Obama’s Plunging Polls Correspond To America’s Plunging Economy

President Obama’s biggest calender item yesterday was his scheduled “having a beer” with his good friend Henry Louis Gates and the man that both Gates (directly) and Obama (indirectly) called a racist, Sgt. James Crowley.  By sitting down for a beer, Obama was attempting to turn the giant turd he laid at his fourth prime time news conference in six months (which is how many George Bush gave in 8 entire YEARS btw) into a gold-plated turd.

I hope the three men clink their glasses to Obama’s plummeting poll numbers and America’s plummeting economy while they pondered why ‘Skip’ Gates is such a bigot and why Barry Obama acted so stupidly by claiming the Cambridge police “acted stupidly.”

Rasmussen has Obama at a -12 approval rating measuring the difference between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove of his presidency; and he is now at only 48% approval – a far cry from his halcyon days of being in the high 60s.  Only 34% of likely voters think the country is headed in the right direction.  And 49% believe America’s best days have come and gone, versus only 38% who think the country will improve.

The hope that once swelled the hearts of Obama voters is fading fast – especially in the swing states he needs to win to have any chance at either future re-election or even current relevance.  “Hope and change” now means, “I hope I still have some change left in my pocket at the end of the month.”

As U.S. recession bites, Ohio hopes fade for Obama
Thu Jul 30, 2009 11:12am EDT
By Nick Carey

TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) – Hope and jobs are in short supply in Ohio eight months after President Barack Obama won the recession-battered state in the 2008 election with promises of a better future.

“People were looking for a savior to get us out of this mess and that’s why they voted for Obama,” said Jeff Fravor, 55, a retired train conductor on his way to breakfast on the outskirts of Toledo.

“I’ve nothing against Obama personally, but he’s new to the job and ‘hope’ won’t fix this mess.”

Candidate Obama delivered his message over and over again in Ohio, a politically diverse battleground state that often decides presidential elections. Obama went back to the state last week with an approval rating below 50 percent.

A Quinnipiac University opinion poll released on July 7 showed the Democratic president’s popularity in America’s seventh most populous state had fallen to 49 percent from 62 per cent in May. Even worse for Obama, 48 percent said they disapproved of his handling of the U.S. economy, with 46 percent approving.

The reason for the poll drop? Rising unemployment.

The downturn has pummeled Ohio’s manufacturing base.

“As jobs have gone away, that has created a true focus here on job creation,” said Andrew Doehrel, head of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. “People look at what’s been done on a federal level in terms of bailouts and stimulus and they see that this has not equated to anything more than lost jobs in Ohio.”

Ohio has not been the state hardest hit by the U.S. recession that began in December 2007, but it is not far off.

Unemployment in the state of 11.5 million people reached 11.1 percent in June, compared with the national rate of 9.5 percent, making it the seventh highest rate in the country. Michigan was first with a rate of 15.2 percent.

TWICE THE UNEMPLOYMENT

Ohio’s unemployment has nearly doubled from 5.7 percent in January 2008. That is not a good start for Obama in a state with 20 electoral votes that could be vital for his re-election effort in 2012.

“It’s not a surprise Obama’s numbers have fallen here and they’ll continue to go down as long as jobs keep being lost here,” said Jim Rokakis, treasurer for Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland where unemployment hit 10.1 percent in June. “Americans always want a quick fix to problems, but they are going to relearn patience this time round.”

Toledo in northwest Ohio has been especially hard hit by the recession, in particular because of the auto industry-related plants that dot the area.

“Obama set expectations too high here and six months later, things haven’t got better, so some people are losing hope,” said John Johnson, branch manager of the Southeastern Container Inc plant in nearby Bowling Green, which makes plastic bottles for Coca-Cola Co..

Johnson said he had to turn away qualified workers from auto-related plastic companies seeking work. “When people are out of work for a long time, they become very impatient.”

Unemployment hit 14.2 percent in June in Toledo, a city of about 315,000 people. Many of the roads in and out of the city are in a poor state of repair and many downtown stores have closed down. Manufacturing brought the city wealth, so plant closures have taken a heavy toll.

‘DEPRESSION’

“We’re not just in a recession here, it’s a depression,” said Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. “This downturn has left Ohioans wondering if we’ve lost our place in the sun.”

According to a midyear survey from real estate service company CB Richard Ellis Reichle Klein, Toledo’s retail vacancy rate hit a record level of 14.6 percent.

“Everybody is having a hard time just existing right now,” said Bob Shelley, 72, who runs Shelley Rubber Stamp & Sign Inc for his father in downtown Toledo. “All businesses have been hit, so everybody’s giving everybody a break right now.”

Shelley said he felt Obama had an overcrowded agenda.

“He’s trying to satisfy everyone at once and he’s trying to rush everything through Congress,” he said. “But if you rush like that, you’re bound to make mistakes.”

Angie Carter, 32, a market research analyst in downtown Toledo, said she voted for Obama and he just needed time.

“This is a recession and we live in a manufacturing state,” she said on a cigarette break. “It’s going to take time to turn it around.”

When touting his $787 billion stimulus package earlier this year, Obama cautioned that a recovery would take time.

The president also has time to recover in Ohio if jobs come back. Aware of its importance, he was there last week to tout his healthcare plans. The last candidate who won Ohio but lost the election was Republican Richard Nixon in 1960.

Rokakis said Obama’s speech in Cleveland on July 23 was no accident.

“Obama is a smart man and he knows how important Ohio is,”

The article portrays Obama as having said that recovery would take time under his stimulus.  It fails to mention that the Obama administration – in pushing the failed stimulus package through Congress – predicted that unemployment would rise no higher than 8% if his stimulus passed.

As bad as things are now, there is no realistic reason to believe they will get better.  Meredith Whitney, the Wall Street analyst who gained much credibility in predicting the mortgage meltdown, is predicting unemployment will rise to 13% or higher.

The date for a housing market recovery stretches to 2015.

Obama’s deficits are soaring to stunning levels.  Back in March the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Obama’s “huge annual budget deficits that would force the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade — $2.3 trillion more than the president predicted when he unveiled his budget request just one month ago.” And that mindbogglingly ginormous figure doesn’t include the trillion plus hole we would dig passing Obama’s health care plan.

As the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Boskin puts it:

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.”

Obama has blamed President Bush for the deficits, but not only has he racked up far more debt than did Bush, but as a Senator Obama actually voted for the very Bush-budget that Obama is now blaming on Bush – including the $700 billion TARP bailout.

It is also worth knowing that the federal government has exposed itself to $23.7 trillion in risks with its bailouts since TARP (which is turning out to be a thinly disguised anagram for “TRAP”).

