It is all about Context, Context, Context - Trying to make some sense for those who simply hit reblog without knowing exactly what it is they are reblogging!
Oh that is okay…let’s just leave all the dead people on the rolls and let illegals vote. After all, it shouldn’t be harder to vote than it is to get a drivers license in Florida….Oh Wait. It ISN’T….Think progress should come down and try to get their license ….maybe they’d change their mind when they realize that the average person has had to go back 2 times to renew or obtain their licenses here since January 2010…..
Makes sense, it’s not as though Florida has ever been at the center of a presidential election controversy before.
Here’s the difference - if you and I donate our measly five dollars to a GOP candidate or group, President Obama is not going to place you on an enemies list, and tells left wing reporters in their weekly morning strategy meetings to target you in “hit pieces” that assassinate your character and then uses his campaign website to lie about your business.
The Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have accused President Obama of keeping an “Enemies List.” That sounded a bit … dramatic, so I though I would check out what they were upset about. It turns out it was this little page listing names, donation amounts, and a bit of…
Surprise! The unemployment rate has gone back up to 8.2% in spite of the fact that every major news outlet wants us to believe that we’re in a recovery. With recoveries like this, who needs recessions?
From CNBC:
The American jobs engine hit stall speed in May, with the economy adding…
And here we ago again…that truth team….
Its pretty clear to me that the Truth Team isn’t all that concerned about the real truth; they are concerned only with the passing off of what they want us to believe is truth. Take the latest blasting of email inboxes dealing about Obama’s spending…
Based upon some commentary (that’s right…not an expert opinion…commentary) filled with misrepresentations, Obama and supporters are out there claiming that his rate of spending has increased slower than at any time in the past 50 years…..! Now, remember that they are talking about the rate of spending and not the actual spending in dollars and cents and debt and deficit….they conveniently leave all of that out of their truth telling in their rush to “prove” that Obama hasn’t been a “whirlwind” spender.
I read this guys commentary piece before the Obama campaign picked up on it and began to use it in speeches and graphics. Before any “fact checking” had been done by CBS or the Washington Post, I already knew the guy was doing an end run around the truth….
Right off the bat, he states the Fiscal Year 2009 was the last year of G.W. Bush’s presidency blaming the huge increase in spending that year on Bush. Let’s take a look at that for just a minute…
The election was in 2008 and Bush left office on January 20 2009. There was NO budget in place for 2009 despite the fact that Bush had presented Congress with a budget proposal for FY 2009 in February. It is important that readers understand that a Fiscal Year begins October 1 - in this case - October 1 2008. So, here are the facts…
FY 2009 began in October 2008 - one month before the election and about three months before Bush left office. There was NO budget in place because the Democrat led Congress decided to hold over the budget because Bush had threatened a veto because of the pork in their version of it. The federal government operated from October 1 2008 through March 11 2009 on continuing resolutions so was basically operating on 2008 spending levels until then (except for defense, homeland security, and veteran affairs).
What about TARP? That was in FY 2009 and was a Bush proposal so you can say that he was responsible for the spending under that bill….however, Obama can’t escape responsibility for that either…since he was in on the emergency meetings surrounding it and was voting Senator when the thing passed.
What else happened in 2009? Obama’s stimulus. What else? The 2009 budget was finally signed into law….by President Obama. With all of its pork spending. With 4% higher spending levels than requested by Bush in February 2008. With increased spending permission by Congress for Congress itself….(no pay raise but more money for everything else!).
The commentary goes on to say that Obama reduced spending in 2010. Oh yeah? At first glance it looks that way but when you do a bit of digging, turns out that TARP and the Stimulus weren’t a part of that years spending totals and account for almost ALL of the decrease in spending that Obama claims he oversaw….!
Then there is 2011 and projections for 2012…using the baseline CBO reports…when everyone else uses the alternative one for a more accurate estimation of the future state of our government spending, not to mention our debt and deficits which by the way, the author and the campaign conveniently leave out of their claim that Obama is not a big spender.
