The First 100 Days: What Did You Do To Celebrate It?

Me? I was working my butt off at my job. Why? Because in addition to taking care of my wife and 4-month-old son, Obama and the other socialists in Washington have decreed that I also have to work to take care of various Peggy the Moochers out there who think that a life is owed to them and they can just sit back and sponge off of the tax dollars that come from hard working people like me.

But, it is important to look at how the leftists celbrated it and how they twisted the truth for Obama’s benifit. Those twists are nothing more than insults to the intelligence of those of us who do our own research and try to verify our information before putting it out there.

Let’s look at some of Obama’s 100 Days quotes that don’t pass the smell test:

We began by passing a recovery act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families.

Well, the unemployement figures show that more jobs are being lost than saved or created. I guess Obama believes that this is somehow a good thing.

As for that tax quote, it has long since been established that 43% of Americans effectively have a tax bill of $0 after their deductions and credits are factored in. That is, they either recoup their entire tax bill or get more money back than they paid in. So, how can you offer a tax break to someone who effectively doesn’t even pay taxes?

On bipartisanship:

And if that is how bipartisanship is defined, a situation in which basically, wherever there are philosophical differences, I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in a historic election, you know, we’re probably not going to make progress. If, on the other hand, the definition is that we’re open to each other’s ideas, there are going to be differences, the majority will probably be determinative when it comes to resolving just hard, core differences that we can’t resolve, but there is a whole host of other areas where we can work together, then I think we can make progress.

In that first sentence, Obama is basically saying that it is his way or the highway. But his way is a hell of a lot more radical than he let onto during the campaign.

As for that second paragraph, well, perhaps Obama should have spent a few minutes explaining how locking the Republicans out of various meetings and discussions on the Porkulus/Spendulus package amounted to “bipartisanship.”

On the economy:

I didn’t anticipate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

I don’t know if Obama is aware of this or not, but we have not reached that point yet. The economic crisis that resulted from Jimmy Carter’s disastrous presidency was worse than what we are experiencing now. If the current crisis does reach the proportions of the Great Depression, it will be because of Obama’s socialist policies, not because of the previous eight years.

On the Auto industry:

I don’t think that we should micromanage …

Unless you want to push out the CEO of GM, then micomanaging is just fine in his opinion.

And of course, Obama tried to re-write history with some of his comments. Take for example the following:

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

If Obama actually believes this, then he has been drinking the kool-aid of some historical revisionist who outright changed the facts. The British most definitely did use torture techniques, even to the point of drugging prisoners, in order to get information out of Nazi captives during World War II. Why Obama would make such a glaringly false statement, I don’t know.

Every single question thrown at Obama was a soft-ball and seemed a part of a love-fest that the media was having at the time. No one asked a serious question or any of the hard questions that the American people want answered.

For example, here is a question that should have been asked: “Mr. President, if the Democrats hold that a $1 trillion deficit is irresponsible, then shouldn’t the Democrats consider your budget plan to quadruple the deficit as being five times as irresponsible?”

But then, a media that is so deep in the tank for a socialist president would never have the courage nor the integrity to ask such pertinent questions.

Fact Checking Obama’s Claims About The Pork Spending (Stimulus) Bill

Okay, all is not well with the Obamanation. Here are some facts that have been checked by the Associated Press and have been found wanting:

OBAMA: “My bottom line is, are we creating 4 million jobs?” he told the news conference. He said in Indiana, “The plan that we’ve put forward will save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next two years.” THE FACTS: Job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers. The president’s own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, “It should be understood that that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error.” Beyond that, it’s unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it’s clear when jobs are abolished, there’s no economic gauge that tracks job preservation.

In the long run, this bill will cause a loss of jobs. The money to pay for this massive spending must come from somewhere. Ultimately, it will come out of our economy and hurt our ability to create jobs.

OBAMA: “They’ll be jobs building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars that will lower our dependence on foreign oil and modernizing our costly health care system that will save us billions of dollars and countless lives.” THE FACTS: The economic stimulus bill would allocate about $20 billion to help hospitals and doctors transition from paper charts to electronic health records for their patients. Research has shown that in some instances, electronic record keeping can eliminate inappropriate services and improve care, but it’s not a sure thing by any means. “By itself, the adoption of more health IT is generally not sufficient to produce significant cost savings,” the Congressional Budget Office reported last year.

Only proven technology leads to new job creation. Unproven technologies rely on government subsidies to continue, like wind farms that need government dollars to remain on-line. Again, this will lead to fewer jobs in the long run.

OBAMA: “I’ve appointed hundreds of people, all of whom are outstanding Americans who are doing a great job. There are a couple who had problems before they came into my administration, in terms of their taxes. … I made a mistake. … I don’t want to send the signal that there are two sets of rules.” … Obama previously acknowledged he “screwed up” in making it seem to Americans that there is one set of tax compliance rules for VIPs and another set for everyone else. Yet his choice for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, achieved the post despite having belatedly paid $34,000 to the IRS, an agency Geithner now oversees. That could leave the perception that there is one set of rules for Geithner and another set for everyone else.

And let’s not forget how Obama went on a tirade about lobbyists in John McCain’s campaign and yet Obama himself appoints lobbyists to his own staff.

Anyone else think that there aren’t two set of rules here?

OBAMA: “We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.” THE FACTS: This could turn out to be the case. But as bad as the economic numbers are, the unemployment figures have not reached the levels of the early 1980s, let alone the 1930s — yet. A total of 598,000 payroll jobs vanished in January — the most in nearly 35 years — and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.6 from 7.2 percent the month before. The most recent high was 7.8 percent in June 1992. And the jobless rate was 10.8 percent in November and December 1982. Unemployment in the Great Depression ranged for several years from 25 percent to close to 30 percent.

When we do reach the unemployment levels of the 1930′s, it won’t be because of the Bush Administration and the economy growing tax-cuts they enacted. It will be because of the socialist policies the Dems are trying to force down our throats right now.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

FACT CHECK: Examining Obama’s Job, Pork Claims
Calvin Woodward
Associated Press via Yahoo News
February 10, 2009