Bloodthirsty Liberal

To hear Chris Matthews tell it (which aural bilge I will spare you), Obama is some sort of human embodiment of the moral suasion of Mount Rushmore.

Matthews is entitled to his opinion, of course—but not even Obama shares it:

President Barack Obama’s announcement that he now supports same-sex marriage came sooner than planned as a result of comments made by Vice President Joe Biden, he said in an interview broadcast Thursday.

“I had already made a decision that we were going to probably take this position before the election and before the convention,” Obama told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” referring to the Democratic National Convention in September.

Biden “probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” the president said.
He added that he would have “preferred to have done this in my own way, on my own terms,” but “all’s well that ends well.”

Biden told NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend that he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage.

So, it’s Biden who is the reincarnation of Harry Truman, not Obama, who was only “probably” going to make this announcement when it suited him (and his potential wealthy gay contributors). That makes Obama a latter day Millard Fillmore.

But I call BS on that, too. I think they sent Biden out to test the water. If the sharks ate him, no big loss. After three days and little political fallout, forward came Obama, chin jutted oh-so firmly, to wade ashore—a General MacArthur reclaiming the territories of the West Village and the Castro.

As a conservative who supports gay marriage, I congratulate the president on his, ahem, “evolution”.

But I wonder if he hasn’t alienated one constituency while pandering to another:

African-Americans voted 2-1 in favor of the North Carolina amendment banning gay marriage Tuesday, but the White House is betting that black voters there and beyond will stick with the president, despite broad resistance to legalization.

Now, that’s a profile in courage!

“Bite-me” sticks his foot in his mouth again!

Vice President Biden ordered supporters to “pretend you like me” after mocking them as “dull as hell” at a campaign fundraiser in Washington on Friday.

The vice president was speaking to Turkish and Azerbaijani donors about the potential of the region as a democratic and economic force when he noticed he wasn’t getting much of a reception.

“I guess what I’m trying to say without boring you too long at breakfast – and you all look dull as hell, I might add. The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!” Biden said.

The joke “drew big laughs from the crowd,” according to the press pool report.
Biden went on to extoll “Azerbaijan as country with tremendous potential.

Yes, but does it “punch above its weight”?

“I’m boring you as much as I’m boring myself,” Biden joked while exiting the stage.

You can always talk about the president’s “big stick”, Joe. They love it, none more than Chris Matthews.

May I, Buck?

RAAAACIST!

Initially, Barack had tuned out the presidential talk, too. But he was just as disappointed with the U.S. Senate as he had been with the state senate—he had gone to Washington to do big things, but he was a junior member of a slow, rule-bound, Republican-controlled body. ‘Shoot. Me. Now.’ he wrote to an aide, in the middle of a particularly long-winded oration. (The speaker was Senator Joe Biden.)

Isn’t that precious? The United States Senate was too small for him. He had served less than one term, only two years of which in the minority party, and he was already bored. Now, I know Joe Biden will do that to a person, but if your goal is really just to help people, can’t you find a way? And is the honor of serving as a US Senator really all washed away in a few months’ time? I’m surprised he still wants to be president. Emperor would be more fitting.

Anyhow, Joe got his own back:

Not such a big effing deal after all, eh Joe?

PS: Don’t you love how the mainstream media ferrets out these embarrassing episodes in Obama’s life? Me neither. This is from Jodi Kantor’s book, which ha been out only a few weeks. But the dog-eating story has been out there for years (even in his own voice on the book on tape!), and no one thought fit to mention it till just now! I haven’t read the thing, but maybe it has the same effect on readers that Obama’s speechifying has on Biden.