Let’s look at the debt for a second. From 2001 – 2004, Bush increased the debt by 1.855 trillion – the debt in 2009 increased by 1.573 trillion! During Bush’s second term, the debt increased by 3.014 trillion….During President Obama’s first three years, the debt has increased by 4 trillion!
Don’t believe me?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57442013/fact-check-obama-off-on-thrifty-spending-claim/
The only way that Obama can dispute the claims that he is a huge spender is to grab onto commentary that begins by misleading the readers about FY 2009 and whose presidency it fell under and continues by taking spending out of the context of everything and uses a “rate” of spending to confuse the issue.
Wise up folks…you are being led down the garden path ……
More about Obama’s policies and their impact~
Let’s take a look back. Friday July 1st 2011. The White House released its “Seventh Quarterly Report”. It was about the stimulation of the economy by the Stimulus. It was written by President Obama’s own economic team - more specifically by the handpicked Council of Economic Advisors.
They reported that that Stimulus “saved or created” about 2.4 million jobs…although I - like others wonder how one can count jobs that were “saved”….! What the report doesn’t point out is the fact that those jobs each….I repeat EACH…cost the taxpayers $278,000.00 (that means per job)…. remember we currently borrow 42 cents of every dollar spent by the government so we are paying interest on that “investment”.
Oh and let’s not forget the fact that - in President Obama’s own words and accompanied by a smile- “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.” One could wonder if there had been a President who was experienced in running a business or even a local or state government - and if there had been business people serving as advisors instead of activists and academics - maybe those who pushed for and designed the Stimulus might have known that?
“It’s still about the economy….and we’re not stupid”
George Kaiser’s involvement with both fundraising for Obama and Solyndra - that’s crony capitalism by any definition. http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/solyndra-obama-connection
And for more about Obama supporters and their links to that failed company which you and I will pay for….http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46791
“Attacks on President Obama’s “crony capitalism” are a major theme of Mitt Romney’s campaign. And the stimulus typically figures prominently in these attacks. As Romney and his allies tell is, the Recovery Act was full of shady, wasteful giveaways to the administration’s friends and benefactors.
This argument is probably effective. Most Americans have no problem believing government programs are a boondoggle. The argument is also untrue—as in, the very opposite of true. Federal auditors watching over the Recovery Act have documented just $7.2 million in fraud, or about .001 percent of the $800 billion the federal government has distributed through the program. That’s astonishingly low. And that’s not because the auditors haven’t been looking.”
- Jonathan Cohn, Crony Capitalism, Minus the Cronies
Photo courtesy of Dead Homer Society
Obama’s fund raising~~
“In the clutch” - a letter requesting $3.00 donations to the campaign because Romney is relying on big money but President Obama is only relying on people like me.
Oh really?
Obama donors include but are not limited to….
Bundlers: Bundlers are people with friends in high places who, after bumping against personal contribution limits, turn to those friends, associates, and, well, anyone who’s willing to give, and deliver the checks to the candidate in one big “bundle.”
Even though these donors direct more money to the candidates than anyone else, disclosure can be spotty, candidates generally release bundlers by ranges of fundraising, indicated in this chart with the “max” and “min” columns, and with the top ranges being simply “$500,000 or more.” http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/bundlers.php?id=N00009638
Lawyers/Law Firms$22,400,000128Securities & Investment$14,500,00077Business Services$10,850,00043Real Estate$7,300,00035TV/Movies/Music$6,800,00030
You can go to the link above to see the names of the individual bundlers.
SuperPacs Despite all the rhetoric about SuperPacs from the Democrats, President Obama has taken more money from the PACS than other candidates. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/superpacs.php
Lobbyists: Though Obama rejects contributions from lobbyists, his top fundraisers include individuals involved in the business of influencing government.
Michael Kempner, among those who raised more than $500,000, is president and CEO of MWW Group, a public relations firm with a large lobbying business. Kempner himself is not a registered lobbyist.