Those massive deficits guarantee future economic pain, but recent developments are beginning to show that our future pain may already be here right now:

Weak Treasury Auctions Raise Worries About US Debt Burden
By: Reuters     Wednesday, 29 Jul 2009

The U.S. Treasury sold $39 billion in five-year debt Wednesday in an auction that drew poor demand, raising worries over the cost of financing the government’s burgeoning budget deficit.

It was the second lackluster showing in as many days,  convincing analysts that the stellar results of debt auctions just a few weeks ago were a fluke and that Thursday’s $28 billion seven-year offering could suffer a similar fate.

Under the weight of the ballooning deficit, the government has raised auction volumes and analysts now wonder whether the strain on the market is showing.

“Obviously everyone is inferring that tomorrow’s won’t be good either,” said James Combias, head of government bond trading at Mizuho Securities USA in New York. “Maybe you will see more interest tomorrow but I think the increase in the auctions and the size of them may be starting to have an effect. These are very large auctions.”

We are witnessing a terrifying unfolding scenario in which “Interest due on the debt could easily be $1 trillion toward the end of the next decade.”

Like the Texas Hold’em player who pushes every last dime into the center of a poker table, the federal government is now “all in” with its commitment to push the national debt to 50% of GDP. The Congressional Budget Office believes that the Treasury will have to borrow nearly $2 trillion this year. None of that is new news, but what is beginning to emerge is a picture of a government which has narrowed its options for improving the economy down to one. Either GDP turns sharply up next year or the deficit will become an unmanageable burden. The Treasury will have to default on interest payments if sharply raising taxes in 2010 and 2011 does not bring IRS receipts to historic highs. That would not appear to be likely with unemployment moving toward 10% and American corporate earnings badly crippled.

You may not know it, but your government under Obama has gambled this country’s future – and gambled poorly.  Obama believed his $787 billion stimulus – which was actually scored by the CBO to be $3.27 trillion – would stimulate big, but it has been a total dud.  And as we continue to pile on debt on top of debt on top of debt, and combine that with continuing high unemployment and low economic output, the result is insolvency and doom.  And it is already beginning to rush toward us like an enraged Kodiak bear.

Some are pointing at the seemingly recovering Dow Index to argue that the worst is behind us and that we are on the road to recovery.  As reported by Reuters:

No Economic Recovery in Sight, Only Inflation
Mon May 11, 2009 9:01am EDT

FORT LEE, N.J., May 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The National Inflation Association yesterday released the following statement to its http://inflation.us members:

“Wall Street would like you to believe that the Dow Jones’ recent 33% rally from March’s low is due to improving economic fundamentals, but it is our belief this rally is due to nothing but inflation.

“Jobs data released on Friday shows that U.S. employers cut 539,000 jobs in April, the fewest since October. However, these numbers were artificially strong due to the U.S. government increasing their payrolls by 72,000, which included the hiring of about 60,000 temporary workers in preparation for the 2010 census.

“Government jobs are non-productive jobs that normally get paid for by taxpayers. However, because the U.S. already has a huge budget deficit with tax revenues likely to decline substantially, these jobs will be paid for through inflation. An increase in government jobs is not a sign that the economy is improving, but only a sign that we are digging our economy into a deeper hole that will ultimately lead to the U.S. dollar collapsing.

“Even Warren Buffett, who is a huge supporter of Obama and has defended his economic policies, said last week that with political leaders showing little inclination to raise taxes, the only way to pay for excess spending will be by inflating the currency and shrinking the value of the dollar.

“The worst of the recession is not behind us. Nominally, anything can happen to the Dow Jones. If the Federal Reserve prints enough money, the Dow Jones could go back to 14,000, but it won’t mean anything if it costs $2,000 to fill your refrigerator with groceries.

Obama’s spending has put us into a genuine crisis: we are now in a situation where any recovery will be immediately followed by sharp increases in inflation, unless government either sharply raise taxes across the board (which will undermine the economy) or unless they sharply raise interest rates (which will also undermine the economy).  Both options are politically unacceptable.

You’d better be thinking about getting a wheelbarrow, because you’re eventually going to need to one to bring enough cash to the grocery store to buy your daily bread.

That was my long-winded way of saying that Obama’s polls are likely to drop to the point where angry villagers armed with pitchforks and torches start storming Castle Obamastein as the economy drops right along with his popularity by the end of his one-term presidency.

Obama’s Vs. Bush’s Deficit In One Truly Scary Picture

Want to see something really scary?

Stop and think about this picture.  Realize that Democrats – who are and have been demagogues in every sense of the word – repeatedly positioned themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility against Bush spending.

And then the moment they get the chance – from the very first nanosecond – they blow up the budget deficit the way terrorists blew up the World Trade Center towers.

And, before anyone object to the comparison to terrorism, let me clarify myself even further.  Terrorists can only do so much damage.  What Obama did to the federal budget dwarfs anything terrorists could have done to us.  The commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation in history has declared total war on fiscal responsibility.  It’s actually woefully inadequate to compare what Obama did to the budget to a mere terrorist attack.

The Heritage Foundation introduces the discussion this way:

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

Let me put it another way: Suppose I punch you in the mouth 100 times, sending you to the hospital on life support with a face that will never again be the same no matter how many reconstructive plastic surgeries you have.  Would it make you feel better if I told you that – next time around – I’d only punch you in the mouth fifty times?

The man who exploded a nation’s debt in a way never before seen in the entire history of the human  species is poising himself to take credit for his fiscal responsibility by only exploding it half as much as his initial nuclear blast.  And we’re actually supposed to be grateful for it!

It needs to be mentioned that this is just the spending Obama has proposed in the first 6 months of his term along with the forecasted trends that spending will entail.  It only stands to reason that the actual future spending will only increase, and these already truly terrifying numbers will only get worse over the next few years.  We literally aint seen nothin’ yet.

The generally reliably liberal Washington Post has said this:

President Obama’s ambitious plans to cut middle-class taxes, overhaul health care and expand access to college would require massive borrowing over the next decade, leaving the nation mired far deeper in debt than the White House previously estimated, congressional budget analysts said yesterday.

In the first independent analysis of Obama’s budget proposal, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obama’s policies would cause government spending to swell above historic levels even after costly programs to ease the recession and stabilize the nation’s financial system have ended.

Tax collections, meanwhile, would lag well behind spending, producing huge annual budget deficits that would force the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade — $2.3 trillion more than the president predicted when he unveiled his budget request just one month ago.

Although Obama would come close to meeting his goal of cutting in half the deficit he inherited by the end of his first term, the CBO predicts that deficits under his policies would exceed 4 percent of the overall economy over the next 10 years, a level White House budget director Peter R. Orszag yesterday acknowledged would “not be sustainable.”

