The Onion covers Obama Teleprompter Malfunction

You know, when you've lost the Onion...actually, they destroy pretty much everybody.

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

Obama proposes Federal Subway Administration

Is there any challenge in this country for which the Obama Administration won't seek a federal takeover?

The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation's subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies.

Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Transportation would do for transit what it does for airlines and Amtrak: set and enforce federal regulations to ensure that millions of passengers get to their destinations safely. Administration officials said the plan will be presented in coming weeks to Congress, which must approve a change in the law.

The proposal would affect every subway and light-rail system in the country, including large systems in Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Amendment X: Education Reform in Wisconsin

Bill Osmulski at the MacIver Institute reports that Wisconsin Republicans are taking up President Obama's call for education reform.

Wisconsin Republicans say they like what the President has to say about the need for education reform, even more so than state Democrats do. Only time will tell if it stays that way. Over the last 24 hours, WEAC's clout helped block sweeping merit pay reforms from passing in the legislature, while more modest changes were accepted.

I was told there would be no math- Part III

The Obama Administration's War on Math continues apace. Annoyed that ABC's Jake Tapper would calculate the amount of stimulus dollar spent for every job that the Administration claims to have created or "saved", they call it "Calculator Abuse".

So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

No one seriously questions that government spending creates economic activity. But it does so by taking money out of the economy in the first place, either directly through higher taxes or indirectly through higher debt and inflation. It shouldn't be surprising that funneling $787 billion through the inefficient filter of Washington, DC would create jobs quite ineffeciently. The Obama Administration is trying to take credit for every bit of economic activity generated by its stimulus package. It should also take responsibility for the high cost of those jobs, higher taxes, higher debt, and a drag on other parts of the economy.

FOX and Obama: An abuse of power

The Union Leader editorializes that the Obama Administration's efforts to delegitimize its critics, including press coverage it doesn't like, goes over the line.

In power, this team has taken that paranoia to new heights. The administration aggressively demonizes critics, undermines opponents and bullies anyone viewed as a potential enemy. (Just ask General Motors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.)

The message is clear: Fall in line, or we'll use our power to attack and undermine you. That's not merely unbecoming of a President. It's unacceptable behavior for any government.

Fox wars

In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer blasts the Obama Administration for its ill-conceived "War on Fox News".

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.

This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

White House Press Corps Backs Fox News over Obama Administration

In a great sign for the independence of the American press, the White House Press Pool backed up Fox News as the Obama Administration tries to kick them out.

Government can not, and should not, be able to pick the press that covers it. The Obama Administration's efforts to demonize Fox News have been ham-handed and counterproductive. It's refreshing to see the other networks, which have been far less critical of the Administration and stand up for a free and independent press.

Does Obama own stock in Fox?

President Obama must own stock in Fox News. That's the only logical explanation for his Administration's continued efforts to drive up ratings at the cable channel by singling them out for constant attacks. Not content to blame all of its troubles on a television channel, Obama aides are now pressing other news outlets to stop paying attention to Fox News' political coverage.

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news" in an interview last Sunday.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox."

I think George Orwell got it wrong. In 1984, he assumed the thought-police were competent.

No reason to take Nobel Prize seriously

As if their recent selections for the Peace Prize, or the worst Nobel Peace Prize winners, weren't reason enough to ignore the Nobel Committee's annual announcements as political propaganda, AFP reports that a majority of the Committee objected to Obama's prize selection this year.

But Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, who represented the right-wing populist Progress Party on the committee, led the way in objecting to the choice of Obama because she questioned his ability to keep his promises, the newspaper said.

It also said the representative of the Conservative Party, Kaci Kullmann Five, and Aagot Valle, the representative of the Socialist Left, had objections.

The choice for Obama was however strongly supported by committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland and Sissel Roenbeck, both representatives of the Labour Party.

So we have two members of the Labour Party railroading through a ridiculous decision over the objections of the three minority party representatives, all in an attempt to gain publicity and influence American foreign policy. Tell me again; why do we care what five Norwegians have to say about world peace every year?

The Ten Worst Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Barack Obama’s shocking selection as this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize left some swearing, some giggling, and many simply stunned into immobility. But awarding the prize to a President who was in office less than two weeks before nominations closed isn’t the worst decision the Nobel Committee has ever made. It’s not even close. After all, Barack Obama hasn’t done much, but at least he hasn’t supervised genocide in the Philippines, impoverished the Palestinian people, or fueled the rise of Nazi Germany, so that puts him far from the bottom of the Peace Prize Barrel.

