Scott Pelley brings "60 Minutes" cameras back to central Florida to document another form of family homelessness: kids and their parents forced to live in cars.
~Jell-Obama~ White House officials offered no details about the Rose Garden barbecue and birthday party thrown for President Obama last night. No menu, no guest list, the event did not appear on his official schedule.
Ann Compton reports that the Obama family paid for the celebration out of its own pocket.
Their silence might be so as to not create the impression that the president was celebrating just hours after the Dow Jones fell 500 points. Politicians hate to be portrayed as fiddling while Rome burns, Nero-style.
[N]ow in 2010, Obama is well on his way to becoming the anti-glamour president. Americans from across the political spectrum are assuming the worst, that he doesn’t share their values or beliefs — even when it’s his stated position.
Republicans and, increasingly independents, think Obama is a left-wing radical bent on a vastly expanding government and bankrupting the country in the process. Many on his left flank think he’s a coward, a corporate stooge, or both.
From the tea party-GOP perspective, Obama has passed a $1 trillion pork-laded stimulus that hasn’t worked, seized GM and tried to nationalize health care while also passing the growing-killing agenda of greens and unions — all in a highly partisan fashion.
From the left’s vantage point, Obama lacks principles — or is unwilling to fight for them. They see Wall Street bailouts and sleazy deals with drugmakers and other medical industries. Cap and trade is going nowhere; nor is Big Labor’s card check bill. Unions also are smarting from the Senate’s Tuesday rejection of ally Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Oh, and Gitmo is still open and Obama has doubled down on Afghanistan.
Enter the BusinessWeek interview, in which Obama casually said he doesn’t “begrudge” the huge bonuses of the “savvy” heads of Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan (JPM). He said it’s part of the free market system and noted that some to baseball players are paid more.
Left-liberals are appalled. “Obama Still Doesn’t Get It,” ran the headline of one Huffington Post entry. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote simply: “Oh.My.God.”
Via Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ:Yes, America, this is how laws get made now: written in secret, voted on in the dark of night.
Tonight will be the first of three procedural votes the Democrats need to pass in order to destroy America's healthcare system.
Assuming they get 60 votes for cloture on the Manager's Amendment, the Democrats must wait 30 hours for the next vote (roughly until 7am Tuesday) , which will be an up-or-down vote on the Manager's Amendment. 50 votes required.
Immediately following the vote on the Manager's Amendment there's going to be a cloture vote on the Reid Substitute. It also requires 60 votes. Then Democrats must wait 30 more hours for an up-or-down vote on the Reid Substitute (until roughly 1pm Wednesday) . Only 50 votes required.
Immediately after the vote on the Reid Substitute, there will be a cloture vote on the final bill, ReidCare. 60 votes required. Then Democrats must wait 30 more hours for the final up-or-down vote on ReidCare. That requires only 50 votes and it should take place, if everything goes according to schedule, on Thursday, Christmas Eve around 7pm.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
1:08am So Reid's just yammering on. Can we tweak him for already being off schedule?
1:10am Voting now. Am I a bad person for hoping for a freak earthquake?
1:17am It's done. No surprises. The vote was 60-40 on strict party lines. The clock is now ticking.
Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.Obama’s Jokers are voting to nationalize health care tonight.
At 1:00 AM Monday, December 21, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the Reid-Baucus-Dodd-Harkin amendment #2376.
Claire McCaskill — Don’t Think We Will Forget This.
We can’t stop them from passing their radical, unpopular, rationed health care legislation but we can promise them this:
We promise to actively and openly campaign against every democrat who votes for this bill no matter if you are a red state democrat or a blue state democrat.
We promise to forever kill the myth that there is such a creature as a bluedog democrat.
We promise to donate to campaigns to defeat the democrats who vote for this radical expansion of the federal government.
We promise to make it known how you bought your votes with our taxpayer money to pass this bill.
We promise that we will never forget how your party leaders and your state-run media called Americans who opposed this lousy nationalized health care bill – mobsters, radicals, Nazis and teabaggers.
We promise to never forget that you voted to force taxpayers to fund abortion by voting for this bill and that your bill requires a monthly abortion fee.
We promise to never forget that your plan allows for government coverage of illegal aliens.
We promise to attend your town hall meetings and confront you about your vote to takeover one-sixth of the nation’s economy. Not even your SEIU and ACORN thugs will keep us away.
We promise to let Americans and seniors know that democrats just cut $470 billion from their Medicare.
We promise to let Americans know that you voted to ration their health care.
We promise to NEVER FORGET that you voted against the wishes of the people you represent.
To some homeless the sign’s message says enough. Mark Limonez, a homeless man living in “tent city”, says the sign doesn’t make him feel good about trying to get back on his feet. “Guys are trying to work but there’s not enough work out there, so they go pan handling or flag a sign” Limonez says, “I’ve never seen so many camps since I’ve been out in the streets – there’s no money.”h/t to Gateway Pundit
Thousands of Tea Party activists descended on Washington Thursday to protest the trillion dollar health care bill and government spending, holding signs protesting Barack Obama’s agenda while aiming chants of “you work for us” at the Capitol building.
"Whether you love him or can't stand him, he is a major player on the American political scene."Detroit's homeless and low-income residents have another opportunity for a chance at millions of stimulus dollars.
...To qualify, a person must have been a resident of Detroit for more than six months, must be homeless or facing eviction and must be able to maintain housing after receiving assistance.
Also, a resident must make 50 percent less than the median area income, which would be less than $24,850 for single Detroit residents and less than $35,500 for a family of four.