The result, according to the CBO, would be an ever-expanding national debt that would exceed 82 percent of the overall economy by 2019 — double last year’s level — and threaten the nation’s financial stability.

“This clearly creates a scenario where the country’s going to go bankrupt. It’s almost that simple,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, who briefly considered joining the Obama administration as commerce secretary. “One would hope these numbers would wake somebody up,” Gregg said.

Probably not, given that we are a ship of fools captained by the worst fool in American history.

You know what is interesting?  Look at what the Democrats said against Bush’s – now in historical context against Obama’s – incredibly tiny deficits (you DO realize that Bush’s deficits virtually amount to a rounding error compared to Obama’s massive ocean of red ink, don’t you?).  From the Left Coaster:

CBO Budget Deficit Estimates Too Low-Dems Attack Bush

After the Congressional Budget Office officially issued the staggering news of $400+ billion deficits for this year and next, the Democratic candidates on the campaign trail in unison hit Bush hard today on his fiscal mismanagement. Several even got in some good lines while doing so. […]

Those figures prompted criticism from Democrats, such as Howard Dean, who has called for a repeal of Bush’s tax cuts. “The president has not only destroyed three million jobs, he is destroying the financial future of our children with these crazy tax cuts for the top 1 percent,” the former Vermont governor said in a telephone interview.

“It’s obvious this administration doesn’t have the slightest clue about how to get this economy back on track, get Americans back to work and get our nation’s finances under control,” said Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who added, “it is time to admit what millions of unemployed Americans already know – that the economic policies of George W. Bush are the worst in our nation’s history.”

Said Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: “The tide of red ink is rising higher than ever before. And the best George W. Bush can do is ask the American people to hold their breath. That’s unfair to our kids and unacceptable for our economic health.”

John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, said the record deficits indicate it’s time to say “enough of the unaffordable tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy … and enough of pretending that deficits just don’t matter.”

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, cited the deficits as well as job losses as proof that the president’s “tax-cut economic policy is failing, it’s not helping ordinary taxpayers.”  […]

But the best line of the day came from Bob Graham.

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, in a variation of a line from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, said Bush “is telling the world that Americans shall defer any price, unload any burden on our children, postpone any hardship for ourselves to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.” […]

There are three items from the CBPP analysis that should be in the Democrats’ line of attack next year: […]

In other words, two-thirds of the $10 trillion deterioration is a direct result of actions taken by George W. Bush. […]

If the Democrats cannot win an election on those issues, then frankly the country deserves what it gets. These are George Bush’s deficits, and the voters need to be reminded of that every day between now and next November.

For the record, unemployment was 4.4% in 2006 when Nancy Pelosi and Democrats took over the House and Harry Reid and Democrats took over the Senate.  And the Dow was close to 12,000.  But, apparently, total Democrat control of the House and the Senate somehow still never translated into any kind of Democrat responsibility for the slide that only began after they took power over Congress.

Democrats – being demagogues – repeatedly blamed the deficits on the Bush tax cuts (because it enrages them that the American people should be allowed to keep more of the money that they earn).  But the reality is actually quite straightforward, as the Wall Street Journal evidences:

Tax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history.

Liberals cannot even allow for the possibility that tax cuts might generate more revenue.  So – as the following New York Times article exemplifies – they must be perennially surprised when tax cuts create larger tax revenue by stimulating more investment.  It simply astonishes liberals that if government allows me to keep more of what I produce, that I might be inspired to try to produce even more.

“For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.”

It wasn’t Bush’s tax cuts that created deficits; they clearly RAISED revenues, rather than lowered them.  What created the deficits was massive spending (on 9/11, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on Katrina, on the huge Bush Medicare drug benefit, etc. etc.).

Massive spending.  You know, like Obama is doing now – ONLY A HELL OF A LOT WORSE THAN ANYONE IN HUMAN HISTORY HAS EVER EVEN CONTEMPLATED BEFORE.

But let’s put blame where blame belongs: Presidents are responsible for deficits.  As Democrats repeatedly pointed out.  Which is why any fair-minded Democrat (as though there actually were any) should be screaming in rage at the Obama insanity.

Now we see what massive hypocrites and incompetents Democrats truly are.  They didn’t scream at Bush’s deficits because they wanted fiscal responsibility; they only demagogued an issue for rhetorical benefit.  They falsely positioned themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility – which was a joke even before Barack Obama came along and demonstrated it for the sickest and most twisted joke ever told.

As a conservative, I DO criticize the huge deficits under George Bush.  And I apply that same “fiscal responsibility” lens on Obama and see the worst economic manager in the history of the world.

Obama Wreckovery Act And Stimulus ‘Employment’: The Pathetic Reality

I downloaded the Obama administration’s “Recovery Report: 100 Days, 100 Projects.” It was an utterly laughable experience.

I copied the “100 projects” into a Word file and then conducted a search with the word “employees.” Here were the results of EVERY single occurrence:

9) A company in Maine “that had been struggling to pay its 19 employees” now being “back to work” thanks to a $2 million stimulus handout.

14) A New York construction company was able to rehire laid-off seasonal employees. Slate Hill had previously laid off 40 seasonal employees, possibly at the END OF THE SEASON. There is no mention of how many seasonal employees (meaning these are not full time jobs) were rehired, but the cost was over $7 million of your dollars in stimulus contract money.

15) The president of New Hampshire paving company Continental Paving ESTIMATES he would have had to lay off 75 employees if it weren’t for the Recovery Act (I “estimate” he may be a liberal). In any event, however many of those 75 jobs were actually “saved” come at the cost of $10 million in stimulus money.

29) EnergX, a Department of Energy contractor, has 87 new employees on the job. We’re told that that these jobs “are supported by Recovery Act funding” – whatever that means. No mention of how much government money they are getting.

51) An auto-repair business owner received $463,500 in stimulus funds which we’re told are “strengthening his short-term cash flow and putting him and his 10 employees in position to increase sales as the economy turns around.” Note that no mention is made of any new employees hired.

58) A start-up tire-recycling plant owner had borrowing fees of $45,750 for a $1.715 million equipment loan paid by stimulus funds. The owner “hopes to have 34 employees onboard by New Year’s Day next year.” Clearly, IF the owner is able to hire 34 employees, it will NOT be due to the pissant borrowing fees for the near $2 million in private bank loans.

75) Four hundred employees hired using Recovery Act funding reported for work at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State. Now we’re getting somewhere! 400 plus a few employees from the other 74 programs, at a cost of ONLY $3.27 TRILLION!!! We’re not told how much these employees cost taxpayers, but we ARE told that most of the employees will be UNION.