First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize went mostly to pacifists and mediators in its early years, even as the great powers militarized and nationalized, hurtling through the bloodiest century in human history. It was only after the end of World War I, the War to End All Wars, that the Nobel Committee started giving the award to people who really made the world a more dangerous place.

10) Jimmy Carter- 2002- The worst ex-President in American history would rank higher on this list, except he deserved more credit for the 1978 prize shared by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for the Camp David Agreement. It was not the first step towards a broader peace in the Middle East, but Egypt and Israel haven’t gone to war since. But Carter got his trip to Oslo years later, well after he’s undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts to stall North Korea’s nuclear program, and just about the time he started his incoherent ramblings against Israel.

9) Jody Williams- 1997- This Vermont activist headed the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the prize with her. Williams urged Western powers to unilaterally ban landmines when hostile states wouldn’t agree to give them up. Like any weapon, landmines can be deployed irresponsibly, though American and Allied forces track their minefields and take other steps to prevent collateral damage. Landmines are also a defensive weapons system, which have played a large role in preventing North Korea from invading South Korea for the past fifty years. Williams took the flawed logic of the gun control movement, and expanded it to a geopolitical scale.

8) Kofi Annan- 2001- The Secretary General of the United Nations split the Prize with the U.N. itself for the U.N.’s general awesomeness at peace and stuff. Annan’s tenure was marked by widespread corruption, such as the Oil for Food scandal and a general inability and unwillingness to address the systemic flaws in a moribund bureaucracy guided as much by the wishes of tin-pot dictators as the free people of the world. On the bright side, the U.N.’s Peace Keeping troops weren’t accused of rape and robbery in several of the countries where they were deployed.

7) Elihu Root- 1912- The U.S. Secretary of State practices shuttle diplomacy before the term was coined, helping to arbitrate peace treaties around the globe. He did not ask for an arbiter following the Spanish-American War. As Secretary of War, Root oversaw the brutal American occupation of the Philippines, marked by a scorched earth campaign against rebel forces and some of the worst abuses by American troops in our history.

6) Frank Kellogg- 1929- The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, outlawed war. Really. It prohibited the use of war as “an instrument of national policy.” It was signed in August of 1928. Since the deadliest war in world history had broken out yet, the Nobel Committee gave Kellogg the Peace Prize. They may have jumped the gun a little.

5) Aristide Briand- 1926- Brian was coauthor of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but his medal was already on the mantelpiece for his work on the Locarno Treaties, a series of seven agreements designed to normalize relations with Germany. The principal treaty was an agreement by Germany, France, and Belgium not to attack each other, guaranteed by Britain and Italy. Looking back, it’s almost shocking that Neville Chamberlain never got this award.

3) Charles Dawes- 1925- Vice President Dawes shared the Prize with British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain. Dawes lent his ideas and his name to the Dawes Plan, which forced Germany to pay huge annual reparations to Britain and France. The Dawes Plan completely collapsed by 1929. German resentment over punitive reparations is now seen as helping fuel the rise of the Nazi Party over the next decade.

3) Mikhail Gorbachev- 1990- For nearly a century, the Nobel Committee had been recognizing do-gooders who ignored dictators, appeased dictators, or asked dictators politely to stop killing people. In 1990, they stepped it up a notch by given the prize a dictator who wasn’t very good at being a dictator. Gorbachev’s flailing attempts to hang onto the last vestiges of Soviet power included sending KGB and military forces into the Baltic States, and he was ousted in a coup in August of 1991. But that birthmark was just so cute.

2) Al Gore- 2007- Gore clearly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for narrating the highest profile documentary about meteorology that year. The International Panel on Climate Change, which shared the prize, if not the stage with Gore, has since revealed that the most compelling evidence for its global warming work, the Mann Hockey Stick graph, was based on faulty reading of global temperature data. In it’s own words, the Committee gave the prize to Gore and the IPCC “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”, which quite frankly don’t have a lot to do with peace. Except that when it’s really hot out, people fight more I guess.

1) Yasser Arafat- 1994- Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israel Foreign Minister Shimon Peres “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East” following the 1993 Oslo Accords. Now if you sign a peace treaty in the Committee’s backyard, that’s going to get you some Nobel love. So let’s look at the evidence for and against Arafat’s selection:

Cons
*Unrepentant terrorist.
*Kleptocrat who kept Palestinians impoverished through equal measures of corruption and incompetence
*Wanted to kill the Jews and take their land

Pros
*Hated American power as much as Nobel Committee
*Snappy dresser
*Willing to put “killing the Jews” on the backburner if he could just take their land first.

