A link on his blog…
and political operatives to shore up his poll numbers!
The White House has quietly launched an effort to confront the political backlash along the Gulf Coast over its handling of the BP oil spill — giving special attention to Florida, the only state in the region President Barack Obama won in 2008 and one he will need again when he runs for reelection in 2012.
The White House dispatched political and communications aides to the Gulf Coast states on July 12, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving one each, sources familiar with the effort said. Some aides went to Louisiana, while Florida received four.
Today's News
Yesterday, here, I wrote about the President diminishing the office by, in part, still acting as if he was a candidate rather than the President of the United States.
Power Line also noted how Obama’s constant partisanship tarnishes the office.
Earlier this month President Obama attended the groundbreaking of an advanced car battery factory in Holland, Michigan, subsidized by the stimulus bill. It was President Obama’s fourth battery-related trip, and it came as the White House makes an aggressive push to tell what one senior official called “the battery story.” Veronique de Rugy isn’t buying the battery story.
The groundbreaking occurred in the district of Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who attended at the invitation of the company and sat in the first row to listen to the president’s remarks. Hoekstra of course opposed the Democrats’ $800 million stimulus bill. He is also a Michigan gubernatorial candidate. For reasons that remain mysterious to me, Obama seized the opportunity to attack Hoekstra:
There are some folks who want to go back – who think we should return to the policies that helped to lead to this recession,” Obama said later in his comments honoring a new advanced battery factory being built by the company LG Chem. “Some made the political calculation that it’s better to obstruct than lend a hand. They said no to the tax cuts, they said no to small business loans, they said no to clean energy projects. It doesn’t stop them from coming to ribbon cuttings — but that’s OK.
The president’s remarks were both classless and petty. Hoekstra aptly commented: “It demeans the office of the president. It’s disappointing. It is unpresidential.” Hoekstra added: “This is my home district. These people are paying the taxes that he’s handing out today. I’m here to respect the office of the president, and I don’t think he reciprocated.” Video of Obama’s attack and Hoekstra’s response is accessible here.
The incident revealed something that we have come to observe frequently with Obama, as in his attack on the Supreme Court at the State of the Union address. In the current Weekly Standard cover story, Professor James Ceaser observes:
The longer he is president, the less presidential he has become. Obama has reversed the usual process of growth and maturation, appearing today far more like a candidate for the presidency–and a very ordinary one at that–than he did during the latter stages of his campaign.
Obama claims to seek bipartisanship, but his actions and words show a man unable to work with the opposition. He is intolerant of dissent, which of course is consistent with his far left political views.
Honestly, on the White House’s web page, do we have to see partisan politics on display? The Obama administration simply is one of the most petulant, out of touch, if not intellectually dishonest presidencies since Dick Nixon.
This is just one example:
From the blurb above, which can be found here, the President, out of one side of his mouth, talks about tax cuts for the middle class, yet in the very next sentence, he basically all but says he wants the Bush tax cuts to expire. So the President claims to help the middle class, but he is willing to allow my taxes to increase by 2% when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year(see this chart). So much for being for the working man and woman.
So in essence, he “lies” when he says he wants to cut taxes for the working class. You can’t be for “strengthening” the middle class, and yet allow their taxes to increase by at least 2%.
Of course, if you read a little further, everything is still the fault of the Republicans—remember, they caused “this mess.” At what point does this man take responsibility for the nation he governs?
Finally, he says the “Republican plan” would increase the deficit. Honestly, is that supposed to be a joke?
It truly takes someone out of touch with reality to let that pass his lips. Simply put, Obama owns the title to the “largest deficit, ever.” The Republicans, even at their worst, could never match the spending spree exhibited by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.
It is embarrassing to have such a petty, deceitful, and amateurish individual as our President. And, as evidenced by our “Jerry Springer” White House blog, our President lacks class as well.
Probably took two years off my life.
The future is here, as a test of a laser system developed for the Navy shot down a drone on July 17, 2010:
A Raytheon-U.S. Navy team used a high power, solid-state laser combined with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System to shoot down four UAVs off San Nicolas Island near California. Powered by electricity, the system offers an affordable and almost infinite magazine to stop incoming threats. Once development is completed, the Laser Area Weapon System will give the warfighter a speed-of-light solution for defeating rockets, mortars, UAVs and other targets.
