Category Archives: Obama
State Dinner
The Obamas hosted a state dinner this week for the tax cutting socialist president of France, Francois Hollande. The menu featured dry aged ribeye beef, quail eggs, caviar, chocolate cake, ice cream, fudge, shortbread cookies and cotton candy.
Smidgen of Corruption
Usually when a politician is asked about a particular scandal he stonewalls and says he’d love to set the record straight but he just can’t because an investigation is ongoing. In a refreshing change of pace President Obama told Bill O’Reilly there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.
George Will has said the IRS scandal should be treated like Watergate.
Lois Lerner was the head of the IRS division that grants tax exemptions to non profit groups. During a speech to the American Bar Association she arranged for a planted question so that she could account for increased scrutiny the IRS was giving to conservative groups, compared to liberal groups, seeking tax exempt status.
When asked about this by Congress Lerner pleaded the fifth.
Well, Maybe a Smidgen of Corruption
Cleta Mitchell, a respected attorney representing grass roots conservative groups, says the IRS contuse to target them to this day.
Unemployment Liberation
War is peace, freedom is slavery, and unemployment is liberation.
A new Congressional Budget Office report says ObamaCare will cost the economy 2.3 million jobs. Lower income workers will have a “disincentive to work”, as CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf put it.
“By providing subsidies that decline with rising income (and increase with falling income), and by making some people financially better off, the Affordable Care Act will create an incentive for some people to work less,” the report states.
The White House has embraced this. Jason Furman the chairman of the Council for Economic Advisers calls it freedom from “job lock”.
Unemployment Liberation Update:
University of Chicago Economist Casey Mulligan thinks that’s nuts:
I don’t know what their intentions are,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “but it looks like they’re trying to leverage the lack of economic education in their audience by making these sorts of points.
I can understand something like cigarettes and people believe that there’s too much smoking, so we put a tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that’s a good thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We’ve been complaining for six years now that there’s not enough work being done. . . . Even before the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a sudden we wake up and say we’re glad that people are working less? We’re pursuing our dreams?
Super Bowl Version XLVIII.2
Hate to drag politics into the sports, but I didn’t want to miss out on Super Bowl Version XLVIII.2. First, Team Obama tweeted The One throwing a football. Then Bill O’Reilly interviewed him.
Dr. Krauthammer says the interview was better than the game and the score was closer.
Dana Milbank says O’Reilly treated President Obama like a guest on the Factor. Which is to say, not well. O’Reilly’s interruptions were annoying but Obama would have verbally stonewalled him if he let him. Instead he blamed his problems on Fox.
As it was Obama booted questions on Benghazi and Republicans have yet to recover the ball (view from 6:24-7:37).
Super Bowl Version XLVIII.2 Update:
Fox New’s Catherine Herridge nails the CIA for knowing the attack in Benghazi had nothing to do with demonstrations gone wild, yet the director changed talking points allowing Susan Rice to blame the attacks on protests about a video.
Separation of Powers
During his State of the Union speech the president again emphasized his intention to go it alone. He’s his own separation of powers. He’s got a phone and a pen and he doesn’t need no stinking Congress.
Update:
Back in December Law professor Jonathan Turley said that President Obama is “becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid”.
Update 6/5/14:
Professor Turley now says Obama is the president Nixon always wanted to be.