Democrats explained:

The White House reports that the Obamas gave “$172,130 – or about 22% of their adjusted gross income – to 39 different charities.” Good for them; that’s the kind of wealth-spreading that conservatives endorse. On the other end of the spectrum, though, we have the Bidens, who had a reported AGI of $379,035 — and who donated $5,540 to charity. That comes to about 1.5% of their taxable income, which was an improvement over earlier years … but not by much. Contrast that to Mitt Romney, who donated $4.1 million on an AGI of $20.9 million in 2011 on his estimates, which would come to 19.6% of his AGI.

Yes, good for the Obamas—but better for the Romneys. That’s one thing about rich people: they tend to give away a whole lot of money. And that’s one thing about most Democrats: they tend to give away a whole lot of other people’s money. One-point-[bleeping]-five percent. Heckuva job, Joe.

To hear Biden tell it:

Biden spoke at a dinnertime gathering at his official Washington residence, where he hosted more than 100 federal, state and local police officers and firefighters.

…

“You’re stuck in a God-awful mess, and so It doesn’t make sense to us that that would be happening at a time when the need for y’all actually would be increasing,” Biden said, adding that was why the administration pushed for added public safety spending in the first recovery act.

Biden referred to lawmakers who always vote against funding for local law enforcement. “At least they’re consistent,” he said, rapping those who stopped supporting the funding in tight fiscal times.

“They walked away because they didn’t like the way we were paying for it,” Biden said, referring to tax increases on the rich.

…

Biden said it’s a question of public safety, but also of first responder safety.

“There’s one thing we know: the more cops on the street, the fewer cops get killed. The more firefighters responding to a fire, the fewer injuries to the firefighters, because you have each other’s backs,” Biden said.

…

“The first guy who’s going to have a problem is the guy whose $3 million home is on fire and you can’t get a truck out there. The first guy that’s going to have a problem is the person who has real assets and finds their house burglarized or robbed, or their Porsche is stolen,” Biden said. “I’m not very subtle; I find it absolutely beyond my understanding.”

Though Biden’s remarks were partisan and clearly designed to curry political favor with firefighters and police, the gathering was billed as an official event and paid for by taxpayers.

What’s with the “y’all”? Did he borrow his boss’s Optional Negro Dialect (© Harry Reid)? Similarly, he borrowed his boss’s (and his boss’s wife’s) habit of turning state business into a campaign appearance, paid for by the taxpayer.

But the one trait he has that his boss doesn’t have is sympathy for the police. To Obama, they just “act stupidly”. (Unlike the Vice President?)

It’s not a big [bleeping] deal, but it’s still pretty funny:

Another oops from Vice President Biden today on the campaign trail.

While addressing voters in Iowa on the campaign trail, Biden mistakenly refered to Scott Community College President Dr. Theresa Paper as “Dr. Pepper.”

Joe’s a Pooper, BO’s a Pooper,
Wouldn’t you like to be a Pooper too?

A lot has been written recently about how the Obama administration is giving up on white working class voters in favor of a coalition of the elite plus very low income Americans.

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree.

You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global’s Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.

In the president’s view, extending the payroll tax cuts is more important than adding more people to the payrolls, unless they are making electric cars that catch fire or work for solar-panel makers that go bankrupt.

Any attempt to link the pipeline to a payroll tax cut extension will be vetoed, Obama said Wednesday as he stood next to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

President Obama has dropped any pretense that delaying the pipeline that would bring Canadian tar-sands oil to American refineries is really related to environmental safety concerns.

He knows it would create jobs, at least 20,000 directly and many more indirectly thanks to the multiplier effect he dismisses now but touted when he still believed in “shovel-ready” jobs that needed federal funding.

“However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline,” he said, “they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”

He forget the stimulus effect of food stamps, something touted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

When it comes to payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits and food stamps, Democrats and liberals believe in the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

You get back much more than you spend. In their skewed view, joblessness can create jobs.

While adding $250 billion to the deficit, according to Alex Brill of the American Enterprise Institute, extending the payroll tax holiday would provide up to $1,500 per family.