83) A company selling and installing energy-saving window films for commercial buildings, saved $6,970 in fees on its SBA 504 loan when it bought a new space five times larger than its previous home. We’re told “the savings will help owners John and Kimberly Henderson add three employees to their staff of 12.” If you know any business owner who has ever hired full-time employees, ask him or her how much $7 grand in saved fee-money would go toward such a hiring decision. And THINK ABOUT IT: $3.27 TRILLION DOLLARS, AND OBAMA IS POINTING AT “HELPING” HIRE 3 EMPLOYEES IN ITS LIST OF HIS TOP 100 ACHIEVEMENTS!!!

And that’s IT. That’s ALL THE JOBS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO ACCOUNT FOR. And most of the list of EIGHT businesses really aren’t able to hire employees based on anything Obama did with his – did I mention? – $3.27 TRILLION in porkulus.

Think about it: this is Obama’s own “Look what we’ve accomplished!” list. This is all the man has to show for the largest spending bill in the history of human civilization! How would Mister Rogers put it: “Can you say, “pathetic”? I think you can!”

I wrote an article earlier this month titled, “Obama And Unemployment: Just So You Know How Pathetically Incompetent Dear Leader Is.” You might say it’s a harshly-worded title – until you see just what a ZERO Obama (who interestingly enough is often ALSO called “Zero“) has produced with more money than any government has ever spent in the entire history of the planet. That article mentions facts such as how Republicans were shut out of the bill; how no one in Congress was even allowed to read it before it was rushed through; how Republicans PREDICTED it would be a gigantic boondoggle; how Obama time after time boasted that he’d “saved” jobs only to see those very jobs go down the drain; how Obama created a marketing term called “saved jobs” to “create” 150,000 phantom jobs out of thin air that he could take credit for; how the stimulus money isn’t even going to the poorest counties that need help most; and how the Obama administration promised that unemployment – which is now at 9.4% – would NOT go above 8% if his stimulus bill was passed. And on, and on. Hence the disparaging title describing a failed president and a failed economic policy.

Obama is now claiming that his administration will “create or save” 600,000 MORE phantom jobs. Just realize that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is already on record claiming it has no way to verify Obama’s job numbers. Because they are a fantasy (Michelle Malkin calls it “The biggest most magical makework program ever“). The mainstream media – which adores their new “Dear Leader” – would never haved allowed President Bush to make claims about “saved” jobs. The whole thing is like building a house of cards in the wind.

All that as an introduction to this:

Stimulus program fraught with waste, report says

A Republican senator’s office says stimulus funds are going toward dubious projects, such as a $3.4-million tunnel for turtles. Obama aides say the report is flawed.

By Peter Nicholas, June 15, 2009

Reporting from Washington — A report due to be released today by a Republican senator contends the Obama administration’s stimulus program is fraught with waste and incompetence — evidenced by a turtle crossing in northern Florida that will cost more than $3 million and a snafu in which thousands of Social Security checks went out to people who had died.

Modeled after a release from the White House describing 100 stimulus projects that were in the works, the report put out by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma looks at the same number of projects but reaches starkly different conclusions. The title is “A Second Opinion on the Stimulus.”

“Will these projects make real improvements in the lives of taxpayers and communities or are they simply pet projects of politicians and lobbyists that never got off the ground because they are a low priority?” the report says.

Coburn’s staff spent about a month interviewing federal officials, reviewing data and compiling news clippings in a continuing examination of the $787-billion stimulus package.

Millions of dollars are going toward bicycle lockers, bike paths, walking trails and a skate park, Coburn said. One town in North Carolina is using stimulus funds to hire an administrator whose job will be to procure more stimulus funds, according to the report. […]

A theme of Coburn’s work is that money is going toward dubious projects that will leave little imprint. One project mentioned is the $3.4-million construction of a 13-foot tunnel near Tallahassee, Fla., that will allow turtles and other wildlife to safely cross U.S. Highway 27.

The report said the area “has the highest road-kill mortality rate for turtles in the world.” But it also suggests other uses for the money, and mentions Florida State University’s plans to lay off 200 faculty and staff members in hopes of saving millions of dollars.

Officials at the Florida Department of Transportation defended the project as one that not only would save turtles but also protect motorists. “A lot of these turtles are quite large. They get hit by a car, and they turn into flying objects,” said Josh Boan, the department’s natural resources manager.

Construction on the tunnel is to begin in September. State officials could not estimate how many jobs would be created.

Raising questions about the government’s ability to manage the stimulus money, Coburn’s report also focuses on more than 8,000 Social Security checks that have been mailed to people who are dead.

A spokesman for the Social Security system said the checks were mailed based on erroneous records. In most cases, the Postal Service returns the checks directly to the government.

One $250 check went to the home of Antonietta Santopadre, a 74-year-old retired hairdresser living in New York. The check was made out to her father, who died 35 years ago. In an interview Monday, Santopadre said: “I was infuriated. Where’s our money going? Our country is in such trouble right now.”

The Coburn report entitled “A Second Opinion on the Stimulus” is now available. Some of the section titles:

– “Free” Stimulus Money Results in Higher Utility Costs for Residents of Perkins, Oklahoma.

– FutureGen: The Stimulus Earmark that Wasn’t, Becomes the Costliest Pork Project in History.

– Little-Used “Shovel-Ready” Bridges in Rural Wisconsin Given Priority Over Widely Used Structurally Deficient Bridges.

– $800,000 for little-used Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the “Airport for Nobody” Has Already Received Tens of Millions in Taxpayer dollars [note: that’s in pork-king and king-scumbag Jack Murtha’s district].

– $3.4 Million for Wildlife “Eco-Passage” in Florida; Project Still May Take Years to Finish [note: that’s the one about the turtles while 200 nearby employees are being laid off].

– Nevada Non-Profit Gets Weatherization Contract After Being Fired For Same Work.

– Non-Existent Oklahoma Lake in Line for Over $1 Million To Construct a New Guardrail.

– Taxpayers Taken for a Ride: Nearly $10 Million to be Spent to Renovate a Century Old Train Station that Hasn’t Been Used in 30 Years.

– Ten Thousand Dead People Get Stimulus Checks, Social Security Administration Blames a Tough Deadline.

-Town of Union, New York, Encouraged to Spend Money It Did Not Request For a Homelessness Problem It Does Not Have.

Mind you, this is just the porkulus bill. There was also the 9,287 pork-project-laden $410 billion Omnibus spending bill and the soon-to-come $1.5 trillion socialized health care bill (which will easily be triple that, given the longstanding tradition of massive underestimation of the actual cost of government programs).

And as we speak, Obama is showing how much he wants to save taxpayer money by illegally firing an Inspector General (in flagrant violation of a law he personally co-sponsored as a Senator) in order to protect one of his friends who abused Americorps funds.

