Conservative Rumblings

Barack Obama’s 2010 State of the Union promises to be more of the same: high soaring rhetoric, heavy teleprompter reliance and Nancy Pelosi most likely clapping like a seal. In order to squeeze at least some entertainment out of this campaign-speech-on-steroids, I’ve developed a nice little list of things Barack is likely to say tonight.

Below are my current odds for these catchphrases/statements. Variations count if they are very close, and I’m also giving 5000/1 odds that the teleprompter breaks and he goes off script talking about breathalysers.

In that vein, if you want to turn this into a drinking game, it’s very easy: longer odds, stiffer drink.

I’ll also be live tweeting commentary from http://www.twitter.com/ianessling. It’ll be epic.

2/1 “Pre existing conditions”
2/1 “Spending freeze”
2/1 “Inherited”
3/1 “Last eight years”
3/1 “Let me be clear”
4/1 “People are angry”
5/1 “I’m fighting for you”
5/1 “Excessive profits”
5/1 “It’s not about me” or “This isn’t about me.”
7/1 “Wall Street Bankers”
10/1 “George W. Bush” or “last administration”
10/1 “I’m fired up.”
10/1 “And that is why…”
10/1 “I have asked”
10/1 “Mess we inherited”
12/1 “Spending freeze” more than 10 times
15/1 “Fatcat”
20/1 “Get this economy moving again.”
20/1 “Ted Kennedy” or any variation
25/1 “Rising deficit”
25/1 “I” more than 100 times
30/1 “War in Iraq”
35/1 “Eric Holder”
35/1 “Stimulus package”
50/1 “Closing Guantanamo Bay”
50/1 “2010 election” or “midterm election”
50/1 “George W. Bush” or “last administration” more than 10 times
50/1 “I don’t want to hear”
50/1 “We’re going to pass healthcare reform”
50/1 “Yes we can.”
60/1 “Janet Napolitano”
75/1 “Campaign”
100/1 “Underwear bomber”
150/1 “Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid” (in the same sentence, any order)
175/1 “Czar”
200/1 “Budget reconciliation”
250/1 “Joe Wilson”
350/1 “Hope” and “Change” in the same sentence
500/1 “My record-breaking deficit”
500/1 “I won”
500/1 “It’s bleeping golden!”
500/1 “I have a dream.”
1000/1 “I hereby resign the presidency”

Couldn’t even muster a simple majority.

This vote was sort of a test bubble for the main healthcare bill, but it was also an attempt by the Dems to pull a deficit killing section of the bill out of the main bill. This would allow them to still claim that the bill was “deficit neutral,” even though this provision is going to cost $247 billion and WAS a part of the main bill.

WASHINGTON — Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call.

[…]

By addressing doctors’ fees in a separate bill, Senate Democrats could hold down the cost of the broader health legislation, keeping it within the limits set by President Obama. House Democrats are considering a similar tactic. Republicans said it was a transparent ploy to hide the cost of a health care overhaul.

Basically, it was a bunch of slick smoke and mirrors…and it failed spectacularly.

Charming.

FRANK:  I’ve had people come to us and complain, “Well, if you do that, I can’t make any money.”  The answer is that’s not my job.  We’re not here to help you make money.  We are here to help have a system in which you will make money as an incident of your providing funds to those who will use it productively.

That’s a little tough to digest because Bawney Fwank speaks in bleeble-blabble 95% of the time, but essentially the gist of it is that he is telling businesses to shut up with their complaints about the government taxing them to death and levying insane restrictions on them.

What he suggests, of course, is that businesses only exist to give their tax money to Washington, where people will “use it productively.”

This is absurd. The government exists to defend the country, regulate trade and regulate currency. That’s what the Constitution says. It says nothing about them being the most productive organization, nor does it say that they should be picking winners and losers (as they did with the auto and bank bailouts). Obviously they are well beyond the Constitution in a lot of places these days.

