Bloodthirsty Liberal

I’m thinking!

Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.

Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.

Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004.

…

Vowing in 2008 to ‘launch the most sweeping ethics reform in US history’ Obama said that if elected he would ‘make government more open, more accountable and more responsive to the problems of the American people’.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama bemoaned the ‘corrosive influence of money in politics’. The following month, he reversed course and announced he was allowing cabinet members and top advisors to speak at big money events for so-called super PACs – unaccountable outside groups raising money for his re-election.

During the 2008 election, Obama abandoned a pledge to opt for public funding of his campaign, instead opting to raise an unlimited amount privately. He then raised and spent approximately $730million, almost double the campaign funds of Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent.

Boy, they almost say it: Obama is full of [bleep]. Almost, but not quite.

Of course, in libel law, truth is an absolute defense.

When President Obama said he wouldn’t do business with lobbyists, it turns out it was only the Israeli lobby he meant:

Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.

More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.

If it’s still not clear to you, let’s run it through the human translator:

Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply a part of “how this business works.”

“If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I do my part.”

Mr. Kennedy visited the White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they face.

Is this hope—sorry, Hope? It’s clearly not Change (at $100,000 per audience, not chump change anyway). If this is what you voted for, fine. But don’t tell me he’s anything but a charlatan and a carnival barker. Don’t wast your breath and my time.

I went through Obama’s extortionist warning to the Supreme Court yesterday. (“Nice robe ya got there. Shame if it burst into flame. While you were wearing it.”)

But his words were so layered with lies, one slipped past me. He referred to a democratically elected Congress. My first thought, as I’m sure was yours, was what Congress is not democratically elected?

And then I remembered how the Democrat-controlled Massachusetts legislature rigged the succession law twice in recent history—once to hog-tie a Republican governor, then more recently to allow Democrat Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a Kennedy coat-holder (who even remembers his name?) to fill out Ted Kennedy’s term.

Is that the sort of democratic process Obama was referring to?

UPDATE:

More of the Democrat process:

Felony charges related to election fraud have touched the 2008 race for the highest office in the land.

Prosecutors in South Bend, Ind., filed charges Monday against four St. Joseph County Democratic officials and deputies as part of a multiple-felony case involving the alleged forging of Democratic presidential primary petitions in the 2008 election, which put then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Indiana ballot.

The officials are accused of taking part in a scheme to fake signatures and names on the primary petitions needed to run for president. Court papers say the plan was hatched by local Democratic Party officials inside the local party headquarters.

And more Democrats behaving badly [via reader Yerushalimey]:

The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.”

Dani Gilbert, who has been a staffer in the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), was recently appointed as the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish outreach liaison, according to her Twitter feed.

Photos publicly available on her Facebook page depict her engaged in the kind of youthful displays that social media like Facebook and Twitter have made increasingly common and problematic for young Washington staffers.

In one photo, Gilbert is seen kissing paper currency of undetermined denomination. The caption at the bottom of the photo reads “JEWBAGS.” A comment left on the posting refers to Gilbert and a coterie of female companions as the “Jew cash money team.” Other photos depict Gilbert as a bit of a party girl, including one featuring an assortment of condoms.

…

Update (9:31 p.m.): A senior GOP aide with close ties to the Jewish community emailed the Washington Free Beacon in response to this report.

“A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle know Dani and these photos do not reflect her professionalism,” the aide wrote.

No, she just looks to be an idiot. But then, look at her party affiliation.

Somewhere, Justice Alito is shaking his head and saying “Not true.”

“Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama told reporters today while speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Obama reminded reporters that conservative commentators, have complained about “judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint,” that “an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

First of all, that’s what the Supreme Court is supposed to do. It’s not “unprecedented”—in fact, it started in 1803! Marbury v Madison ring a bell, Mr. Law Review President? The Supremes have declared unconstitutional a total of 158 laws passed by “a democratically elected Congress” between 1798 and 2002, about one every year and a half.

“Strong majority”? By seven votes in the House—the ayes being unanimously Democrats, the nays a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans. So, that’s that lie dispensed with.

And “judicial activism”? The court spent a lot of time discussing how to avoid it! They didn’t want to be in a position of picking and choosing politically favored programs in the law—at least the conservative justices didn’t. Ginsburg seemed to think the law was peachy because it provided health care for “Indians” (feather, presumably, not dot), and why should Congress have to start all over again? But the court can’t rewrite the law; it can only deliver an opinion on whether it passes Constitutional muster.