One quote in particular that set me off:

In the course of his investigation, Walpin found [Sacramento Mayor and personal friend of Barack Obama Kevin] Johnson and St. HOPE had failed to use the federal money they received for the purposes specified in the grant and had also used federally-funded AmeriCorps staff for, among other things, “driving [Johnson] to personal appointments, washing his car, and running personal errands.”

I don’t know ’bout you, but I’m hoping to get me a job shinin’ Massah Bureaucrat’s shoes some day.

There are a whole lot of questions about whether Obama is creating any jobs with his massive government spending, but there is no question at all that the trillions of dollars being spent are all-too-real. And there is no question that the anvil will fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in. Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.” And most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very far off? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

All that staggering hyperinflation-creating debt, and about the only jobs that are being created by it are washing cars and running errands for politically-connected Democrats.

Fund Betting Big That Obama Kills U.S. Economy With Hyperinflation

There’s a memorable line in the movie, The Hunt For Red October.  A fanatic  Soviet submarine skipper – trying to complete his mission to destroy the renegade Soviet sub “Red October” before it escapes to America – makes a fatal overconfident miscalculation.  As the torpedo he fired boomerangs back toward the very submarine that fired it, a Russian officer turns to the captain and shouts:

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Essentially, a hedge fund that was wildly successful last year is betting that the American people will be shouting that very same line at Barack Obama.

The June 2 article from The Wall Street Journal:

Black Swan Fund Makes a Big Bet on Inflation

A hedge fund firm that reaped huge rewards betting against the market last year is about to open a fund premised on another wager: that the massive stimulus efforts of global governments will lead to hyperinflation.

The firm, Universa Investments L.P., is known for its ties to gloomy investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the 2007 bestseller “The Black Swan,” which describes the impact of extreme events on the world and financial markets.

Funds run by Universa, which is managed and owned by Mr. Taleb’s long-time collaborator Mark Spitznagel, last year gained more than 100% thanks to its bearish bets. …

A Bloomberg article offers a little more.  An excerpt:

June 1 (Bloomberg) — Universa Investments LP, the hedge- fund firm advised by “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb, is adding a new strategy, betting that government efforts to pump money into economies around the world won’t prevent deflation or could result in hyperinflation. […]

“Policy makers have no control over the outcome of their actions,” Taleb said. “The plane they are flying will either hit the mountain, which is hyperinflation, or crash in the ocean, which is deflation. There is a chance of the pilot hitting the runway. But if he’s not skilled, it’s less than he thinks.”

Obama has – and this is a direct quote from another Wall Street Journal piece – been “adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.”  We have a national deficit of $11 trillion that has been racking up since the 1920s, and the Congressional Budget Office is estimating that Obama will nearly double it with a further $9.3 trillion in his own deficit spending.  Even as “[t]he U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion.”  And growing.  And spent in order to spend us out of a hole that was created by the weight of excessive debt in the first place.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

A C-SPAN interview with Obama reveals a fascinating mindset.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

Notice that Obama acknowledges that the government is out of money, and then immediately starts discussing spending what is expected to top $1.5 trillion MORE for his  health care “investment.”   He is an addict who cannot stop his spending.  He’s like a gambler who thinks he’ll hit it big on the next roll of the taxpayer dice.

And that $1.7 trillion figure from the C-SPAN interview, as bad as it is (I mean, you have to understand: people complained about Bush’s spending raising our debt $1.2 trillion over THREE YEARS), is still likely a lowball figure.  The numbers keep changing.  McClatchy Newspapers has an article describing the rosy numbers, fuzzy math, and constantly changing numbers coming out of the Obama administration.

According to Strategas analyst Dan Clifton’s budget analsis as found in US News & World Report:

Based on our analysis, the deficit is actually $2.2 trillion for the fiscal year or nearly 100 percent higher than is being reported. In fact, the deficit will finish the fiscal year at an astonishing 15.5 percent of GDP! Federal spending will rise to 32 percent of GDP.

The United States will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year.  By 2019 Obama will have so exploded the debt that it will exceed 82% of gross domestic product.  And we are simply doomed.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

China has been warning the Federal Reserve over “printing money” – a warning that comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.  The dollar has weakened sharply against other currencies due to the Treasury simply creating money out of thin air.  China is increasingly concerned that all this “money creation could end up debauching the dollar … inviting a global inflationary crisis.”   The policies that the Obama administration has been pursuing have led another writer for the UK Telegraph to conclude, “From now on, think of the US as a bigger Zimbabwe.”

A Bloomberg article describing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s hat-in-hand visit to China said:

U.S. government securities have tumbled 4.3 percent this year, the worst performance since Merrill Lynch & Co. began tracking returns in 1978, as so-called bond vigilantes drove up yields to punish President Barack Obama for increasing the budget shortfall.

Concerns about international investors have grown as the U.S. Dollar Index weakened 8.6 percent since February and Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke committed $12.8 trillion to thaw frozen credit markets and snap the longest U.S. economic slump since the 1930s.

It was while Geithner was speaking before an audience of Chinese that the following event occurred:

Speaking at Peking University, Mr Geithner said: “Chinese assets are very safe.”

The comment provoked loud laughter from the audience of students. There are growing fears over the size and sustainability of the US budget deficit, which is set to rise to almost 13pc of GDP this year as the world’s biggest economy fights off recession. The US is reliant on China to buy many of the government bonds it is planning to issue but Beijing’s policymakers have expressed concern about the strength of the dollar and the value of their investments.

Obama has until October to sell about $1.9 trillion in debt.  Geithner is actually in China right now to pitch a major bond sale next week.  And neither China nor anyone else seems crazy enough to keep buying our debt in sufficient amounts to fill our bottomless pit of federal spending.  That means either that the US has to raise interest rates to make its debt more attractive – which will kill the economy and plunge the US into a further cycle of recession – or else simply keep printing money which creates the core element of hyperinflation.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Obama and the Democratic spin machine keep laying the blame on Bush policies, but it is Obama’s spending that has created this “Sophie’s Choice,” not anything that Bush did.

It wasn’t Bush who fired the salvo of spending “torpedoes” that are now coming back to blow up in the bowels of our economic and financial system.  It has been Obama’s uncontrolled spending.

It certainly isn’t just Universa and it’s “Black Swan” fund that is betting on Obama-caused hyperinflation, just as it isn’t just the UK Telegraph comparing the US under Obama to Zimbabwe, as a brief excerpt from Bloomberg shows:

May 27 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation” approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.

Prices may increase at rates “close to” Zimbabwe’s gains, Faber said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate reached 231 million percent in July, the last annual rate published by the statistics office.

“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,” Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.”

