1312 Obama - Sunlight

Steve's speech June 22, 2007, Manchester NH

On or near that day he said it with different words

7 Broken Promises in Record Time

1. Make government open and transparent.
2. Make it "impossible" for Congressmen to slip in pork barrel projects.
3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. (Even Congressional Republicans shut out.)
4. No more secrecy.
5. Public will have 5 days to look at a bill.
6. You’ll know what’s in it.
7. We will put every pork barrel project online.

1314 Obama - Colmes is ON

Colmes is on

From Red Square to the shores of Havana, from San Francisco all the way to Berkley, and from the West Village to the Upper West Side, Colmes is on. Tonight we are live at Mount Rushmore where the final touches are being put on Barrack Obama’s face after just 72 days in office. Then, what do republicans hate as much as poor people – furry little animals (and we have the video to prove it). Plus Al Gore says Ann Coulter is to blame for global warming – so it must be true. And an emotional retrospective of the life and work of Noam Chomsky. All that plus the anti-American panel: tonight featuring Bill Ayers, Sean Penn and anybody from France. Grab you hammer and sickle – Colmes starts right now. … Got ya!

1315 Obama - Nice motel

London, April 1, 2009

Steve and Michele spent a quiet night in a quaint London motel last night. The room was specially decorated with a bust of Winston Churchill for the President of the United States. In addition, a fruit basket of region 1 DVDs was place on the TV. It is rumored that Steve brought his own region 1 DVD player.

1316 Obama - Tea

GJ tea party
GJ tea party

City: Grand Junction
When: April 15, 12:00pm - 1:30pm
Where: 12th street and North Avenue
Contact: EMAIL

1317 Obama - Tax Advice

letter to Senator Harkin, D-IA

Dear Senator Harkin,

As a native Iowan and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you.

My primary reason for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's provisions is accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five years, all I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and income taxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious to get the process started before every one figures it out.

Simply put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively?

This would yield an excellent result for me and my family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005.

Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin using the local emergency room as my primary health care provider. Once I have stopped paying premiums for medical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year.

Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications, as well as "in-state" tuition rates for many colleges throughout the United States for my son.

Lastly, I understand that illegal status would relieve me of the burden of renewing my driver's license and making those burdensome car insurance premiums. This is very important to me given that I still have college age children driving my car.

If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become illegal (retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be most appreciative.

Thank you for your assistance.

Your Loyal Constituent,
Donald Ruppert
Burlington, IA

1320 Obama - replace PM w/ POTUS ??

U.K. MEP Daniel Hannan: Transcript of His Attack on Gordon Brown

Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidised, where you have not nationalised outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words? Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country?

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary; countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year - in the last twelve months – a hundred thousand private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created thirty thousand public sector jobs.

Prime Minister, you cannot carry on for ever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so – which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

1321 Obama - Bait and switch

Meet Larry, the dead fish, aka government printing $1 trillion and monetizing our debt

So what was in the news? Steve's bracket picks ....

Steve's rage at AIG bonuses ...

Steve debuts on Leno ....

citizens wanting to lynch AIG citiznes

youtube video

1322 Obama - TOTUS/POTUS

President Obama's press conference transcript, March 24, 2009

baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com

BARACK OBAMA'S TELEPROMPTER'S BLOG REFLECTIONS FROM THE HARD DRIVE OF THE MACHINE THAT ENABLES THE VOICE OF THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD

1323 Obama - One with nature

GJ daily sentinel, March 24, 2009

Humans must give up all to truly preserve nature

Stop it now! All this energy production is ruining our environment and it has to stop.

Everything we humans do is bad for the Earth and must stop. Turn off your electricity, turn off your natural gas, stop buying gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and jet fuel. And since farming and manufacturing are bad for the environment too, no more manufactured goods or food. The only option we have to protect Mother Earth is to become one with nature and let nature replenish.

Sexual reproduction spreads disease, leads to birth defects, overpopulation and promotes pornography. Run wild with the bears and the birds. Compete one on one for your food and shelter. No guns allowed either. Guns are evil.

But our intelligence is still and unfair advantage, so I suggest that we all become politicians. Only then will we be well suited to drive ourselves to extinction and the Earth will survive.

Lonnie Smith
Grand Junction

1324 Obama - Cupboards Bare

Rush claims he went from right 98.9% of the time to right 99% of the time.

Well, here's one thing he's right about - 46% of the US people did not vote for Steve. And they're buying stuff.

Sportsman's warehouse Feb. 2009

1326 Obama - Thomas Paine

aka Bob Basso

1327 Obama - AIG smoke screen

Glenn Beck

I've been telling you for weeks to not be distracted by the "big news of the day" because it's usually just a smokescreen. But on Wednesday, I fell for it myself.

While everyone — including me — was taking sides on the AIG bonuses, something much more important was happening: The Fed announced it will pump a $1 trillion into the system by buying debt from our treasury.
....

That last line of defense was just hung over "patient America" yesterday, but we were all — and that includes me — too focused on AIG to notice.

Here's what this means: We're borrowing money from ourselves to pay for programs we can't pay for.

And that's why the price of gold shot up about 75 bucks in 18 hours. Investors aren't stupid. They know the risks this poses, especially to inflation and our dollar.

video clip

1328 Obama - Ayn Rand

Wall Street Journal

by Yaron Brook

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

The message is always the same: "Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand said this message is wrong -- selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness -- that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest -- she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention -- and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.

Rand offered us a way out -- to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today.

Dr. Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

1329 Obama - more chump change

Almost the same chump change as the bonuses, but no outrage. Well, Dodd actually said this: "Naturally, I knew nothing about this, and I’m now seething with anger at the injustice.” SURE!! Chrissy

from ScrappleFace

AIG, which has received $170 billion in taxpayer cash from the federal government since September, gave more than $585,000 to Congressional and presidential candidates last year, favoring Democrats 3-to-1 over Republicans.

President Obama and Sen. Dodd were the two largest recipients of campaign contributions from the beleaguered company, and the only politicians to garner six-figure amounts from AIG in 2008 — $103,100 for Sen. Dodd and $100,332 for presidential candidate Obama.

1330 Obama - More panties

1331 Obama - panties in a wad

from NY Times

WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials and Republicans alike were nearly universal in condemning the $165 million in bonuses that the American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, is to pay executives in the business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.


“There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what’s happened at A.I.G. is the most outrageous,” said Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser

$165M/$170B --> 1/10 of ONE percent - GOOD GRIEF!

1333 Obama - pockets

from eyblast.tv

1334 Obama - Or so he says

Associated Press, Recovery Act Implementation Conference, March12, 2009

"If we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it" President Obama

"Six months from now, if the verdict on this effort is that we've wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary or we've done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don't look for any help from the federal government for a long while" V.P. Biden

"All of you are at the front lines of what is probably the most important task that we have in this country over the next couple of years, and that's getting the economy started again" President Obama (the audience gasped when he entered the room)

"make sure that every single dollar is well spent" President Obama

1335 Obama - Doom Bunker

Doom Bunker

1336 Obama - March Madness

In the spirit of March madness coming up next week. And given that Rush Limbaugh is right 99% of the time and Steve is wrong 99% of the time, Let's dwell on Steve's right 1%, and that has to do with sports (remember he is in favor of college football playoffs). So in that spirit, there should be a betting line on when Steve's first official VETO happens.

Heaven knows, he should have vetoed today's pork bill, since he promised during the campaign that there would be no more earmarks and that the American people would get to review all bills for 5 days before he signed them.

Knowing America's recent luck, his first veto will probably be vetoing college football playoffs.