Sally Susman, another fundraiser in the $500,000-plus category, is executive vice president for policy, external affairs and communications at Pfizer Inc., a job that includes directing the pharmaceutical giant’s government relations operations.
California figured most prominently on Obama’s roster of big money “bundlers.” Sixteen are from California and 13 are from New York.
Top fundraisers include movie producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Actress Eva Longoria was in the second highest tier, bundling $200,000 to $500,000 for Obama’s re-election. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/01/obama-bundlers-include-advisers-tied-to-solyndra-corzine-eva-longoria/#ixzz1wXsm5EGI
Dinners with a $30,000 + entry fee http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/obama-hollywood-fundraisers_n_1029760.html
I need that $3.00 he keeps begging me for - to help pay for the increased cost of groceries and gas.
Gas prices since Obama took office have risen by 103.79 percent. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/04/09/gas-prices-grow-more-under-obama-than-carter
Truth Team…again
Angry at the GPS Crossroads ad that highlights so called “broken promises” of the Obama Administration, the Truth Team has come out swinging…so let’s take a look at one of the points in the ad…
The Mortgage Crisis….right now, 11.1 million homeowners are underwater on their mortgages. These are for the most part folks who paid their mortgages on time but due to the number of foreclosures that have taken place over the past 4 years, have seen the value of their home plummet leaving them owing more than they could expect to sell it for.
Two major initiatives were put into being by President Obama - both being hailed as salvation to those facing foreclosure (which would have helped those who were not facing foreclosure but who were suffering because of the massive numbers of those who had stopped making payments either because they couldn’t or because they chose not to continue making payments). Neither of those programs have helped anywhere near the number of people they were supposed to help.
Affordable Home Modification Program (the one that had Tea Party folks carrying signs that read “honk if I’m paying your mortgage) was supposed to bail out 3 to 4 million homeowners (and save the home value therefore of millions of others) helped out only an estimated 795,000….
The second initiative was the refinance one…and once again, this one would prove not to help as many people as we were promised. At issue (just like with all those student loan executive orders) is that the requirements are so stringent that far too many were left out…You had to have your mortgage underwritten by Fannie and/or Freddie; you had to have good credit, you had to have had no more than one missed payment for the previous 12 months; the loan to value couldn’t be less than 80%.
The issue is this…most of what Obama has done is symbolic. It makes a very good political talking point but the real life affect leaves much to be desired. Rush Limbaugh always says that the problem with liberalism is that is too many times “symbolism over substance”. In the case of the promise by President Obama to help homeowners who had done nothing wrong but who had been caught in the cross fire of others who had irresponsibly gotten mortgages for homes they couldn’t afford, symbolism over substance pretty much sums it up.
In light of the discussion of steel industry job losses blamed on Romney….
let’s look at some of the affect of President Obama’s policies.
Bypassing Congress, the President gave the EPA power to “cap and trade” the energy industries and they pretty much started with coal.
More than five hundred people have or will be losing their jobs because of this in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland from just one coal company.
As of December 2011, it was reported that 32 coal plants will be shutting down and another 36 are in danger of having to shut down because of the cost of meeting the new EPA requirements.
Now, this is going to be environmentally a “good thing” but jobs are going to be lost because of it when we already have a high rate of unemployment (the real one that counts those that have stopped looking and not just those who are standing in the unemployment lines).
Not just jobs either. Counties and towns will be losing tax revenue. Folks who can’t find another job will probably default on their mortgages. The cost of the communities energy needs will increase.
So, can we say that Obama is “out of touch” with the affects of his decision on the working man and woman? Is that fair?
If it is fair to say that Romney is responsible for the closing of the steel plant in Kansas and the loss of hundreds of jobs (ignoring the state of the industry itself, the amount of money sunk into renovating the plant up to modern standards, the cost of powering the plant after the Hawthorne power station exploded and so on) - then it is certainly fair to say that President Obama is responsible for the loss of 1,000’s of jobs in small towns across a dozen states.
Just saying…..
