Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he regretted his promotion of
the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, Barack Obama said, “No, I
don’t.” This cavalier answer provides yet another snapshot of the
arrogance and ideological fixation that drives his presidency.

Clinging to an idea in defiance of reality defines the
ideologue, a definition to which Obama conforms perfectly. No
failure ever gives him pause. He can squander over a half billion
dollars of taxpayer money and then use the occasion to brag about
what he considers glorious forays into innovative
risk-taking.

Most hack pols are reluctant to admit errors, but hack
pols who also fancy themselves deep ideologues on the “right side
of history” take open pride in them. Obama falls into this latter
category. In his mind, the supposed purity of “green jobs” not only
absolves him of any complicity in the Solyndra scandal but confers
upon him a permanent halo. He has seen the future and it
works.

To the extent that he acknowledged the Solyndra failure,
he cast it as a minor misstep on the ascending road of progress. He
claimed that the green jobs loan guarantee program is humming along
nicely — “if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees
that have been provided, overall, it is doing well” — even as
media outlets report that the program has yielded an anemic number
of jobs and a growing list of busts.

In his past boosterism for green jobs, Obama has described
them as an indisputable boon to the economy and environment and a
safe bet on the future. But in the Stephanopoulos interview, he
blithely acknowledged the risk of investing in them: “And what we
always understood was that not every single business is going to
succeed in clean energy.” Always understood? Did he inform the
taxpayer of this?

A gross dereliction of duty dressed up as brave
risk-taking has become the administration’s audacious new stance on
Solyndra: at first, White House officials professed innocent
ignorance of its risk to the taxpayer; now they acknowledge
awareness of its wobbliness and dismiss such foreseen failures as
the price of progress. “This program was established by Congress to
support innovative, cutting-edge projects that by their nature
carry a degree of risk,” Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera

said to the Washington Post.

“Hindsight is always 20/20,” said Obama to Stephanopoulos,
even as his remarks indicated that he would gladly make the same
mistake again. He offered no apology to taxpayers while promising
more grand gambles with their money in the future: “… the fact of
the matter is that if we don’t get behind clean energy, if we don’t
get behind advanced battery manufacturing, if we’re not the ones
who are creating the cars of the future, then we’re not going to be
able to make stuff here in the United States of America. And one of
the most important things that I want to do over the next several
years is restore a sense that America can manufacture, but we don’t
just purchase stuff from someplace else, but we’re also exporting
to other countries.”

According to this ludicrous attempt at uplift, Obama is
making America more competitive in the global marketplace one
bankruptcy at a time. The idea that green jobs would ever prove
beneficial to the economy was the first deception involved here, as
foreshadowed by Obama’s appointment of Van Jones, a de facto
Marxist, as his “green jobs czar.” Marxists have never been known
for their job creation.

Nevertheless, Van Jones thrilled White House officials
with his “green collar economy” drivel. The Valerie Jarretts
listened with rapt attention as he urged environmentalists to move
beyond just hyperactive conservation and regulation and explore new
avenues of “investment” at taxpayer expense.

Solyndra has smudged the administration’s green collar and
raised the prospect of a new crime category, green collar crime,
while throwing light on a loan guarantee program that looks like
something hatched in a socialist dystopia of Van Jones’s imagining.
It has come out that former administration official Lawrence
Summers, commenting on Solyndra’s shakiness, warned that government
is a “crappy” venture capitalist, but such reservations were never
going to register with Obama no matter how loudly expressed, as he
was simply not interested in the normal workings of capitalism and
was fixated upon green jobs at all costs.

Like a good socialist ideologue, he is impervious to
reality and treats any setback as a reason to expand rather than
end the cause. Last week, his Department of Energy shoveled out the
door more money for green jobs. What will happen with those
billions is anybody’s guess. But if the gallows humor contained in
the leaked OMB memos about Solyndra are any indication of the
fitness of future projects, taxpayers shouldn’t hold their breath.
The Washington Post
quotes an analyst saying to a colleague: “What’s terrifying is
that after looking at some of the loan guarantee projects that
came next, this one Solyndra started to look
better.”

Read original page.

Barack Obama responded to Republican charges of “class warfare” by saying he’s proud to be “a warrior for the middle class.”
But what battles-or even skirmishes-has he ever won for working families? By what measure…

View original article.

Dear Reader (and those of you following the summary of this on AttackWatch.com),

I was going to start this with an Obama joke along the lines, “If you love me, you’ll donate to NRO.” But there are a few problems. First, I’d hate to seem like I think you people owe me anything or that I take it for granted that you all love me. Anyone who’s peered into the Ark of the Covenant face-melting maelstrom that is my e-mail inbox knows that’s not the case. Second, as Tina Turner said, “Ike! I’m calling 911!” Oh sorry, wrong quote. As Tina Turner said, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”

Read original post.

 

Yes, humor is always, always the best revenge.

Last week, @Misfit Politics made Team Obama’s Attack Watch the laughingstock of the Internet. Today, they take aim at the raging ragers behind the Day of Raaaaage.

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZkdvA2W5MI

Related:

Chris Barnhart covers Seattle’s Impotent Rage rally.

Zombie: Day of FAIL: Nationwide anti-capitalist revolution flops

View original article.

As the fictional Cleveland Indians announcer Harry Doyle from the movie Major League might say, Team Obama’s budget estimates, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are “juuust a bit outside.”

From The Hill:

The Congressional Budget Office on Friday released its analysis of President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal and found it does less to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated.

CBO estimates Obama’s plan would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product.

The administration, using different methods, estimated budget deficits would total $7.2 trillion over the next 10 years under the 2012 budget. It forecast that total debt in 2021 would be 77 percent of GDP.

Gee, I wonder which analysis is more accurate.