But, Brill notes, researchers Matt Shapiro and Joel Slemrod found that among recipients of tax rebates in 2001, only 22% spent the rebate, while the rest saved it or used it to pay off debt. A similar study of 2008 tax rebate recipients found only 20% spent it.

Contrast this with the 20,000 paychecks that would be added if the $7 billion Keystone XL project is completed. These workers would pay federal taxes. States along the route are projected to receive an additional $5.2 billion in property tax revenue.

Doesn’t matter. The environmentalists don’t want it and Obama wants their votes. And he has written off the votes of the sorts that would be working those projects.

The really terrifying part of all of this silliness is that people who don’t want to live in a Liberal Fascist State have nowhere to go. Even Canada has more sense than the US under this clown.

- Aggie

Huh. The LA Times finds that 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.

Thousands of long-term unemployed Americans from across the country have converged on Washington this week to dramatize their plight and to urge Congress to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits and the payroll tax cut, and to pass President Obama’s jobs bill.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13.3 million Americans are unemployed. Nearly half have been jobless for more than six months — a record. If you add workers who are so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for work, and people who are underemployed (working part time but who want full-time jobs), the number of jobless Americans skyrockets to more than 25 million.

After remaining at or over 9% since March 2009, the nation’s jobless rate dipped to 8.6% in November. But in California, the rate is 11.7%. For more than 21/2 years, the number of jobless Americans has outstripped the number of available job openings by more than 4 to 1.

They want Congress to extend unemployment benefits. Question: If Congress extends unemployment benefits, then do the official unemployment numbers go up? Because more people will be able to collect? If so, I’m totally in favor of it. We need accurate numbers going into this election.

On the other hand, there is a bright side if they don’t extend:

In such dire circumstances, the least Congress can do is extend unemployment benefits. The Obama administration and House and Senate Democrats are pushing for another yearlong extension of federal benefits before they expire Dec. 31. Without action, nearly 2 million Americans — 305,400 in California — would be cut off from unemployment insurance in January alone; 6 million would be cut off over the course of the next year.

Historically, whenever the jobless numbers are this severe, Congress has extended jobless benefits to help keep families and local economies afloat. In fact, Congress has never allowed unemployment insurance to expire with the jobless rate above 7.2%.

Having run out of hands, let’s go to the left foot:

Last year, congressional Republicans opposed extending jobless benefits but were outvoted by the Democrats. Now the Republicans aren’t saying they outright oppose an extension, because that would be unpopular in hard-hit states like Ohio, Speaker John A. Boehner’s home state. Instead, they’ve added a poison pill, insisting that any extension of unemployment benefits be paid for by making other cuts, which will shed even more jobs. The Democrats have proposed paying for the extension of jobless benefits and the payroll tax cut with a tax increase on those making more than $1 million a year, a plan that Republicans oppose.

In other words, the Republicans are more willing to provide tax breaks for the rich than unemployment benefits for the jobless.

Most unemployed Americans are out of work through no fault of their own but because the economy isn’t generating enough jobs. But GOP lawmakers have cruelly claimed that many jobless Americans are simply too lazy to look for work and take advantage of unemployment insurance.

The truly cruel are the journalists who sold Hope ‘n Change to the public, relentlessly tapping the keyboard with all sorts of inane claims about the virtues of the Obama pitch. There was no way that Hope ‘n Change could do anything to improve the economy, and it was likely that it would further stress it. Now, they demand more of the same and if they don’t get it, the Republicans are cruel.

I’m good with that. If we become Greece in the next four years or so, do we also get their climate?

If that study were accurate, we could simply empty the treasury and double our economy. We could pay China back and buy every child in America a pony for Christmas.


American child receives Multiplier Pony for Christmas

Coffee time.