Single payer Healthcare is next.
@SondraK
Italian luxury goods manufacturer VBH boasted yesterday that First Lady Michelle Obama had toted their $5,950 alligator manila clutch earlier this week while on a trip to Russia.
No way, said the White House, which countered that the First Lady was carrying an $875 VBH patent leather clutch.
Via Glenn Beck at FoxNewsHere's the one thing and there's absolutely nothing funny about it: the wunderkind in charge of saving our auto industry is a 31-year-old with about as much experience as a summer intern.
Despite having no formal business education, no business experience and no auto industry experience, 31-year-old Brian Deese is now in charge of dismantling General Motors.
So what does this guy's resume look like? It should be impressive, considering he's managing America's $458,000 per day involuntary investment.
.......What should be more than a little scary for GM, much less the American people, is that however smart Deese may be, he has literally no private sector experience; he is not formally trained in economics or business; and, according to The Times, he "never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the nature of the American and Japanese auto industries."
General Motors Corp. became the second-largest industrial bankruptcy in history Monday as it filed its landmark case, with President Barack Obama predicting the humbled corporate titan will emerge from Chapter 11 "a stronger and more competitive" company within months.Read it...
GM's bankruptcy caps a frenetic few months in which the Obama administration scrambled to salvage GM as well as Chrysler LLC, the country's first- and third-largest car makers, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $62 billion.
GM officials portrayed the bankruptcy -- No. 2 in asset size among industrial concerns to WorldCom's filing in 2002 -- as an unprecedented opportunity to reverse decades of decline. GM said it would close 17 factories and parts centers and lop off 20,000 more jobs by the end of 2011 in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and other states.
The government-orchestrated shrinkage will cost taxpayers $30 billion, on top of $20 billion in U.S. funds already put into the company. In exchange, the U.S. will own 60% of the new GM. In all, the rescue of the car industry could cost taxpayers close to $100 billion.
I wonder if these are the same people who will stand behind him when he falls.Even as he conceded there is still much hard work to do, President Obama was in a boastful mood Wednesday night, telling a star-studded crowd at a fundraising dinner that he "would put these first four months up against any prior administration since FDR."
The president, speaking to a dinner that included Hollywood A-listers like Kiefer Sutherland, Marisa Tomei, Jamie Foxx, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, lauded the legislation he has signed since taking office but added that he is "not satisfied."
..."I'm confident in the future, but I'm not yet content," Obama said.
The celebrity dinner, which cost couples $30,400 to attend, was followed by a larger, lower-dollar concert that all told raised between $3 million and $4 million for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Joining the celebrities feting Obama were Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), "the newest member of our caucus."
...But Obama said in promising to continue to work hard, "Los Angeles, you ain't seen nothing yet."
President Obama has the star power to raise millions of dollars for the candidates and organizations he graces with his stump speech.
But when the president hit the road Tuesday for a two-day fundraising tour to pack the party coffers, he also was racking up a $265,000 partisan bill for just one leg of the trip, according to a watchdog group -- part of which taxpayers, regardless of party affiliation, will have to pay.
...He said the minimum domestic travel package for the president consists of one Boeing 747, which serves as Air Force One, one back-up dummy plane and one C17 cargo plane. The cost estimate is based on past hourly operational costs for the three aircraft, adjusted for inflation.
Read it all...
So here is a small selection of news on the most powerful man on Earth which has been deemed unfit to print:
•Obama’s first two major bills alone, the "stimulus" and "omnibus," cost nearly twice as much as was spent on Iraq over six years – $1.2 trillion vs. $650 billion.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise of "a net spending cut," his first annual deficit – not counting bailouts – being three times the worst deficit under President George W. Bush.
•Obama’s objective in his first G20 summit – commitments to spend our way to prosperity with massive stimulus boondoggles across the G20 – was rejected out of hand.
•Obama’s objective in his first NATO summit – commitments to combat troops for Afghanistan from "our European allies," which Obama and his party imagined were ready and willing to fight if only someone "enlightened" like him were running things – was predictably refused, with some more European non-combat contingents offered as a token.
•Obama’s Defence Department announced cuts of $1.4 billion to missile defence, the day after North Korea test-fired its long-range, multi-stage ballistic missile.
•Obama’s economics were criticized by Warren Buffet, whose endorsement had been candidate Obama’s highest economic credential.
•Obama reversed the free trade Bush policy that had allowed about 100 Mexican tractor-trailers into the United States, which the Mexican government immediately used as an excuse to levy tariffs on 90 American goods amounting to $2.4 billion in U.S. exports.
•Obama’s "tax cuts for 95 per cent" turned out to mean $13 a week from June to December, to be clawed back to $8 a week in January – as compared with President Bush’s 2008 tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 plus $300 per child, which were notably scoffed at during the election campaign by Michelle Obama.
•Obama’s campaign promise of a $3,000-per-employee tax credit for businesses that hired new workers – repeated ad nauseam for weeks before the election – was discreetly retired even before inauguration day.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise that "lobbyists won’t work in my White House," waiving his no-lobbyist executive order or conveniently re-defining his appointees’ past lobbying work to allow 30 lobbyists into his administration.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise to reform earmarks, signing the omnibus bill which contained 8,816 of them.
•Obama took more money from AIG than any other politician in 2008 – over $100,000 – and signed into law the provision guaranteeing the AIG bonuses which later had him in front of the cameras "shaking with outrage" and siccing the pitchfork crowd on law-abiding citizens who had fulfilled their end of a contract and had their payment upheld by Obama’s own legislation.
