obama

Appearing on Drudge’s site today:

What a way to make it sound like Democrats are against the Obama jobs bill. But facts mean nothing to the merchant of lies and spin. Here’s the real facts from the article Drudge linked:

The 50-50 vote fell 10 short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill, and saw two Democrats and one independent join with all 47 Republicans in sustaining a bipartisan filibuster.

Even if the two Democrats and one independent voted for it, the vote would have still failed. It’s the fact that since day one of President Obama taking office the Senate Republicans have done nothing but filibuster to the point they have shattered the record of filibusters ever in the Senate. This bill proves that the GOP is the party of no, with a large majority of people supporting the bill.

So how do real news organizations headline this story? Well let’s start with the New York Times:

Obama’s Jobs Plan Is Blocked Again by Senate Republicans

And how about Reuters?

Last week during his address to Congress, President Obama talked about our crumbling infrastructure. One project he highlighted was the Brent Spence bridge, which connects Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky. This bridge is a part of the most major north/south corridor in the United States  - I-75. It is a vital part of transportation, meaning it’s a vital part of commerce. If it were to be unexpectedly shutdown, it would be a nightmare not only for the greater Cincinnati area, but far a large portion of the eastern United States.

The following day this area got another warning about the deteriorating bridge. In Louisville the I-64 bridge crossing the Ohio River into Indiana was suddenly shutdown because of cracks.  The video on this page shows the traffic nightmare commuters experienced yesterday morning from the closure of this bridge.

While our leaders have spent the past decade engaged in extreme partisan warfare, America has fallen apart. We have a Republican Party that looks at replacing these important parts of our infrastructure and economy as being “pork”.  Remember this scene?

By now you have probably heard that the White House gave into John Boehner’s demands to move the date of Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on jobs. Instead of the speech being next Wednesday, we will not have to wait until Thursday so that nothing interferes with the Republican debate next week.

This is another sign of the Obama administration being weak on politics and commanding the lead in any debate and there are a few reasons for this.

This could prove to be some real entertainment:

As Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan comes to a final decision about running for president, several top national conservatives are encouraging him to join the race. Ryan, who has been seriously but quietly considering a presidential bid for several months, is expected to decide on a run in the next two weeks

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels hopes he runs. “If there were a Paul Ryan fan club, I'd be a national officer,” Daniels said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

One issue with Ryan is his age:

Daniels also dismisses concerns about Ryan’s age. “It didn’t stop the last guy,” he says, laughing. “This president would have a hard time arguing that Paul wouldn’t be a serious candidate.” When asked if that might be an object lesson, Daniels says no. “It’s a natural question but I think people would be reassured both by hearing him talk and by the people he’d put around him.”

Ryan is 9 years younger that Obama, which would make him 5 years younger at the time of a Presidential run. But I don't really view age as a big deal. The only ones who really seemed concerned about that was the Republicans in 2008, when they were talking about Obama. It does make for an interesting argument though - is a white man mature enough to run for office, when a black man, 5 years older, wasn't? 

But let's consider the real issues here, not the typical faux issues manufactured by politicians and pundits. 

There is no doubt that the Tea Party has become hell bent on destroying America. Proof of that can be seen in this video from Wisconsin, where members of the Tea Party Express cheered the downgrade of the United States credit rating:

Yes, let's cheer on something that can cost our nation an additional $100 billion a year, destroy the stock markets and people's retirements and send the world economy into a death spiral. Are these people really this stupid? Why yes they are.

Here's a perfect example of the stupidity that plagues the Tea Party. In the recent debt ceiling debate there were fears that things like the military and social security might not be paid. Tea Party members in Congress drafted legislation to force the President to pay these items in case of default. The only problem is that the cost of these items are greater than the income of our nation, so we must borrow just to pay them each month. A case of very simple math and the Tea Party once again let failed ideology trump simple fact.

With the deal announced to raise the debt ceiling and instill trillions in cuts during a recession, it is time to declare the that the right owns the economy.

So just how bad is this deal? Here's Paul Krugman's take:

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

So yes, the right owns this economy and they will continue so. Again from Krugman's article today:

And then there are the reported terms of the deal, which amount to an abject surrender on the part of the president. First, there will be big spending cuts, with no increase in revenue. Then a panel will make recommendations for further deficit reduction — and if these recommendations aren’t accepted, there will be more spending cuts.

Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?

The Washington Times has this "end of transparency" headline up right now:

White House to cut access to half of federal websites

Which starts with:

As part of the Obama administration’s campaign to promote transparency, the White House announced today it intends to eliminate the public’s access to half of the federal government’s websites within the next year.

That's a great paragraph for those who can't handle reading whole articles, or those who might only see it in a feed reader. Of course once you get past that headline and first paragraph, you see something much different:

The White House said there are nearly 2,000 websites operated by the federal government, which it said confuses people.

“With so many separate sites, Americans often do not know where to turn for information,” the office of Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. said in a statement. “The administration will immediately put a halt to the creation of new websites. The administration will also shut down or consolidate 25% of the 2,000 sites over the next few months and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, standalone sites in half over the next year.”

It called the campaign of winnowing access to government web sites part of the president’s campaign “targeting duplication and waste.” The administration did not give an estimate of how much money it believes could be saved by halving the government’s Internet sites.

So the White House isn't going rogue and blocking the public from all kinds of government websites, but rather they are combining some of the over 2,000 federal websites to make things easier to find and to cut spending.

With all the chest thumping over "runaway spending" and the growing deficit, you would think the party that claims to be the fiscal hawks would look at cutting spending in all areas of the budget. Well that's not the case. It turns out the Republicans want to add an additional $17 billion to the defense budget over what President Obama had requested.

But that isn't even that troubling. What really gets me is this:

Legislative language withholds three-quarters of the funds until the Defense and State Department come up with a report to Congress on how the money is being used and what metrics are being used to measure progress by Pakistan in rooting out terrorist and Taliban elements inside its borders.

The requested report would include a discussion of “United States strategic objectives in Pakistan” and a “listing of the terrorist or extremist organizations in Pakistan opposing United States goals in the region and against which the United States encourages Pakistan to take action.”

The administration would be asked to spell out “the gaps in capabilities of Pakistani security units that hampers the ability of the Government of Pakistan to take action against the organizations” and what standards will be used to measure progress by the Pakistan in “combating the organizations listed in clause.”

Does this sound familiar? Well it should. Democrats used to try this same thing when Bush was President. They wanted the details of what the plan was and where the money was going in Iraq and Afghanistan.