- Aggie

Deputy Bite-Me Fife explains it all for you:

“Biden didn’t back away from his words on Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ According to the vice president, it’s an issue of simple math. ‘Here’s what my point is — it is a fact, ever since I wrote the crime bill 20 years ago, we’ve put to rest the notion that if you have more cops, there’s less crime,’ Biden said. ‘When you drastically cut the number of police in cities, which is happening all across America, crime goes up. That is a fact. Now, they either are going to figure out how to help those cities the way we want to help them, or some other way. But if they don’t get help, crime is going to continue go up. It’s that simple. It’s not an ideological point — it’s not a political point, it’s just a physical reality.’ Many news outlets have called Biden’s numbers erroneous. Yet he explained why getting the numbers wrong didn’t diminish the importance of getting more funding for law enforcement.”

Who’s drastically cutting the number of police in cities? The cities themselves, right? So, why aren’t cities funding their police forces? Since when does the federal government put cops on the beat? All the America Jobbed Act pays for is a year of maintaining current levels. After that, supposedly, the cities are on their own. But that’s what we did with the first stimulus. Money was handed directly to local Democrat politicians, who turned around and handed it to municipal union members. Did rapes drop then?

Look, I’ll put a bumper sticker on my car that says Republicans Against Rape if I have to. But I’m against a lot of other stuff, too, and my car is only to big. Besides, I don’t want to detract from this one:

A well-off Boston suburb recently had a problem in the high school. It turns out that the history teacher decided to teach 9th graders that Israelis were brutal, Palestinians were helpless victims, etc., and handed out readings on that topic. I wrote about it because it is a clear demonstration of the Jew hatred of the Left, and because I don’t believe that 14 year old kids need to be dragged into politics.

The Obama administration is dragging the 10 year old crowd into politics:

In one of those inspired innovations designed to keep American classrooms on the cutting edge of educational excellence, the administration has been sending Joe Biden out to talk to schoolchildren. Last week, it was the fourth grade at Alexander B. Goode Elementary School in York, Pa., that found itself on the receiving end of the vice president’s wisdom:

Here in this school, your school, you’ve had a lot of teachers who used to work here, but because there’s no money for them in the city, they’re not working. And so what happens is, when that occurs, each of the teachers that stays have more kids to teach. And they don’t get to spend as much time with you as they did when your classes were smaller. We think the federal government in Washington, D.C., should say to the cities and states, look, we’re going to give you some money so that you can hire back all those people. And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to ask people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.

Who knew it was that easy?

Isn’t that nasty?

I think it is nasty because the children shouldn’t be dragged into the misery of adult politics, but Mark Steyn actually takes him on with the numbers:

No problem, says the vice president. We’re going to “ask” people who have “a lot of money” to “pay just a little bit more” in taxes.

Where are these people? Evidently, not in York, Pa. But they’re out there somewhere. Who has “a lot of money”? According to President Obama, if your combined household income is over $250,000 a year you have “a lot of money.” Back in March, my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson pointed out that, in order to balance the budget of the United States, you would have to increase the taxes of people earning more than $250,000 a year by $500,000 a year.

Is ten too young to learn about negative numbers?

So how about people earning a million dollars a year? That’s “a lot of money” by anybody’s definition. As Kevin Williamson also pointed out, to balance the budget of the United States on the backs of millionaires you would have to increase the taxes of those earning more than 1 million a year by 6 million a year.

Very smart 10 year olds will jump out of their seats and shout “I know! I know! Negative 5 Million!!”

Not only is there “no money in the city” of York, Pa., and no money in Washington, D.C., there’s no money anywhere else in America — not for spending on the Obama/Biden scale. Come to that, there’s no money anywhere on the planet: Last year, John Kitchen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin published a study called “Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World — and At What Cost?”

Wow, this is truly a great exercise in negative numbers:

Don’t worry, it’s a book with a happy ending! U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as by 2020 the rest of the planet is willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. And why wouldn’t they? After all, if you’re a Chinese politburo member or a Saudi prince or a Russian kleptocrat or a Somali pirate and you switched on CNN International and chanced to catch Joe Biden’s Fourth Grade Economics class, why wouldn’t you cheerily dump a fifth of your GDP into a business model with such a bright future?