David Rosenberg, the chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, disagrees slightly with Marc Farber and the Black Swan fund: he doesn’t think that the savage beast of hyperinflation will begin devouring the U.S. economy until after consumer spending has rebounded.  In a Newsmax article entitled, “Experts Fear U.S. Will Suffer Zimbabwe-Level Inflation,” Rosenberg is quoted as having told The Wall Street Journal, “Not until the household sector expands its balance sheets are we likely to see the re-emergence of inflation on a sustained basis.”  It’s not that we’re not doomed; it’s merely a question as to how long before we’re doomed.

I feel another refrain from the song we’re singing coming on:

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Famed Trends Research CEO Gerald Celente has predicted food riots in the United States by 2012.  He put his reputation on the line by making that claim.  Now we’ve got more financial experts like Marc Farber, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, David Rosenberg, and a mega-successful hedge fund putting their money where their mouth is in essentially predicting the same scale of disaster.

Like the Russian submarine skipper who arrogantly and foolishly removed the safeties from his missiles which would have protected his sub from his own torpedoes, Barack Obama has arrogantly and foolishly taken actions that will torpedo the U.S. economy.  It’s only a matter of how much time we can dodge the impending explosion of massive spending triggering massive inflation.

Guns, Ammo, And The Only Jobs Being Created By Obama’s Politics Of Fear

People are stockpiling guns and ammunition in a way that no one has ever seen in this country.  And it’s not just conservative rightwing extremists who are bitterly clinging to their guns and religion and racist antipathies as Obama earlier mentioned, either; it’s ordinary people.  Even liberal Democrats are buying guns.

A CNN story puts it this way:

AURORA, Colorado (CNN) — Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.

“Driven by fear.”  That’s probably the best way to put it.

Obama talked about “hope” during his demagogic run for the White House.  But a lot of Americans are now finding cause to be very afraid of what Obama hopes for.

I see Obama saying he has no intention of running the auto industry while he fires CEOs, picks boards of directors, converts to common shares of stock so his administration can have an inside presence to change company policies, dictates the advertising budget of an auto company, threatens hedge funds that owned secured debt in auto companies, and changes bankruptcy proceedings to favor politically connected unions.  If that’s what NOT wanting to run the auto industry looks like, I’d sure be terrified to see what Obama would do if he really wanted to run them.  And he’s doing even more to impose his will on the banking and finance industries.

I see such naked displays of fascism, and I am driven by fear.

The Obama administration uses the Department of Homeland Security to contact every police agency in the nation to inform them that returning combat veterans, pro-lifers, and opponents of illegal immigration are not citizens who can be trusted, but should be categorized as “rightwing extremists.”

I see such clearly ideological-driven partisan political branding, and I am driven by fear.

Barack Obama and key members of his administration have repeatedly demagogued guns and the U.S. gun industry by falsely claiming that “90 percent of the guns going into Mexico come from the United Stats.”  If this isn’t demagoguery and propaganda, what is it?

I see such demagogic and dishonest behavior coming out of an administration, and I am driven by fear.

And so we see movements by states to say, “We shouldn’t have to be afraid of our own federal government.”  We see unprecedented movements of states to assert their rights under the 10th Amendment.  And so Montana passes an in-your-face gun law intended to directly challenge the Obama administration.  Utah and Texas began to follow with their own versions of a firearms freedom act.  And the floodgates are opening, as Minnesota and South Carolina are also entering the revolt.  And numerous states are beginning to sponsor state sovereignty resolutions.

States, too, are clearly being driven by fear.

Obama could largely end this fear by simply clearly stating what his until-now twisted and contradictory stance on guns actually is.  The fact that he will not do so only stimulates MORE being driven by fear.

Well, there’s a single good thing coming out of Obama’s politics of fear.  To cite Vice President Joe Biden, all of Obama’s fearmongering is creating “a three letter word”: “J-O-B-S.” In the gun and ammunition industry.

The Obama administration has to make up numbers to justify how its stimulus program has failed.  They have to ignore the 2.6 million jobs they’ve lost and point to 150,000 jobs they can’t show they’ve created.

I think Obama is looking in the wrong place for his “jobs.”  He should point to the jobs in the gun and ammunition industry that he has inspired.

There’s no question that these industries owe their success to Obama and the fear he has created in millions of American hearts and minds.  Obama should take credit for it.

More stockpiling ammunition: Fear of potential Obama laws causing mass sales
By PERRY BACKUS Ravalli Republic

FLORENCE – Every day, Darren Newsom’s three Bitterroot Valley Ammunition facilities crank out 300,000 rounds of ammunition.

It’s not nearly enough.

“I’m going about 100,000 rounds in the wrong direction every day,” Newsom said. “We probably have about six months of back orders right now.”

Newsom has been in the ammunition manufacturing business for more than 20 years and he’s never seen demand this high.

Fearful of the Obama administration’s potential to tighten gun control laws, people from all over the country are stocking up on guns and ammunition.

“I went through the Clinton years and there was a bit of a scare then,” Newsom said. “This is like the Clinton years on steroids.  On the day of the election, our phones started going nuts. It hasn’t stopped since.”

As a master distributor for ATK – the world’s largest ammunition business – Bitterroot Valley Ammunition supplies other ammunition manufacturers around the country with the components needed to make bullets.

“I get a million primers in every other day and most are shipped out the very next day,” he said. “I have 100 million primers on back order right now. We just can’t get enough of them.”

At a recent gun show in Salt Lake City, Newsom sold somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 rounds in the first two hours.

“It’s just unreal,” he said. “Somewhere in lots of basements around the country, there are millions of rounds of ammunition being stored.”

Local businesses have felt the ammunition shortage.

At Bob Ward’s in Hamilton, Mike Matteson said there has been quite a run on ammunition and reloading supplies like bullets and powder since the election.

“We are especially low right now with pistol ammunition,” Matteson said. “There are four or five calibers that we don’t even have on our shelves.”

Matteson said he didn’t believe manufacturers were prepared for the panic buying that’s occurred since the election.

“They tell us that they’re months behind on some calibers – .22 ammo is really tough to come by,” he said. “Our gun sales are up somewhere between 30 (percent) to 35 percent or better. A good percentage of those sales are pistols.”

Firearm and ammo sales aren’t the only place where concerns about gun control are cropping up.

Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman has seen a marked increase in the number of people applying for concealed weapons permits since November.

Montana is a “will-issue” state for concealed weapons permits. Any law-abiding citizen who fills out the application and can show they’ve completed some form of firearm safety course can obtain a permit.

The county is averaging about 38 requests for renewals or new permits a month. Last year, the requests averaged about 25.

“It’s definitely a noticeable increase,” Hoffman said.

The sheriff said he’s hearing from people who are concerned about what might happen over the next four years with the gun control issue.

“We are being asked what would be the stance of local law enforcement if the federal government calls for the confiscation of firearms,” Hoffman said. “That’s a very real concern for people.”