Honorable Mentions- President Obama is the third sitting President to receive the award, and the first two seemed far more deserving at the time.

Teddy Roosevelt- 1906- Roosevelt received the Prize largely for his role in mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Credit should have been given to the Japanese Navy, which effectively ended the war by sinking the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima.

Woodrow Wilson- 1919- Wilson’s efforts to create the League of Nations got him the Norwegian hardware. The League was one of the most colossal failures of the 20th Century, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Setting new records in fiscal irresponsibility

The Congressional Budget Office totals up the federal deficit for the fiscal year that just ended. Last year's record deficit, which Senator Obama campaigned against was a quaint $459 billion.

The federal budget deficit tripled to a record $1.4 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year that ended last week, congressional analysts said Wednesday.

The Congressional Budget Office estimate, while expected, is bad news for the White House and its allies in Congress as they press ahead with health care overhaul legislation that could cost $900 billion over the next decade.

And now the Administration wants to add nearly a trillion in spending for health care, and is talking about a second stimulus package. A year ago, I would have thought it impossible to make the previous Administration look frugal by comparisan. Yes, we can!

Breaking News- People Respond to Incentives; Like Free Money

Shocking news out of Detroit that if you throw money at people, they will pick it up.

Thousands Line Up For Stimulus Money Stimulus Money Available For Low-Income, Homeless Detroit Residents

DETROIT -- Thousands of people have lined up Tuesday for a chance at millions of stimulus dollars set aside to help Detroit's homeless and low-income residents.

The money is available to help low-income residents from becoming homeless and homeless residents to find housing.

Some people in line falsely believed they were registering for $3,000 stimulus checks from the Obama Administration.

If I've Lost Jon Stewart...

After watching Walter Cronkite’s pessimistic report on the Tet Offensive, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Today, no network news anchor controls the pulse of the nation. Nowadays, conventional wisdom can be tracked, if not shaped, by the fake newscasters. Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report and Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment now showcase what the New York media elites now think of their Washington counterparts. And judging from a week’s worth of TiVo, President Obama is in trouble.

Whether it’s Stephen Colbert’s over the top imitation of conservative talk shows or Tina Fey’s devastating mockery of the still-unknown Sarah Palin, late night and cable comedy does more to tell us what the cool kids think of our political figures than either the network news or the front page of the paper.

At Saturday Night Live, Fred Armisen has been struggling to mine humor from Barack Obama’s low-key personal style. But last week’s opening sketch was a shift in tone. Responding to Obama’s Olympic pratfall in Copenhagen, Armisen portrayed the President as impotent despite immense personal popularity and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. Listing his two biggest accomplishments of the past year, Armisen’s Obama said “Jack” and “Squat.”

Jon Stewart has also picked up on the lack of progress from the progressive President. On the Daily Show’s “Democratic Super Majority” segment, Stewart says the unstoppable Democratic machine would be like a bear, with chainsaws for paws, but can’t get a health care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee. The nation’s comedy gatekeepers are catching on the popular perception that Obama and his Democratic allies can’t legislate their way out of a paper bag, and while they are sympathetic to the Democrats’ plight, Stewart and company can’t afford to let their political sympathies get in the way of a good joke.

The President needs to shift the storyline, or at least the punch line. The White House will still be a source for comedy gold, and just about the only thing worth watching on SNL these days. But the jokes don’t have to be about Obama’s continuing string of failures. Luckily, this is exactly why Jefferson and Madison wrote the Vice-Presidency into the Constitution. No one on the planet is in better position to take the comedy bullet than Joe Biden. But he’d better hurry. Because if Barack Obama loses Jon Stewart... he’ll probably still carry Manhattan.

CNN Fact Checks SNL

No, really.

Confirming its reputation as Barack Obama's media bodyguard, CNN suddenly decides that the mean comedians are distorting the President's record.

My thoughts on the comedy mafia turning on the Obama Administration will be up later today. I swear that I wrote it before I saw this ridiculous CNN piece. Really. I have witnesses.

Hattip: Hot Air

I guess Obama has already received total consciousness

Who needs the Dalai Lama? Not President Obama.

The decision came after China stepped up a campaign urging nations to shun the Tibetan spiritual leader.

It means Mr Obama will become the first president not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington in 1991.

