference from the agency. After the most recent discussion, it was agreed that the OIG would provide, among other things, a White Paper and specific examples of agency interference with OIG audits and/or investigations. To date, the OIG has not yet provided any documents. As you know, any interference such as that was described in these previous discussions is a direct violation of the Inspector General Act of 1978.
In light of Mr. Weiderhold’s unexpected retirement, please provide the previously requested documentation immediately.
This is just ridiculous. Funny, but ridiculous.
Joe Biden today told law enforcement officials that Judge Sotomayor “gets what it takes to keep our communities safe and our streets clean.”
Joe, she is not applying to be either a policeman or janitor.
Vice President gaff-o-matic strikes again. Construction finally began on the nation’s largest transportation project in North Bergen, New Jersey this week. After much debate and planning an $8.7 billion tunnel that is supposed to double the number of train commuters that can travel between New Jersey and Manhattan broke ground at last.
Vice President Joe Biden was so excited about the tunnel that he mentioned the project on a Monday conference call with various newspapers and interested parties in New Jersey. He was proud that the Obama administration had sent stimulus money to this new tunnel “designed to provide for automobile traffic” for New Jersey.
Uh, oops. It’s a railway tunnel, not a car tunnel, Joey.
Vice President Joe Biden is the sort of person who must be taken everywhere twice: the second time, to apologize*.
Gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden backtracked yesterday from comments he made at a Democratic fund-raiser in Manhattan that were widely viewed as an endorsement of Gov. Paterson’s re-election.
[snip]
Speaking of Paterson Monday night, the loose-lipped Biden said, “Your once and future governor of the state of New York has been extremely generous to Barack and me and has been a major part of us trying to put this economy back together.
The New York Post goes into more, possibly even loving, detail (including a greatest hits recap of his gaffes as VP: which is impressive, considering that it’s only June) - and why would they not be loving? Biden gives them copy every time he opens his mouth. Good copy, for them: for the rest of us, well, not so much. I’ve been spoiled by eight years of having a functional sort of person being placed in that spot: the new arrangement isn’t nearly as satisfactory. In fact, the idea of ever having to write “Joe Biden, President of the United States! Dear God!” fills me with existential dread. Which may have been a calculation.
Or, as Don Surber (H/T) put it: “Well, they said if I voted for Sarah Palin we would put an imbecile one heartbeat from the presidency. I did… and they were right!”
Moe Lane
Providing an object lesson on the hazards of sharing secrets with a man who has no unexpressed thoughts, the undisclosed location is undisclosed no longer:
