Four hackish thoughts off the top of my head about the president imbibing. (1) It's probably the only way he can understand Biden. (2) Now we know where that famous mellow temperament comes from. (3) If I had to deal with Reid and Pelosi every day, I'd go straight to heroin. (4) They should put the intervention on C-SPAN.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/02/2010 10:51 ||
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#1
One more thought: at least we have a pretty good indication that he really isn't a Muslim. Probably a Bolshevik but at least not a Muslim...although I'm not sure which is worse.
#2
Well, everyone says the ruling classes of all the problem countries we have to deal with drink in private. (You know, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc...)
#4
Bush wouldn't drink. Pretty sure I'd trust him over a drunken Bolshevik...although in general I prefer the company of guys who can enjoy a good, stiff belt.
#6
If Obama is drunk, is that better for the US than when he is sober?
I don't think a drunk could find as many communists, radicals, cross-dressers, and nuts as Obama appoints to government positions. "Moderate alchohol intake" may get us all unemployed and killed; we may need his inner drunk.
I guess blaming Bush is no longer working now it's Mother Gaia's turn
White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Monday winter blizzards were likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures, which are due to be released on Friday. He's spinning well before the numbers have been released. Eleven percent here we come!
"The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it's going to be very important ... to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends," Summers said in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript.
Construction activity was hit particularly hard by the storms, but many restaurants and stores also had to close, putting the brakes on hiring plans and temporarily throwing some employees out of work.
Summers, director of the White House's National Economic Council, also said the United States was closely monitoring Greece's debt problems and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was encouraged by what he had heard from European officials about the issue.
"With respect to Europe, I am obviously very concerned about what's happening in Greece and Portugal, in Spain, in Italy, on the European continent," Summers said.
"I think there have been increasing signs of recognition both in Greece and in the major countries of Europe that this is a situation that has to be managed; that combination of getting the Greek budget under better control and providing more support is necessary to stabilize this situation."
Summers brushed aside speculation that he was interested in changing jobs.
"I like what I'm doing," he said. "My view is if the president asks me to do something in which I think I can make a contribution, the right approach to it is to say yes, and that's why I'm very pleased to be here working at the National Economic Council."
#1
What pure unmitigated bullshit. The lapdogs will take this as gospel and report accordingly.
It must be getting bad, I figure they have been lying by half to begin with.
#3
What's the excuse for restaurants closing and little new construction in Houston? We've been surviving in a consumer-based/service industry economy for some time now but unemployed people have no disposable income. Spending tax dollars we don't have to cover for the unions isn't flying with the public. This isn't temporary--the Dems are dropping out of the picture like flies, too. I wonder which off-shore island his villa is on?
#6
We must remember that in addition to higher temps, Global Warming is responsible for increased snowfall as well as droughts, flooding, cold spells, hurricanes in Nebraska, hives, scabies and that persistent rash on your left buttock.
#7
It is true that February's severe winter weather will have an adverse effect on employment stats. Someone who can't go go work because his employer closed due to bad weather is just as unemployed that day as someone without a job.
It is also true that US gov't unemployment stats are just barely believable, month in and month out. I would be very interested in Larry Summers losing his government position & becoming unemployed himself.
#10
With some luck the summer hurricanes will push it to 12%
In Germany, the jobless rate is 8 point something this year, with little movement.
Our winter was cold, too. I think last time our rate was better than yours must have been during the Carter administration. Maybe.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/02/2010 17:03 Comments ||
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#11
well this is unexpected
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/02/2010 17:28 Comments ||
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#12
Spring is hayfever season ya know.
And tornados.
And tax time
So many reasons
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/02/2010 17:33 Comments ||
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#13
ION NEWS KERALA > TERRORISTS USING ECONO-JIHAD TO PARALYZE WESTERN ECONOMIES, e.g. OSAMA-VERSUS-USA.
Pert believes the MilTerrs [e.g. OSAMA + AL QAEDA, etc] are desirous and indeed implementing potent startegies to destabilize and destroy US-Western economies via INDUCEMNT OF EXORBITANT TO DEBILITATING PUBLIC EXPENDITURES IN SUPPORT OF ANTI-TERROR STATE POLICIES, + GETTING THE US TO OPEN UP AS MANY NEW INTERNATIONAL OR WORLDWIDE ANTI-MILTERR BATTLE FRONTS AS POSSIBLE, IN AS MANY DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AS POSSIBLE.
White House officials tell ABC News that in his remarks tomorrow President Obama will indicate a willingness to work with Republicans on some issue to get a health care reform bill passed but will suggest that if it is necessary, Democrats will use the controversial "reconciliation" rules requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass the "fix" to the Senate bill, as opposed to the 60 votes to stop a filibuster and proceed to a vote on a bill.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been awaiting the president's remarks direction on how health care reform will proceed.
In his remarks, scheduled to be at the White House, the president will paint a picture of what he will say will happen without a health care reform bill -- skyrocketing premiums, everyone at the mercy of the insurance industry as recently seen with the 39% premium increases proposed by Anthem Blue Cross in California.