The Buddhist monk arrived in Washington on Monday for a week of meetings with Congressional leaders, celebrity supporters and interest groups, but the president will not see him until after he has made his first visit to China next month.

I don't have anything to add. It's just a cheap excuse to post a clip from Caddyshack. Big hitter, the Lama.

ObamOlympic Fail

There's lots of talk today about how President Obama staked his prosaic on convincing the IOC to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Pundits are pointing out the obvious parallels between Obama's flop in Copenhagen and the prospects of winning over other nations with good intentions and lofty rhetoric. It's only fair, I suppose, because if Chicago has landed the Games, the front pages would be filled with praise for Obama pulling off such a bold gamble.

Ultimately, of course, this has nothing to do with the White House, and probably never should have. President Obama's decision to link himself so tightly to the Olympic decision is one of the key flaws in his governing style. Everything is about Barack Obama, all the time. A blowhard Harvard professor yells at a cop; the President blames the cop, and then puts on a lengthy show of national racial harmony and beer. The auto industry is looking for a bailout; the President replaces the head of GM. Chicago wants to bask in the Olympic flame; the President hops on a plane to close the deal for "his town".

Victor Davis Hansen writes that the ObamOlympic full-court press may have backfired among the IOC officials who certainly like Obama, but don't seem to respect him.

And the more I watched Barack/Michelle do the “I grew up in the neighborhood” thing, the more I noticed the Euro-audience wincing [Not smart bragging about your childhood Chicago “right hook” to an audience that has just watched horrific fighting in the streets of Chicago]).

But even without the self-centered story-telling it was a hard sell anyway. How can a post-national, I’m sorry Obama, trapped in a sort of we are the world paradox, be seen in nationalistic and near tribal fashion stumping for his own home town? Again, it did not help that he appeared in campaign mode, tossing out the usual personal, somewhat hokey (and all but narcissistic) stories about himself and his family, that I know don’t resonate, much less make effective arguments, in the less therapeutic world of hardball politics abroad. In short, the community organizer was out organized by the multicultural ascendant Rio.

Lots of people grew up in Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio. Lots of people have touching stories about how much it means to them. That doesn't make up for Chicago's lack of Olympic facilities, the 50-50 split among Chicagoans on giving Major Daley a blank check for the next eight years, and the city's status as the hometown of political corruption.

I like having the Olympics in America. Mostly, I just like them to be a similar time zone so that I don't have to get up at 3am to watch a basketball game or try to avoid the results of a track meet for ten hours so I can be surprised on tape delay. But hosting the Olympics always seemed like a raw deal. The benefits are short-term construction jobs and long-term civic pride. The costs are massive spending on arenas that will only be fully utilized for two weeks, as well as tremendous incentives for corruption as public money flows into the host city.

Following Chicago's embarrassing exit as the first city out of the running for the 2016 Games, the President's inner circle complained about the nasty politics that go on behind the scenes at the IOC. Thank goodness they'll never have to deal with that kind of thing at the UN.

Wrong then, wrong now

THe folks at Innocent Bystanders have updated their chart showing the Obama Administration's unemployment predictions with or without the stimulus.


As I've written before, this chart allows three possibilities:
1) The Obama Administration was completely wrong about how the stimulus would impact the economy;
2) Obama's economic advisors didn't know what they were talking about when they made their economic forecast in January;
3) Both.

Unemployment Rate at 9.8%

The nation's unemployment rate continues to approach double digits.

Remember, when they passed the stimulus, the Obama Administration argued that without the $787 billion package, unemployment would be up to nearly 9% by now, but passing the stimulus would lower it to just over 7%.

Search Is On for Best Cost-Cutting Ideas

The Obama Administration is trying a new approach to cutting costs, asking federal employees for their ideas.

Confronted with a staggering federal deficit, the White House is inviting employees across the federal sector to submit suggestions on how to cut waste and make government more efficient. A Web site, http://www.saveaward.gov, has been established to receive the ideas.

There is no monetary award for the winning entry. The winner will, however, present the suggestion in person to President Obama. Moreover, the idea will be immortalized by its inclusion in the fiscal 2011 budget.

Governor Craig Benson tried a similar approach in New Hampshire, but offered employees a cut of the savings their ideas produced. It will be interesting to see if non-financial incentives work well in generating cost-cutting ideas from the federal bureaucracy.

Worst Idea of the Weekend

The Hill reports that President Obama is open to the idea of bailing out the nation's failing newspapers.

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).