Ok, you should go to the link, but I’ll give you just one more example of his humor:

It’s just about possible to foresee, say, Iceland or Ireland getting its spending under control. But, when a nation of 300 million people presumes to determine grade-school hiring and almost everything else through an ever more centralized bureaucracy, you’re setting yourself up for waste on a scale unknown to history. For example, under the Obama “stimulus,” U.S. taxpayers gave a $529 million loan guarantee to the company Fisker to build their Karma electric car. At a factory in Finland.

If you’re wondering how giving half a billion dollars to a Finnish factory stimulates the U.S. economy, well, what’s a lousy half-bil in a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole? Besides, in the 2009 global rankings, Finnish schoolkids placed sixth in math, third in reading, and second in science, while suffering under the burden of a per-student budget half that of York City. By comparison, America placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math. So the good news is that, by using U.S.-government money to fund a factory in Finland, Fisker may be able to hire workers smart enough to figure out how to build an unwanted electric car that doesn’t lose its entire U.S.-taxpayer investment.

That’s it. Go to the link.

- Aggie

As an experienced retail politician, Joe Bite-Me knows a good slogan when he hears it:

Vice President Joe Biden now says he didn’t make a reference to rape, and got testy with HUMAN EVENTS when we asked if he would like to retract his comments that the number of sexual assaults would increase if Republicans don’t sign on to Barack Obama’s latest “jobs” proposal.

“I didn’t use, no no no…Let’s get it straight, guy. Don’t screw around with me,” Biden lashed out at HUMAN EVENTS. Then Biden confirmed that he indeed did talk about rape in terms of the President’s spending measure. “Murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise,” if the Democrats agenda isn’t passed, he added.

…

It was on Tuesday during a speech at the University of Pennsylvania where Biden initially argued that another round of government spending was needed to prevent sexual assaults. “It’s not temporary [administration’s proposed stimulus] when that 911 call comes in and a woman’s being raped, if a cop shows up in time to prevent the rape. It’s not temporary to that woman.”

Then in the same speech he wished Republicans were themselves rape victims. “I wish they had some notion of what it was like to be on the other side of a gun, or [to have] a 200-pound man standing over you, telling you to submit.”

Who says they haven’t, Joe? It’s a free country.

But you’ve got your work cut out for you, GOP. The Party of Rape just isn’t going to cut it.

PS: One small point. Aren’t cops and teachers state and local concerns? Why are the president and vice president so concerned with issues only one level above dog catcher and meter reader? And how many rapes could be prevented if Obama stopped flying his buses all over the country on campaign trips billed to the taxpayer? How many if Michelle turned over the 10 Gs she charges for photo ops to rape crisis centers instead of the Obama Victory Fund (see below)?

Now we know why Biden was so impressed by Obama’s articulateness and cleanliness. I haven’t looked in Joe’s ears or checked under his nails, but he’s as ineloquent as they come:

The VP said “I really don’t know about the Van Jones group, except what I read in the press.” The group is currently protesting in New York City against the social and economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government.

Later in his response in talking about the frustration seen in the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street Group, Biden said “you have on the one end Van Jones’ guys, whoever he is, talking about Wall Street.” Jack Harris and Tedd Webb stopped him to tell him he had previously been “Green Czar” in the administration. The VP responded, “Oh is that… alright”

Van Jones was appointed by President Barack Obama in March of 2009 to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council of Environmental Quality. Politico reports that Van Jones was vetted by Joe Biden himself. Van Jones wrote about the VP on the White House website.

Jones resigned from the Obama administration in September, 2009 amidst controversies including his statements alleging U.S. government complicity in the 9/11 attacks as well as particularly disparaging comments about the GOP.

Biden can’t keep up with the Joneses.

Every night I pray for the health and safety of my family and the President of the United States.