He will note that the "fixed" bill will include the proposal for a new "Health Insurance Rate Authority" to set guidelines for reasonable rate increases. If proposed premium increases are not justifiable per those Health Insurance Rate Authority guidelines, the Health and Human Services Secretary or state regulators could block them.
The plan to pass the bill includes having the House of Representatives pass the Democratic Senate health care reform legislation as well as a second bill containing various "fixes."
The president will call for an up or down vote on health care reform, as has happened in the past, and though he won't use the word "reconciliation," he'll make it clear that if they're not given an up or down vote, Democrats will use the reconciliation rules as Republicans have done in the past.
White House officials will make the argument these rules are perfectly appropriate because the procedure is not being used for the whole bill, just for some fixes; because reconciliation rules are traditionally used for deficit reduction and health care reform will reduce the deficit; and because the reconciliation process has been used many times by Republicans for larger legislation such as the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush.
A White House official says the president will "reiterate why reform is so crucial and what it will mean for American families and businesses: they'll have more control over their own health care, they'll see lower costs , and they'll see an end to insurance company abuses. He'll note that his proposal includes the best ideas from both parties, and he'll restate his preference for a comprehensive bill that will reduce premiums and end discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions."
The president will also extend a hand to work with Republicans on measures they have pushed, including $50 million for state grants for demonstration projects to explore alternatives to medical malpractice cases, and a crackdown on Medicaid and Medicare fraud as proposed by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
He will also herald the removal of extraneous provisions in the bill such as the so-called "Cornhusker Kickback," a deal to secure the support of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., in which the federal government would pay for Nebraska's Medicaid expansion; and "Gator-aid," the provision to shield Florida seniors from cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, secured by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
Mr. Obama will say that he will be working on exact legislative language in the next few days. Republicans can join him and Democratic congressional leaders of the House and Senate to makes these changes and to pass the bill, but either way the bill will be moving forward.
What a awful photograph of Nancy. That is bound to give someone nightmares. Eww!
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year. Nancy, being from a safe district, doesn't have to worry about losing her income, only her position as majority leader...
Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week." Consent of the governed isn't a requirement in a system of rule. It's only necessary when dealing with free men and women.
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people." "Whether they like it or not!"
It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill." It took courage for them to pass the Volstead Act, and it took courage for them to pass the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, too. The Missouri Compromise took courage, I'll betcha. And so did the Alien and Sedition Acts.
It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. "Nancy! Whenever I go back to my district they pelt me with dog turds!"
"So why do you go back to your district? They don't have anything to say that you want to hear!"
Republican lawmakers unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections. It'd be a real good idea to keep an eye on the rinos, though.
Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. It's San Francisco, after all. If found in bed with the proverbial dead girl and a live boy it'd increase Nancy's margin of victory by five percentage points. I'm surprised she hasn't thought of it yet.
But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes. Only for show. Never when the vote's gonna be close. Health care's gonna be close, even when they go for 50 percent plus one vote...
Her comments to ABC, ... the network that's shutting down...
in the interview released Sunday, seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall -- maybe a lot. If the Publicans don't get overconfident, and they don't let the Malefactors of Great Wealth divide them to conquer, they could end up taking back both houses. Even if they're as stoopid as they've shown they can be in the past, they're gonna pick up seats, and maybe lots of them.
They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help. "Time is up," she said. "We really have to go forth." "And I'm not just saying that because there's no way I'm gonna lose my seat!"
Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Obama, who said at the end of last week's bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. "That's what elections are for," he said. "I don't have to worry about it until 2012. Congressmen are little people from where I sit!"
The White House says Obama, perhaps on Wednesday, will announce a "way forward" on health care. He, Pelosi, and Senate Democratic leaders have left little doubt that they hope to pass a Democratic-crafted bill under "budget reconciliation" rules that would bar Republican filibusters in the Senate. It's unclear whether Pelosi can muster the needed votes in the House. "Vote for the bill and I'll sleep with you!"
"Oh, Gawd, Nancy! Not that!"
"Okay, vote for it or you'll find me in your bed, nekkid!"
White House officials say they will redouble efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December, with a super majority of 60 votes. The new plan calls for the House to pass that bill and send it to Obama's desk, and then use Senate budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats.
Following a Republican victory in Massachusetts last month, Democrats now control 59 of the Senate's 100 seats, one vote short of the number needed to block GOP filibusters.
Pelosi told CNN that "in a matter of days" Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.
"When we have a bill," she said, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."
Obama and Democratic lawmakers say they may add several more Republican ideas to their legislative package, even if it's unlikely to attract a single GOP vote. One idea, by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., would focus on battling waste and fraud in the medical system.
The main elements of the Democratic plan are known, and opposed by Republicans in Congress. It would insure about 30 million more Americans over 10 years with subsidies for the poor and a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry health insurance.