Gary Marbut, the longtime president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association in Missoula, said the seeds of the current ammunition shortage can be traced back almost a decade to the Y2K scare.

“Many people became concerned about their ability to get ammunition back then and they stocked up quite a bit,” Marbut said.

In the intervening years, China blossomed and bought up world copper supplies. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan used up warehouses full of U.S. ammunition that needed to be replenished. That forced higher prices for civilian ammunition and people started using some of the bullets they had squirreled away after Y2K, Marbut said.

And now, with the current economic and political uncertainty, people are looking to restock their supplies at a time when most ammunition manufacturers aren’t willing to expand their operations.

“The whole demand side of this is so flexible and the supply side is not,” he said.

The ammunition shortage is creating a bit of an economic boon for Ravalli County.

Newsom plans to open a fourth manufacturing facility in Stevensville sometime in September. He employs about 50 people right now and could add up to another 100.

“There are a lot of people out of work right now,” he said. “Two years ago, I probably couldn’t find 10 people to go to work for us. Now I have 10 people a day coming in here looking for a job.”

Newsom believes the need for ammunition won’t go away. This scare is creating a whole new group of ammunition customers for the future, he said.

Need proof?

Take the .380 caliber pistol. A year ago, Newsom said there was hardly a demand for the ammunition. Since then, the .380 auto pistol has become very popular with women.

“One year ago, it wasn’t in demand and now it’s some of the most sought ammunition in the U.S.,” he said. “There are more people getting into shooting and that’s one thing about ammunition – you can only shoot it once.”

People need to understand that the Obamamania fear that is creating such an incredibly high demand for guns and ammunition is not merely fear of Obama gun laws; it is fear of the future that Obama’s out-of-control spending will have on our economy.

We may very well have a short-term recovery (which is what happened during the Great Depression following the stock market crash of Black Friday in October 1929); but that recovery will be devoured by the sheer massive weight of trillions and trillions of dollars in debt.  Obama will spend $9.3 trillion and nearly DOUBLE the national debt.  The administration has spent, loaned, or committed more than $12.8 trillion .  This year Obama is spending more than four times as much as George Bush did in 2008.  Obama is creating more debt than every single president from George Washington to George W. Bush – COMBINED.  And the Congressional Budget Office says that by 2019 a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will be going to pay down the national debt.

That mind-boggling spending and that mind-boggling debt is a disaster weighting to happen.  It is only a matter of time before a ten trillion ton anvil falls on the American economy.

Trends Research Institute CEO Gerald Celente is on record predicting food riots by 2012 as massive spending creates massive inflation and devaluing of the currency.  If Celente is a nutjob, he is a nutjob that CNN, The Economist, USA Today, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times, CBS News, The Detroit News, the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post have all gone on public record to praise for his incredible predictive accuracy.

People are scared, and judging by the continuing massive purchases of people stockpiling guns and ammo, they’re not clearly not getting any less scared.

So you get your gun.  And lock and load.  Because the beast is coming.

Obama Stimulus Robin Hood In Reverse: Poor Get Poorer

Remember that woman at one of Obama’s rallies saying Obama was going to pay her mortgage and fill her gas tank?  No, he won’t.

Remember that woman who beseeched Obama to give her a kitchen? After a momentary freebie, she’s still on the down and outs, too.

“Little people” believe Obama is the ticket to “finally getting their slice of the pie.”  But that is only because they are naive and frankly ignorant.

The reality is that Obama will take from the haves and piss it away rather than perform the usual Robin Hood function.  Just like all the liberals promising their liberal utopias before him.  And the poor will actually end up worse off rather than better off as the overall economy shrinks due to Obama’s policies.

Newsflash: the poor will remain poor under Obama’s stimulus giveaways.

STIMULUS WATCH: Jobs, but not where needed most

By MATT APUZZO and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – The billions in transportation stimulus dollars that President Barack Obama promoted as a way to create jobs shortchange counties that need the work the most, an Associated Press analysis has found.

The AP’s review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide is the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. It reveals that states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest. The Transportation Department said it will attempt to replicate the AP’s analysis as it continues pressing states to dole out money fairly.

One result among many: Elk County, Pa., isn’t receiving any road money despite its 13.8 percent unemployment rate. Yet the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.[…]

The AP reviewed $18.9 billion in projects. They account for about half of the money set aside for states and local governments to spend on roads, bridges and infrastructure in the stimulus plan.

The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs.

The money goes to projects ready to start. But many struggling communities don’t have projects waiting. They couldn’t afford the millions of dollars for preparation and plans that often is required.

“It’s not fair,” said Martin Schuller, the borough manager in the Elk County seat of Ridgway, who commiserates about the inequity in highway aid with colleagues in nearby towns. “It’s a joke because we’re not going to get it, because we don’t have any projects ready to go.”

I seem to recall hearing the Republicans – who were completely locked out of the $3.27 trillion Obama stimulus plan – predicting that this spending plan wouldn’t stimulate anything but the size of an already-bloated federal government.  And lo and behold: Obama promised Caterpillar his stimulus would save the day for them, but it hasn’t done squat for them; and state after state is saying the stimulus package hasn’t helped them.  Oh, well: what’s a few trillion dollars wasted?

Quote: “The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion.”  That’ $42,105 for every single man, woman and child in the U.S.  Where’s your $42,105 slice of the pie?  I know I haven’t seen mine yet.  And I’m not going to hold my breath that I ever will.

Obama is promising a “tax cut” for 95% of Americans (which actually just means more welfare for the 43.4 percent who already don’t pay any federal income tax at all) at the expense of taxing the bejeezus out of the wealthiest five percent (including a great many small business that employ most of our workers who file as individuals).  But how much is Obama going to actually put in your pockets?  Answer: Nada.  Nothing.  Zilch.  And a lot of poor and middle-class workers are going to wake up very surprised one day as they find out that “taxing the rich” cost them their jobs.

You’re going to be paying more for your electricity.  A lot more.  In fact, Obama promised that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his energy plan.

You’re going to be paying a lot more for your next car.  Again, a lot more.  As auto analyst Rebecca Lindland put it, “The consumer needs to understand that they will see significant increases in the cost of vehicles.”  As much as $10,000 more, in fact.  You’ve got Obama now.  And soon you’ll have a bus pass to go along with him.

If you’d like to keep your own health care benefits, you’ll be paying taxes on them under Obama’s new plans.  In a dramatic reversal from his campaign position, Obama is now “open” to taxing health benefits in order to gin up money for his socialized system.