So, this is all a bunch of bull crap from a president who slings it like a Cy Young Award winner.

Which is his history:

Lie like mother[bleepers] together.

Obama on Solyndra:

Several key White House offices were involved with the Obama administration’s messaging plans and other preparations as the collapse of the taxpayer-backed solar company Solyndra was imminent, newly released documents show.

The latest White House documents delivered to House Republicans on Friday again highlight the extent to which senior administration officials braced for the fallout as Solyndra – a company President Obama had personally visited – was about to go under.

A White House memo that noted the danger of “imminent bankruptcy” at the end of August 2011 says, “OMB, DPC and NEC have been working with press and OLA to be prepared for this news to break.”

Acronym translation: OMB is the Office of Management and Budget, DPC is the Domestic Policy Council, NEC is the National Economic Council and OLA is the Office of Legal Affairs.

I have to give it up to a commenter at The Hill for noticing:

They had been “working with the Press” to release the bad news? Just who does the Press work for in this country?

Do you even have to ask?

Anyway, remember the piece we linked to yesterday, the one where Obama was deploying ten-foot poles all over the place to keep scandals a safe distance away?

“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand, this was not our program per se. Congress–Democrats and Republicans–put together a loan guarantee program.”

- March 22, 2012

“This was not our program per se.” Could we at least have a glass of lemonade to wash down this horse[bleep]?

And now to Obama’s dear friend, Jon Corzine.

Former MF Global executive Edith O’Brien said in an October 2011 email that CEO Jon Corzine gave her “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million of customer funds to an overseas account, according to a congressional memo released on Friday.

The memo was released in advance of a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing scheduled next week on the collapse of brokerage MF Global and the continued search for missing customer funds. The committee this week subpoenaed O’Brien to appear before the panel.

The $200 million transfer in customer funds from a JPMorgan account was made to cover a $175 million overdraft in one of MF Global’s accounts in London, the memo said.

Sorry for the Fox News account. Somehow CNN doesn’t have the story.

Obama and Corzine go so well together. Between them, the entire globe has been royally MF-ed.

I was talking with Aggie a couple of days ago, making the point that I have to rely on the reporting of others even to be aware that other parts of the world exist. I believe in Nebraska, because I’ve see almost every flat mile of it (at least that which can be seen from Interstate 80, which is most of it, given the flatness).

But Banda Aceh? Uzbekistan? Patagonia? They exist? If you say so, I’ll have to take your word for it.

The same holds true for what the press doesn’t report. If Obama’s entire history and record were reported—not judged, just reported, let us judge—we would have a better idea of who he is and what motivates him. And we could judge fairly whether we want him for our leader. That didn’t happen in 2008.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose:

That thick black smoke just over the horizon isn’t from another BP oil rig fire. It’s President Obama’s mom jeans engulfed in flames:

President Barack Obama’s struggled to defend his price-boosting energy policies during a speech in Cushing, Okla., today, even as rapidly spreading criticism and rising gas prices damage his poll ratings.

“He was incredibly defensive because little of what he says is true — that’s his dilemma,” said Dan Kish, a vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research.

Speaking off-the-cuff, Obama mistakenly said that “we only produce 2 percent of the world’s oil.”

According to the federal government’s energy administration, the United States produces 10 percent of the world’s production, making it the third-largest oil producing nation.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. … This is the most incompetent administration I’ve ever seen — and I started under [President] Jimmy Carter,” Kish said.

…

[I]n his Prince George’s speech, Obama claimed that even if “we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up those rigs everywhere, we’d still have only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.” In New Mexico, Obama declared, “even if we drilled every square inch of this country, we’d still only have 2 or 3 or 4 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.”

That’s just simply wrong. The United States has the same number of barrels of proven oil reserves — 22 billion — today as it did in the 1940s. That’s because new sources of oil kept getting found, more-difficult-to-obtain oil suddenly became more economically viable, new oil-extraction techniques gained favor, and so forth.

So, in light of the president’s statement in Prince George’s County (and in New Mexico), we are going to change our ruling to Two Pinocchios.

No, no, no, you have it wrong. You can keep your doctor, and Bill Ayers was just some guy who lived in my neighborhood. I will accept public financing in my campaign, and I never heard Jeremiah Wright say anything remotely controversial. And if he did, it was Bush’s fault.

