When it’s ajar the Oval Office window.
Brilliant Obama looked equally the fool as Bush when he couldn’t figure out the proper door to use to get back into the White House.
However there’s two remarkable differences in the similar cases. Bush was duped by the existence of a door knob, however locked it was. And Bush’s blunder will never be forgotten, whereas Obama’s will never even be gotten.
I understand. When you’re this jacked up on hope, it’s hard to be responsible.
An interesting piece in the NYT contrasts the “early to bed, early to rise-and-wear-a-damned-suit-and-tie-to-my-meetings,” Dubya, with the more casual-and-slightly-night-owlish, Obama.
The short-term memory NYT goes on, “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Ah…so soon they forget, Obama says, “we can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,”
Oh yea, and, Malkin just posted the Obamas threw a hot party last nite after doubling the nation’s debt, where 100$ per serving wagyu steaks were served.
So far, other countries are just saying, “OK” as riots have not yet broken out at this late hour.
There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There’s another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.
Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.”
Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on investment. Most urban transit systems are so badly managed that their fares cover less than half of their costs. However, the people who operate these systems belong to public-employee unions that are campaign contributors to . . . guess which party?
Here’s another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?
So why all the PORK? The insanely smart Thomas Sowell posits,
One important clue may be a recent statement by President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, that “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
Again, lots of folks think Bush “cherry-picked” evidence and trumped up the “War on terror” for personal reasons. Will anyone in the corporate media suggest the same for the Dems and Obama?
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