The spin from the Obama administration on the CBO saying their numbers are at least a couple trillion off so far isn’t to deny it, but rather say, “whatever… the point is that it’s a lot either way”:

White House budget director Jacob Lew said in a blog post that “CBO confirms what we already know: current deficits are unacceptably high and if we stay on our current course and do nothing, the fiscal situation will hurt our recovery and hamstring future growth.”

None of this should come as a surprise, since we’re talking about a president who once said he didn’t always do his math homework as a child and is on record as stating that accounting is an inexact science (try using that one on your IRS auditor).

Don’t worry about a thing though, because the Treasury Department and Obama’s budget advisors are hard at work straightening all out as we speak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifWxRFHqKmU

 

By way of Politico, here’s today’s Obama-hits-the-links update…

Human Events Senior Editor Emily Miller Twittered about how many rounds of golf Obama is up to these days:

This prompted John Kim, who is a coordinating producer for PGA.com, to respond this way:

Kim later noted how he should get elected president so he’d have more time to play golf. Careful dude, those deat… er, I mean — “end of life counseling committees” — aren’t just going to be for old people, you know.

But let’s not forget that golf can be a dangerous game, as the president found out yesterday in Hawaii:

“Your putting’s on fire,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Nesbitt on the ninth hole at the Mid Pacific Country Club here, where a presidential fivesome — including Mr. Nesbitt, Eric Whitaker, Mike Ramos and Bobby Titcomb, friends of the president from Chicago and Hawaii — spent much of the afternoon. The private club, in the ritzy neighborhood of Lanikai, boasts what its Web site calls a “highly acclaimed golf course” that has “hosted some of the finest golfers in the world.”

The pool of reporters traveling with Mr. Obama was allowed to watch from a balcony overlooking the course, where about 30 camera-toting onlookers also stood. Mr. Obama approached the green driving his own cart, with his left leg dangling out of the vehicle.

He shot a 5 on the ninth hole. At one point, as Dr. Whitaker took his approach shot from behind a tree in the rough, the ball whizzed past the president, missing him by about two feet.

It missed Obama by two feet, but it only missed TOTUS by one foot. That was a close one!

Whitaker… that’s not the same guy who elbowed Obama during a basketball game, is it? If so, the Secret Service might want to keep a closer eye on him.

Speaking of Obama’s golfing partners, tell me Bill Clinton wouldn’t have killed to have a guy named “Titcomb” in his inner circle when he was president (though I’ve heard unsubstantiated rumors that it was Bill’s Secret Service code name for a short time).

After the year the country’s had, it’s apparent that Obama and Biden have only two things left: denial and each other:

“This guy has a backbone like a ramrod,” Biden said while introducing Obama, adding that he has “a brain bigger than his skull and a heart to match both.”

You’ll not find a bigger brain in any of the 58 states. Biden’s mistaking the “TOTUS pole” for a backbone, which is a common mistake in Washington.

That was some seriously shovel-ready Biden BS, but President Obama returned the favor nonetheless:

Obama took the stage to a hardy ovation from the crowd and said, “I’ve had to make a lot of decisions over the last 24 months …The single best decision I have made was selecting Joe Biden as my running mate.”

Sadly, I’m forced to agree.

It was easy to forget that the two were in Delaware campaigning for Harry Reid’s pet, Chris Coons, whose numbers will probably drop now. A campaign visit from President Obama often does to your lead what a visit from Michael Moore does to the contents of your refrigerator…

From Townhall.com:

Keepin’ it real with a national bromance announcement. If THIS is Obama’s single best decision, we can agree the bar is set at a record low.

BTW: I love Obama’s added, “I mean that! It’s true.”

PS: The new bookend is at the end of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axJwfmLAXSg

Want memos detailing US interrogation techniques? Here you go.

Want to know the size of the US nuclear arsenal? No problem.

Want to know what flavor ice cream the Obamas ordered? Sorry, that’s a secret!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FPynOwis9E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Mg0S4Qod4

As we have been reporting, President Barack Obama is set to let tax rates increase at the end of this year. Obama’s tax hike will have devastating effects on an economy already on the ropes. There have been a lot of myths spread by the left about the supposed dangers of keeping taxes low and letting people keep more of their money, but the reality is that this is no time to raise taxes on all Americans. Along with the reinstatement of the death tax and the multitude of other taxes imposed by Obamacare, this tsunami of taxes will slow the economy even more, hitting America’s job creation engines—our small business owners—especially hard.

To highlight this looming threat, we’ve produced a short movie trailer spoof to highlight the danger these tax increases pose. Please take a minute to watch it and help us get this important message out by sharing the video with your friends and family.

It’s imperative that Congress act to prevent this massive tax hike. Rather than blame the tax rate for our economic woes, Congress must recognize that their out-of-control spending is a much greater threat to any possible recovery.

Comedian Jay Leno on Wednesday wished President Obama a Happy Birthday by making fun of him in the opening monologue of NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

“We want to start off by saying Happy Birthday to President Barack Obama,” Leno teased.

“He is 49, which is eight points higher than his approval rating.”

As “Tonight Show” viewers know, these jokes always come in threes (video follows with transcript):

JAY LENO: Welcome to the “Tonight Show,” and we want to start off by saying Happy Birthday to President Barack Obama. He is…

[Cheers and applause]

LENO: He is 49, which is eight points higher than his approval rating. Wow.

[Laughter]

LENO: If you would like to get him a a gift, he’s registered at Bed, Bath and Blame it on Bush. That’s the store.

[Laughter and applause]

LENO: What, did you see the cake they had for him? They had a huge cake. A little different than most birthday parties. What he did was he didn’t blow out the candles, he just taxed them until they finally gave up and went out on their own.

Delicious! Absolutely delicious.