It would also bar some insurance company practices, such as denying coverage to people with medical problems. And it would establish government-run exchanges to help individuals and small businesses obtain insurance policies, although it would exclude the "public option" that many liberals wanted
#3
Just saw "Shrek" with the little guy....and one line from Lord Farquaar exhorting the people of Duloc to go rescue Princess Fiona while he safely sits on his butt at home seems to sum up Madame Pelosi's views:
Some of you may die, but.....it's a price I'm willing to pay.
#8
Some Republican should take her up on her offer and promise (before a lots of cameras) to vote for the bill if Pelosi resigns immediately.
Posted by: ed ||
03/02/2010 8:30 Comments ||
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#9
Hell, he should even offer to charter a private plane back to San Francisco out of his own funds so that Pelosi would no longer be a leech on the American taxpayers' backside.
Posted by: ed ||
03/02/2010 8:34 Comments ||
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#10
Pelosi is up for re-election in 2010. Her approval ratings in most of the country are very low. Any chance her district will stop smoking weed and sniffing glue and do the rest of the country a great service by dumping her?
#14
There are small islands of beauty in SF, but mostly is a urine soaked dump, which is the natural outcome of the entrenched liberal politics of the city. Mix in a little George Romero, what with all the drugged zombies and mentally unstable roaming the streets and then you have the true picture of SF.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/02/2010 10:57 Comments ||
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#15
#12 Well, it's not like they'd be giving up their *pensions*
#16
Voting this morning at my precinct in the Texas Primary this morning was very interesting. At 7AM this morning when the polls opened, there was no one voting in the Democratic Primary booth area, but there were 6 of us lined up at the Republican Promary booth area at that Precinct. The 6 people who were lined up to vote were white, black, hispanic and one (wild?) Indian. The winners of the political parties today will run against each other come November...
#17
And you all snickered when Cindy Sheehan ran against this witch in the last election. But the truth is you would have been better off if Sheehan had won. You should have contributed all the money you could afford to Sheehan's campaign.
#18
That's right. I wrote "witch" with a "w" and not a "b". Just look at the picture and you can see why. All she needs is a pointy, black hat and a broom.
#19
Consent of the governed isn't a requirement in a system of rule.
Fred, in the long run the consent of the governed IS a requirement. Coerced at the point of a gun, but still consent. Historically any people that is pushed too far ceases to consent and either overthrows the government or is killed trying.
#20
Historically any people that is pushed too far ceases to consent and either overthrows the government or is killed trying. No, that system is called "government by lack of resistance from those permitted to live."
#21
The basic requirement of a system of rule is that some people give the orders & others agree to take those orders. Just how to choose the ones who give the orders is the crucial difference.
Al Gore's defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday's New York Times has many flaws, but I'll focus on just one whopper -- where the "Inconvenient Truth" man states the opposite of scientific fact.
Gore wrote, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."
It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts?
According to "State of the Climate" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average." And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America's East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up.
So what was it, exactly, that Gore's nameless scientists "have long pointed out"? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change and Water," says climate models "project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics." In other areas, the IPCC reports only "substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts."
In other words, the IPCC said that its models predicted some increases in rain or snow -- not observed them. And only in high latitudes or the tropics, which hardly describes New York or Washington, DC.
In fact, recent research actually contradicts Gore's claims about "significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere."
In late January, Scientific American reported: "A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change," and noted that "an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming."
The new study came from a group of scientists, mainly from the NOAA lab in Boulder. The scientists found: "Stratospheric water-vapor concentrations decreased by about 10 percent after the year 2000 . . . This acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25 percent."
Specifically, the study found that water vapor rising from the tropics has been reduced, because it has gotten cooler there (another inconvenient truth). A Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: "Slowdown in Warming Linked to Water Vapor."
Moisture in the lower stratosphere (about 8 miles above the earth's surface) has been going down, not up.
Aside from clouds, water vapor accounts for as much as two-thirds of the earth's greenhouse-gas effect. Water vapor traps heat from escaping the atmosphere -- but clouds have the opposite effect (called "albedo") by reflecting the sun's energy back into space. And snow on the ground from the IPCC's predicted precipitation in high latitudes would have the same cooling effect as clouds.
What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the effect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made) and methane (which has mysteriously slowed since about 1990).
This raises an intriguing question: Since the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it has the authority to regulation carbon emissions because of their presumed effect on the global climate, why hasn't the EPA also attempted to regulate mist and fog?
#1
The University of Tennessee announced today that they are going to award Gore an honorary doctorate to go along with his oscar and nobel peace prize.
#4
ION TOPIX > I READ THAT THE SUN'S BRIGHTNESS [Total Solar Irradiance] INCREASED BY 0.036 PERCENT FROM 1986 TO 1996: IS THIS A POSSIBLE REASON FOR GLOBAL WARMING?
IMO is very likely a factor among others, espec as EYE/GROUND-VISIBLE SOLAR FLARES WERE OBSERVED DURING THAT DECADE, BUT SSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOT REPORTED IN THE AMER MEDIAS, LIKE RUSSIA'S SPACE ROCKS.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Al Gore's defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday's New York Times has many flaws, but I'll focus on just one whopper -- where the "Inconvenient Truth" man states the opposite of scientific fact.