Businesses should be given an open field with fences on the outside to reign in only grossly inappropriate issues (for example, I don’t think workers should be allowed to be beat with clubs on the job). Instead of a fenced in field, the governments wants to give businesses a cattle chute. They’re trying to stuff businesses in a narrow path and force them along a pre-determined route instead of letting them flourish. They’ve obviously forgotten who pays their bills and who is responsible for America being as powerful as it is, and it ain’t the Federal government.

This is an amazing insight into the Far Left mindset. We’ve known this is their idea of the proper place for private enterprise for years, but it’s gut-wrenching to hear them blatantly admit it, knowing that a) no one is ever going to hear about it and b) the country is STILL under the spell of the Obamessiah and most of the zombies will just believe him if he says things like he’s “not a socialist” or that he “doesn’t want to redistribute wealth.”

Ok, to be fair, he’s never actually said that last part…he said in 2001 he DOES want the Constitution TO redistribute wealth. But I digress.

The government is not fiscally responsible, obviously. If you are given the choice of having a private firm do something, or having the government do it, most people will choose the private firm. Rasmussen’s polls even show it.

For Fwank to just throw out there the fact that he believes businesses don’t exist to make a profit but instead exist to serve The State is sickening, it’s anti-capitalist and quite frankly something I’d expect to hear from a maniac communist standing in a park handing out leaflets and protesting The Man that won’t let him get ahead in life.

Instead, it’s a sitting member of the United States Congress.

Doesn’t get much better than this. Country is in a recession, the nation is pummeling itself to pieces thanks to the proposed deathcare bill…but Sen. Boxer still has time to sign some books.

Marin got a small dose of the health care protests on Wednesday evening when U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer made an appearance at Corte Madera’s Book Passage to promote her newest work of fiction, Blind Trust.

Holding hand-made signs, about two dozen protesters lined the entrance to the Book Passage’s parking lot.

Bo”She should be doing town hall meetings with her constituents instead of book tours,” said Pam Silleman who was waving at cars and carrying a sign that read “Born Free but Taxed to Death.”

What’s her book about you ask?

The story pits short-statured Senator Ellen Fischer–who happens to be a Democrat (sound familiar?)–against a power hungry, civil rights trampling Vice President (sound familiar?) in a universe populated by characters like “Sam Slaughter”, a right-wing radio host without principles (sound familiar?).

I hear Janeane Garofalo is already working on the movie deal. She would star opposite a large tree stump, which Boxer thinks would match “her vision” of the “evil Vice President” from her story.

Ah, only in America.

I thought this was an Onion article at first. Seriously.

WASHINGTON — The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he’s bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. “We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

During an interview for CNBC at the White House on Tuesday, a fly intruded on Obama’s conversation with correspondent John Harwood.

“Get out of here,” the president told the pesky insect. When it didn’t, he waited for the fly to settle, put his hand up and then smacked it dead.

“Now, where were we?” Obama asked Harwood. Then he added: “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

You’re kidding right? This can’t be serious. PETA is just messing with us…no one, and I mean no one, even CLOSE to sane would make a press release condemning someone for swatting a freaking fly!

Well, I guess PETA would. Just proves how radical they are, I suppose. They care enough about a fly to make a national scene about it, but not enough about the animals they take in to not slaughter them like fattening pigs. Keep the hypocrisy going there folks.

Interesting side note: it seems that Obama, while soft on terrorists, money launderers and evil regimes bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, it seems he hates insects with a passion. If the planet is ever invaded by large bugs, I guess there’s a better than 50-50 chance that he MIGHT decide the country is worth defending…maybe.

Interesting side note #2: Obama thinks it was “pretty impressive” to nail the fly. No wonder he’s wowed by the supposed “financial genius” of Turbo Tax Timmy if he thinks swatting a fly is impressive. Low standards, baby!

We need Vegas oddsmakers to start taking bets on this guy. He is a freaking machine!

It’s one thing to make a joke about something that is actually funny, but to dig the sitting president (when you’re the VP) about something that is actually a contentious issue…well…that’s Joe Biden for you.

Joe Biden couldn’t help but take a dig at his boss Wednesday when one of the vice president’s teleprompter screens fell down during his commencement speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

“What am I gonna tell the president?” Biden said as a gust of wind knocked down his left teleprompter. “I’m gonna tell him his teleprompter is broken. What will he do then?”