People will be torn. On the one hand, the media machine is about to blow a gasket keeping this guy’s story aloft; on the other, people fill their gas tanks every few days to a week. Only one reality can win.

Plus or minus a trillion is a reasonable margin of error… on Pluto!

The deficit for the next fiscal year would reach $977 billion if President Barack Obama’s latest budget plan were enacted, the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday, slightly higher than the White House’s own estimate.

The CBO’s much-anticipated analysis of the Obama plan, which would raise taxes on the wealthy and increase near-term spending on infrastructure and education, shows that the fiscal 2014 deficit would also be slightly higher than White House estimates.

…

But with the Obama plan’s deficits only falling below a half-trillion dollars for one year in the next 10 – 2017 – the CBO analysis likely will not deter Republicans from their election-year campaign to slam it as a tax-and-spend plan that supports big government.

You know those Republicans, always slamming something (usually women)! Even when Barack worked so hard to get the annual deficit down to $500,000,000,000 in 2017. (Obama will just be a bad memory by then.)

Just so you can compare what he’s done to what he said:

“This is big,” wrote White House director of new media Macon Phillips in a February 23, 2009 blog post, ”the President today promised that by the end of his first term, he will cut in half the massive federal deficit we’ve inherited. And we’ll do it in a new way: honestly and candidly.”

Indeed, President Obama did make that promise that day, saying, “today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

The 2013 budget the president submitted today does not come close to meeting this promise of being reduced to $650 billion for fiscal year 2013.

The president noted in that 2009 speech the Obama administration inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.

The deficit was similarly $1.3 trillion in 2011, is projected to be $1.15 trillion in 2012, and the president’s budget claims it will be $901 billion in 2013.

Make that $997 billion, if you’re counting. The CBO also just told us ObamaCare is going to cost twice what we were lied to.

In fact, pretty much everything Obama says is a lie, including “and” and “the”:

There have always been folks like that. There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?” (Laughter.) That’s why he’s not on Mt. Rushmore — (laughter and applause).

…

We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama’s ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.

…

Wait, so Hayes didn’t even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? “No, no,” Card confirmed.

She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes’s delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, “a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, “looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, ‘That is wonderful.’”

I won’t state it as fact, but will assert that it is my strongly held belief that the president is a dingleberry.

Obama swings and misses:

Now, because of these new standards for cars and trucks, they’re going to — all going to be able to go further and use less fuel every year. And that means pretty soon you’ll be able to fill up your car every two weeks instead of every week -– and, over time, that saves you, a typical family, about $8,000 a year.

…

Except it’s not true.

The new White House CAFE standards would save owners about $8,200 over the life of the car in 2010 dollars, with the per-year savings in the high hundreds – nothing to sneeze at, but not quite eight large a year.

Just take a hit of that breathalyzer, Barack, and you’ll be fine. File under “fuzzy math”. Or maybe not fuzzy so much as gory:

The evidence is overwhelming that CAFE standards result in more highway deaths. A 1999 USA TODAY analysis of crash data and estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that, in the years since CAFE standards were mandated under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, about 46,000 people have died in crashes that they would have survived if they had been traveling in bigger, heavier cars. This translates into 7,700 deaths for every mile per gallon gained by the standards.

Yes, but wouldn’t a greater proportion of those deaths likely be liberal do-gooders eager to help the planet?

I’m just trying to help…

It depends on the meaning of “is”:

Testifying before Congress this morning, President Obama’s acting budget director Jeffrey Zients directly undercut one of the administration’s key legal defenses of its national health care law as it nears a hearing before the Supreme Court.

In a hearing of the House Budget Committee Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., pressed Zients on whether the penalty that the health care law imposes on individuals who do not purchase health insurance constitutes a tax. Eventually, Zients said it did not.

But this directly contradicts one of the arguments the Obama administration is making before the Supreme Court in defense of the health care law, which is that the mandate is Constitutional because it’s a tax and government has taxing power.

This has always been a tricky argument for the Obama administration, because admitting that the mandate is a tax means that Obama violated his pledge not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000. In September 2009, Obama told ABC’s George Stephanapoulos that the mandate was not a tax. But by the following June, his administration was arguing in court that it was.

Now the administration is making both arguments simultaneously. Before Congress, Zients is arguing that it is not a tax. But before the Supreme Court next month, the administration will argue that it is, in fact, a tax.