Raytheon intends to be a major player in the U.S. Army’s Common Infrared Countermeasures competition. Raytheon Missile Systems has developed a CIRCM solution, known as Scorpion that will feature the company’s production-matured directed infrared countermeasures turret and a rugged quantum cascade laser (QCL). Scorpion will be a light-weight, low-cost, highly reliable, laser-based infrared countermeasures solution against current and future IR guided threat missiles. Link
Here’s the video:
Another case where an American citizen died because our elites encourage illegal immigration and refuse to enforce our laws.
Immigration officials have taken on the case of a man involved in a fatal collision with a bicyclist in the Newport Coast area, saying he has a history of being ticketed for driving without a license and was previously deported by immigration authorities.
Jose Luis Huerta Mundo, 38, was being held in Orange County Jail without bail after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ordered that he be held for possible deportation proceedings.
Court records show that in 1999, Mundo was convicted of driving with a suspended license and not having proof of insurance. In 2002, he was convicted of not having his license on him and a year later, for not having his vehicle registered. He was convicted two more times of driving without a license, in 2005 and 2006. Read more….
The illegal immigrant doesn’t respect our laws when he crosses the border illegally. His disregard continues, often, through his entire stay in the U.S.
Yet the rest of us pay our insurance, get our driver’s license….
Something is wrong with this situation and something is wrong with those who not only tolerate it, but encourage it.
VILLEFRANCHE, France (July 4, 2010) The Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigate USS Taylor (FFG 50) is moored at full dress in honor of independence day while in port at Villefranche, France. Taylor is on a scheduled deployment in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Edward Kessler/Released)
Imagine that, entitlements don’t heal an ailing economy.
Here’s a thought. We already spend $140 billion on defense procurement. $72 billion for transportation…and so on.
In essence, we’ve been practicing Keynesian economics for years and yet an already massive level of spending wasn’t capable of sustaining our economy.
So the Democrats decided to pursue an already failing paradigm.
The Stimulus will fail because the Stimulus of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 all failed then.
right click to enlarge
Just a trillion dollars this year….
I found this photo of the President, visiting an electric truck plant in Kansas, and added what I thought an appropriate caption.
This the accompanying blog post from the White House:
Today, President Obama spoke with workers at Smith Electric’s new factory in Kansas City. Missouri. With a $32 million grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act coupled with $36 million in private capital, the electric vehicle company is building up to 500 all-electric trucks.
While he was there, the President also had the pleasure of announcing the company was hiring its 50th worker at the plant. By September, that number is expected to grow to 70, and at the project’s peak, Smith tells us the project will create more than 220 direct and indirect jobs.
If 220 jobs should appear, each job would cost the taxpayer $145,000. Is that $32 million spent wisely?
My favorite bumper sticker via Tim B.:
I find it hilarious and disturbing that NAACP is probably going to vote on a resolution condemning the Tea Party for racism in order to create “enthusiasm” for its cause.
….one day before the nation’s largest civil rights group is expected to condemn what it calls racist elements in the Tea Party movement.
NAACP leaders have individually taken on the Tea Party in the past, but the organization is now trying to build a bigger momentum against the Tea Party, which has emerged as a strong grassroots, albeit fragmented, force across the country.
“We have to close the enthusiasm gap,” NAACP president Ben Jealous said in an interview with the Associated Press Friday. “The danger of the Tea Party is that people see them and think about periods in history when groups like them were much more powerful than they are now, and so a lot of what we spend energy doing is explaining to people what reality is, and that the reality is that the majority from 2008 still exists.” Read more….
Anything that is opposed to the socialist and moribund NAACP’s agenda is racist. A tired tactic from a group that has outlived its original purpose.
What I find discouraging is that the NAACP is blind to what their policies have done to black Americans. High crime rates, lousy educations, a tendency to emulate the gangster culture and high unemployment rates. Socialism and the nanny state have created a dependent class that now wallows in misery. And somehow, the NAACP wants to make people excited about this path that leads to failure.
Instead of promoting individualism and all the associated qualities that result in success, the NAACP continues promoting the “us vs them” mentality (which if you really think about it, is actually racist in of itself) and the concept that government can fix anything.
The only hope I have, is that the Reid, Pelosi, and Obama economic train wreck will shake the black community awake from its allegiance to the Democratic Party and force it to ask hard questions, like “how long can we keep doing this to ourselves?”