The off-handed quip immediately drew laughter and some the loudest cheers of day from the graduates.

See, Barack…this is why less than 1% of Iowans voted for the dude. He’s not very bright and usually says a lot of stupid stuff. Don’t get me wrong though…as I reach for another bucket of popcorn, let me just say that watching him make a Gaffe A Day at your expense is pretty entertaining.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A resolution urging the creation of statues to be built on the Tennessee Capitol grounds of the state’s two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Al Gore and Cordell Hull, is on its way to a full Senate vote.

The Senate State and Local Government Committee on Tuesday advanced the measure supporting the privately funded statues on a 9-0 vote. The resolution previously passed in the House unanimously.

Gore was awarded his Nobel prize in 2007 for his work on global warming, while Hull received the award in 1945 for his role in creating the United Nations and improving international trade relations.

I wonder which Algore the statue will resemble, though. There are many to choose from: Smug VP Gore, Bellowing Ex-VP Gore, Sore Loser Gore, Scissors Lift to Hell Gore, Doing the TV Rounds Eye Twitch Gore or, my personal favorite, Unshaven Tree Hugging Madman Gore.

I’m really pulling for Madman Gore.

Ok, that’s not exactly what he said…but it was close enough…

See, there used to be this sort of unwritten rule that you don’t attack the previous President, out of respect for the position. However, since Obama and his ilk have no respect for the Constitution, the country, the Founding Fathers, citizens, law or integrity…it’s really no surprise they have no respect for the former Presidents either.

Joe Biden is trying to strengthen his tough-guy image, I think. But he’s let his pathological liar streak get the best of him. This really shouldn’t be a surprise, given his history.

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove, in a FOX News interview, called Joe Biden a “liar” over the vice president’s claim this week of having privately castigated former President George W. Bush.

Rove was the latest former Bush aides to challenging the veracity of Biden’s story and an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush, who said he doesn’t remember the incidents.

“It didn’t happen,” Rove, a FOX News contributor, said in an interview scheduled to air on “On the Record” at 10 p.m. EDT. “I hate to say this, but he’s a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind, I would say liar, but it is a habit he ought to drop.”

And it wasn’t just Karl Rove:

“I never recall Biden saying any of that,” former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush’s White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. “I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don’t think that’s true.”

Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not “antagonize” the House.

Rove went even further.

“With all due respect to the vice president, these are the kind of things you can get away with if you are a United States senator or a backbencher in the U.S. House of Representatives,” he said. “You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the vice president of the United States.”

That’s the best point to be made out of all of this: this is the SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA…and he’s flat-out making stuff up to make himself sound cool. (More from Politico here.)

What an administration; an inept, incompetent socialist as President, pathological liar as VP, cabinet full of tax-cheats and a porn apologist and Sharia Law supporter in the Justice Department. Did I suddenly wake up in the Soviet Union?

Oh, this article made me so happy. Major kudos to John Crace and The Guardian; this is pure genius.

Barack Obama, the World’s Greatest Orator (™all news organisations [sic]), didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking …

What follows that introduction is a hilarious blow-by-blow recounting of Obama’s stuttering, stammering and “deer-in-the-headlights” response.

Some highlights:

Barack Obama: “I, I, would say that, er … pause [I HAVEN’T A CLUE] … if you look at … pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] … the, the sources of this crisis … pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I’M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] … a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system … pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SHIT BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that … pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] … here in Great Britain … pause [SHIT, GORDY’S THE HOST, DON’T LAND HIM IN IT] … here in continental Europe … pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.]

The rest of the column is just as entertaining. Go read it. Now.

Nice. Obama and his cronies wanted to make sure they had some nice softball questions to field. It wouldn’t look so good if the Messiah had to take a hard question and stuttered and stammered his way through it now would it?

But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

(emphasis added)

Change We Can Believe In? Sure it is: we’re combining the media and the government into one horrid, multi-tentacled freedom-sapping beast.