“The practical operation of the minimum coverage provision is as a tax law,” reads the administration’s Supreme Court brief filed last month. “It is fully integrated into the tax system, will raise substantial revenue, and triggers only tax consequences for non-compliance.”

I recall (but cannot locate on line) an interview between Nina Totenberg of NPR and Supreme Court Justice, William Brennan. He upbraided her for referring to criminals who got off on “technicalities”. The Constitution (or the Bill of Rights, he may have said) is not a technicality, he corrected her. Touché.

I only wish the Left and the Obama administration had heard the interview.

PS: Found it!

In a radio interview in 1987, Brennan became uncharacteristically agitated when asked, “Why do you let some of those creeps go? They do such bad things, and on a technicality, you let them go.” Brennan replied sharply,

You and the media ought to be ashamed of yourself to call the provisions and the guarantees of the Bill of Rights technicalities. They’re not. We are what we are because we have those guarantees, and this Court exists to see that they are faithfully enforced. These guarantees have to be sustained—even though the immediate result is to help out some very unpleasant person. They’re there to protect all of us.

And now that the very unpleasant person is president…?

We covered this yesterday, but the WSJ is so sulfuric, we just have to post it:

It may create a little “psychic dissonance” to denounce big money and then beg for it, as one Soros acolyte was quoted Tuesday as saying. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

The better way to understand this decision is that it is Mr. Obama’s second in-kind contribution to the demise of the campaign-finance reform movement. In 2008, Mr. Obama was so flush with cash he voluntarily dropped out of the presidential public-funding system that limits the amount a candidate can raise and spend. John McCain, trapped by his own history of favoring spending limits, played the sap, obeyed the rules, and was heavily outspent. You may have noticed he lost.

The liberal goo-goos want to ban money from politics, but now their political hero has made them look like fools—twice.”

…

So the President is now anointing certain Administration officials to be able to speak directly on its behalf—though apparently not actively to solicit checks.

So let’s see: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be able to speak at an event that is expressly a Super PAC fund-raiser, but because she won’t be stuffing the checks in her purse she will not violate federal rules against coordination between a candidate’s campaign and a Super PAC. After the election, and especially if Mr. Obama wins, the President will switch one more time and become a reformer demanding limits on money in politics. And good liberals will praise him for it.

“Good liberals”? That makes no sense. The only good liberal is a… Bloodthirsty Liberal.

Must be election time: Obama has turned two-faced on fundraising.

Again.

According to several participants on a conference call with major bundlers late Monday night, Barack Obama’s re-election campaign encouraged donors to fundraise for a Democratic super PAC supporting the president, marking an about-face on Obama’s position toward outside spending groups.

Obama has been an outspoken critic of current campaign financing laws, in particular a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the creation of super PACs. Until now he has kept his distance from the group, Priorities USA Action.

But in the wake of the group’s anemic fundraising, made public last week, the campaign changed its position. Earlier Monday, it announced to members of its national finance committee that it will use administration and campaign officials as surrogates at PAC events.

On the call, a campaign official made clear that after donors contribute the maximum amount allowed to the Obama campaign, fundraisers should encourage donors to give to Priorities USA, according to a source who was on the call.

Didn’t see that one coming! Just because he broke his word to John McCain about public financing, who would have figured he’d reverse a “principled” stand again? What are the odds?

I employ quotation marks because by Obama’s own citation, Jesus said “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required”.

Ahem: not so Christian

So I suppose it was just AN OVERSIGHT that THE OBAMAS DONATED ONLY ONE PERCENT OF THE INCOME TO CHARITY from 2000-2004.

Because that’s not quite enough to keep my brother. If “much shall be required,” well, ONE PERCENT IS NOT MUCH.

These weren’t exactly lean years. According to previous reports you may remember, the Obamas earned $1.2 million from 200-2004, parting with a mere $10,772 for the least of these.

If this is loving thy neighbor, then I’m glad I wasn’t the poor guy living next to the Obamas.

It appears, though, that the Obamas got religion on charity, shall we say, once it occurred to him to run for president. For the 2005 tax year – which he would have filed in early 2006, when he was surely thinking hard about making a run – the Obamas suddenly decided that “much more shall be required.” They began donating about five percent of their income, which was vastly increased by his book sales, to charity.

So to my fury over the president blurring the separation of church and state, add contempt for his rank hypocrisy. What will it take, libs, to persuade you what a fraud he is? More than this?

Then you’re hopeless.