And you WILL be paying more in taxes, whether you’re smart enough to realize it or not.  The average 30 year old will pay $136,932.75 just for the interest of just Obama’s 2010 budget over the course of his or her working lifetime.  Obama’s massive budgets are stratospheric even in spite of the fact that he keeps lying about it.  Obama’s $3.6 trillion 2009 budget adds more to the debt than all previous presidents – from George Washington to Goerge W. Bush – combined, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Michael Boskin.  And that was BEFORE Obama raised his current budget deficit by another $89 billion.  That means the budget red ink will top $1.8 trillion – more than FOUR TIMES the record set by Bush last year.  That means the US will borrow nearly 50 cents out of every dollar it spends.

And you think someone else is going to continue to pay for all of that?  When we could literally confiscate all the wealth of the richest 5% and STILL NOT scratch the surface of all the debt we are accumulating?

In 2008 we spent $412 billion to service the $11 trillion national debt.  That figure will easily double over the next ten years, dwarfing everything else in the federal budget.  Obama’s spending will add $9.3 trillion to the national debt, nearly doubling it.  Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

You may be like the women who believed that Obama would pay their mortgages, fill their gas tanks, and give them new kitchens.  But you seriously need to realize something: what Obama is far more likely to give you is food riots by 2012.

Wanda Sykes: Anything Less Than Blind Devotion To Obama Is Treason

Barack Obama greeted the White House Press Corespondents by saying, “My name is Barack Obama.  Most of you covered me.  All of you voted for me.”

I don’t know how funny that was, but it certainly had the virtue of being true.  The media is so completely biased today, and has turned into such a pro-liberal, pro-Obama propaganda operation, that it is positively unreal.

But it was Wanda Sykes who expressed the unspoken zeitgeist of the mainstream media.

Youtube link

Sykes said:

Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy, Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So, you’re saying “I hope America fails,” it’s like, I don’t care about people losing their homes, or their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, Sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on oxycontin he missed his flight.

And you’ll notice if you watch the video that Obama clearly laughs at the rabid punchline.

And then Sykes says:

Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how ’bout that? Needs a little waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

And the President of the United States thinks it’s also quite hilarious that one of his fellow citizens’ kidneys fail.  Because that’s just the kind of guy he is, I guess.

And waterboarding is only torture when it is applied to terrorist murderers who want to kill Americans by the millions.  It is most definitely NOT torture if its done to conservatives.  Obama laughs at the thought of Rush Limbaugh being waterboarded.  But the waterboarding of a terrorist responsible for over three thousand American lives is a proof that we have lost our moral bearings.

Let me contrast Obama with a President that actually had some class.  Show me footage of George Bush laughing at the idea of a terrible wasting disease befalling, oh, I don’t know, Wanda Sykes.  The fact of the matter is, we used to have a President who was above that kind of rabid and clearly hateful partisanship.

And its the sheer, total, all-encompassing hypocrisy of the left that will never cease to continue to surprise me.

These same people who were for that war before they were against it, who literally hoped Bush would fail in Iraq and our troops would lose (recall Harry Reid’s proclamation of surrender when our troops were still fighting for victory: “I believe that this war is lost“), used to call dissent “the highest form of patriotism” when it suited them.

Dissent has NEVER been “the highest form of patriotism,” of course, and liberals had to butcher Thomas Jefferson the same way they butchered the Constitution to obtain that understanding.  But Democrats had a “standard” that they clung to when it suited them, only to show their hypocrisy by turning on the same standard they had just held.

Kind of like the war in Iraq itself.  Wanda Sykes speaks of conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh somehow betraying our soldiers in Iraq.  Let’s look at who REALLY undermined and betrayed our soldiers in Iraq.

This is what these cut-and-run-cowards USED to say before they publicly claimed “this war is lost” while our troops were still in the field fighting to win:

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

These liberals, who backstabbed, undermined, blocked, obstructed, demonized, and demagogued Bush and his agenda at every single turn – including hoping we failed in time of war – now have a frankly terrifying view of loyalty and patriotism.

If we are against Obama, we are against the country.  Because Barack Hussein Obama is our Fuhrer, and in him does the destiny of the new Reich lay.  He is our Big Brother, and we owe our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor not to our principles, but to our messiah.

You tell me: was that these hypocrite liberals’ view of the Bush presidency during the last eight years?

Obama is NOT America.  He is NOT our Big Brother, he is NOT our messiah, and he is most certainly not MY Fuhrer.  And I will fight with words, with fists, or even with weapons if anyone tries to take away my right to say otherwise.

Rush Limbaugh has very patiently explained to some incredibly stupid and immoral people that he hopes Obama fails FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.  Obama is a hard core socialist who has already spent more money than every single president from George Washington to George W. Bush COMBINED.  He is imposing a debt upon us that we and our children can never hope to repay.  The average 30 year-old planning to retire at age 70 will have to pay $136,932.75 just for the interest on President Obama’s 2010 budget.  And that doesn’t include the MUCH greater cost of paying for the overal deficit black hole to which Obama has added $12.8 TRILLION.  The interest on the national debt–interest alone–currently amounts to over $800 million a day, and about $300 billion per year.  In ten years we will be paying more than $800 billion a year in interest to finance our debt.

And we are already at a position that in order to make payments on the debt, we have to borrow more money.  A Washington Post article entitled, “U.S. Debt Set to Soar This Year” points that factoid out:

But about 40 percent of the debt held by private investors will mature in a year or less, according to Treasury officials. When those loans come due, the Treasury will have to borrow more money to repay them, even as it launches perhaps the most aggressive expansion of U.S. debt in modern history.

We’re broke, but that doesn’t stop Barack Obama from trying to nationalize another one-sixth of our economy (health care) at the cost of another $634 billion – just for starters.  He wants to nationalize our energy industry.  He wants to nationalize the student loan program.  He’s already nationalized the banks and the auto industry.

Obama’s spending will go on and on and on.  If all goes well, he will only put us $9.3 trillion in the hole. Even the Congressional Budget Office acknowledges that such reckless spending is totally unsustainable.

And I’m supposed to be akin to Osama bin Laden for hoping that Barack Hussein fails in his task of bankrupting the country?  Excuse me?

This was all been predicted before the election by men and women who knew a hell of a lot better than Wanda Sykes.

In a poll of chief executive officers taken prior to the election, 74 percent of the executives said they feared “that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.”  And some of the CEOs predicted that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.”  And with the Congress in nearly total Democratic control, they ARE being implemented.

Rush Limbaugh explained what he meant in an address that is worth reading.  He explained why we should ALL hope Obama fails.

I hope Obama fails – and fails big – and that the people recognize his failure and turn on him before America goes into a hole that it will never be able to claw its way out of.

And in the meantime, I’ll wear Democrats’ charges of treason as a badge of personal honor.  Being called a “traitor” by Democrats bothers me about as much as it would bother me if a child molester (whom Democrats protect as sacred cows, btw) called me “a bad person.”