Friday Morning News and Links

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk
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Obama’s Truth Team: We Have Always Been At War With Eastasia

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk

Obama has taken a huge hit with his “You didn’t build that” gaffe. Now his shameless apologists on the “Truth Team” are setting the record straight, claiming that what Obama said wasn’t what your lying ears heard. Townhall‘s reaction:

Simply incredible. The spot shows a clip of Romney reading a verbatim Obama quote, then snarks: “The problem? That’s not what [Obama] said.”  Twenty seconds later, the ad shows the clip of Obama saying precisely what his “truth team” just claimed he never said.  They can try to spin that Obama didn’t really mean what he said (we dealt with that point earlier), but to assert that he didn’t say it at all must even make old hands Kremlin blush.  He said it.  It’s in your own ad, guys.  But by all means, please continue to explain that Obama didn’t say what he plainly said and that Mitt Romney actually agrees with it, or something.  Good luck with that.

And The Blaze:

But in accusing the former Massachusetts governor of taking the president out of context, the Obama campaign takes Romney out of context. This is what he actually said [emphasis added]:

He said this: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” That somebody else is government, in his view. He goes on to describe the people who deserve the credit for building this business. And, of course, he describes people who we care very deeply about, who make a difference in our lives: our schoolteachers, firefighters, people who build roads. We need those things. We value schoolteachers, firefighters, people who build roads. You really couldn’t have a business if you didn’t have those things.

But, you know, we pay for those things. Alright? The taxpayers pay for government. It’s not like government just provides those to all of us and we say, “Oh, thank you government for doing those things.” No, in fact, we pay for them and we benefit from them and we appreciate the work that they do and the sacrifices that are done by people who work in government. But they did not build this business.

So, what was the point of the Obama video? Oh, that’s right: if you take someone out of context, you’re totally willing to say anything to get elected.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Ain’t it the truth.

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President Putt

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk

George W. Bush was mocked in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 for golfing. During his eight-year presidency, Mr. Bush played 24 rounds of golf. In under 3 1/2 years, President Obama has played well over 100 rounds (his 100th came on June 17, actually). I guess we weren’t supposed to notice.

While Bush plays golf another Soldier dies

Where’s the outrage?

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President Obama: Fundamentally Unserious

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk

H/T Breitbart, From the “You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Department:

An eye-opening new report by the Government Accountability Institute reveals that President Barack Obama averages just eight minutes more a week on economic meetings than the average dog owner spends walking their dog.

When it was recently reported that Mr. Obama had played his 100th round of golf, the president said that playing golf was “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.”  Therefore, by his own estimate, the president has spent 600 hours playing golf, as compared to just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency.

Detail:

  • Throughout the first 1,257 days of his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings or briefings of any kind (DC: 1 hour every three days!)
  • In 2012, so far Obama has spent just 24 total hours in economic meetings of any kind
  • Assuming a six day, 10-hour workweek, Obama has spent less than 4 percent of his total time in economic meetings or briefings of any kind
  • There were 773 days (72 percent), excluding Sundays, in which he had no economic meetings
  • Mr. Obama has spent an average of 138 minutes a week in economic meetings.  According to a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, new dog owners spent an average of 130 minutes a week walking their dogs

Are you still giving him the benefit of the doubt?

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Zuckerman: Real unemployment rate is around 15 percent

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk

From US News and World Report:

What do you want first, the bad news or the even worse news?

The bad news is the disappointing June unemployment numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The worse news is that we are failing to train tomorrow’s labor force for employment in a world of accelerating competition.

Jobs, first. The headline unemployment number remains at 8.2 percent, although President Barack Obama cited the 84,000 new private sector jobs last month as “a step in the right direction.” He had the grace to add: “But we can’t be satisfied.” He can say that again. That 8.2 percent only measures people who have actively applied for a job in the last four weeks by going to an interview or filling out an application. It is not a relevant measure. People who have been unemployed for many months don’t go through the business of applying for a job every four weeks.

Given that the median period of unemployment is now in the range of five months, vast numbers who want to work are just not counted. If we include, as we should, people who have applied for a job in the last 12 months, and those employed part time who want full-time work, the real unemployment number is closer to 15 percent.

–snip–

Here now is the worse news: America is adding to the length of unemployment lines in the future by falling behind today in skill areas where global competition has become so intense.

This next section is especially disconcerting, given the level of debt young Americans take on for their education (emphasis mine):

A stunning illustration of how far America has started to lag in training its youth is that we are only one of three countries in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where the youngsters are not better qualified than their fathers and mothers. Men and women ages 55 to 64 have the same or better education than the 25-to-34 generation. The younger workers in most other OECD countries are much better educated than those nearing retirement.

This is an astonishing commentary on the limits of, and the deterioration of, America’s system of public education. The National Academies warned years ago that the United States would continue to lose ground to foreign economic rivals unless the quality of its science education improved.

“Shut up!” explained the academics.

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The Result of the Progressive War on Success

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk

Great News! Canadian households are now wealthier than their American counterparts. Unemployment continues to be grim. The President is too busy campaigning to meet his jobs council. But he can take time to blather on endlessly about Bain Capital and to lecture American business that they didn’t earn what they’ve earned, someone else did, and they’re only as smart and hard-working as anyone else.

At this point even casual observers seem to be noticing that the Leader of the Free World is waging a campaign of shameless warfare on Romney’s success in an effort to vilify him. It’s an extension of the Occupy mentality: The 1% versus “the rest of us” ™. A few see this for what it is: Class Warfare based on envy and resentment, and a desire to punish the successful.

The problem for Obama and the progressives is that most Americans would like to be rich, including them(!). Even the dullest among us has thought about what they would do if they won the lottery or had a distant relative leave them millions, to say nothing of earning wealth through ideas, effort, etc.. And that is where class warfare in America hits a snag. Most Americans can imagine what it would be like to be wealthy in a country where the government is hostile to their wealth (excessive taxation) and encourages fellow citizens to attack them (Occupy).

This is pretty simple: Obama talks a good show and America has given him the benefit of the doubt. But he simply hasn’t delivered. From all appearances he is completely clueless as to what to do because in his heart and in his ideology he is uninterested in fixing, supporting or encouraging a capitalist free-enterprise supply-and-demand corporate economy. Romney is.

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Thursday Morning News and Links

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Darth Chipmunk
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