PUMABydesign001's Blog

For the longest, I have been saying that Barack Obama is talking loud and saying nothing.  I cannot take the credit alone for this revelation since millions have stated for more than a year that Obama is a talking robot who spews empty rhetoric, false expectations and lies.  It takes Obama a smile and almost ten minutes to answer a question he never answers.

We are not alone.  The Arab community sees Obama as all hype, no show and a full of horse fodder.  Just like the rest of us, they are fed up with Obama’s waltz.

WSJ

“He talks too much,’ a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America’s 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory.

He is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth…

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one’s own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. ‘My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger,’ goes one of the Arab world’s most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

Mr. Obama could not make up his mind: He was at one with ‘the people’ and with the rulers who held them in subjugation. The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy—Mr. Obama was out to ‘engage’ the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.

On Nov. 4, on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the embattled reformers, again in the streets, posed an embarrassing dilemma for American diplomacy: ‘Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them,’ they chanted. By not responding to these cries and continuing to ‘engage’ Tehran’s murderous regime, his choice was made clear. It wasn’t one of American diplomacy’s finest moments. …”

In essence, Obama’s misplaced bows and apologies for the sins of America have done nothing to win the respect of anti-American nations.  If anything, it has served to heighten their disdain and lack of respect for us. 

Dismantling all of the protections that George Bush has put in place, the world today sees the United States as a weaker nation and fair game, a gift from our president.

With 17 to 18% unemployment, this is no surprise.  This is Barack Obama on disconnect.

NEWSMAX

“More than 36 million Americans — one of every eight adults and one of every four children — rely on food stamps in order to eat, and those numbers will likely grow.

‘I think the response of the program has been tremendous,’ Kevin Concannon, an undersecretary of agriculture, told The New York Times, ‘but we’re mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit.’

Government figures show that nationwide, food stamps reach only about two-thirds of those eligible to receive them, with rates ranging from 50 percent of Californians to 98 percent of those who live in Missouri.

Virtually all recipients have incomes near or below the federal poverty line.

While food-stamp use is greatest where poverty runs deep, growth has been especially swift in once-prosperous places hard hit by the housing bust.

The number of recipients has risen by at least two-thirds in 205 U.S. counties, and doubled in about 50 small counties and a dozen sizable ones in the last two years.

That so many Americans are now using food stamps is only one indication that the Obama administration’s economic policies aren’t working, says Howard Schweber, assistant professor of political science and law at the University of Wisconsin.

‘The bailout was supposed to get credit flowing again, which was supposed to get small businesses back on their feet, which would then stimulate employment,’ Schweber writes in The Huffington Post.

‘It didn’t work, because that’s not what the banks chose to do with the money.”

For  starters, I do not approve of foreign nations purchasing our landmarks, bridges, highways, tunnels, etc.   Safe to say that I expect China to step in.

NEW YORK POST

“A block-full of landmark New York City real estate is being sized up for the auction block in the fallout of the Dubai debt crisis rocking global markets.

Dubai, one of seven states in the United Arab Emirates, said last week it will ask creditors for a six-month freeze of its debts as it attempts to pay them down. The effort may include the sale of noncore assets such as:

* The Jumeirah Essex House, the 78-year-old, 43-story luxury hotel on Central Park South whose iconic rooftop sign is a landmark in the city.

* Knickerbocker Hotel, the John Jacob Astor-built Times Square Hotel on the southeast corner of 42 Street and Broadway in which, legend has it, the martini cocktail was invented.

* Barneys New York, the famous, upscale apparel chain that Dubai’s Istithmar unit purchased 26 months ago for $937.4 million, but which has struggled under the weight of the recession.

Aiden Birkett, a senior restructuring expert from global accounting firm Deloitte, on Friday was winging his way from London to Dubai to begin the lengthy task of poring over the books of Dubai World in an effort to help the sovereign investment firm crawl out of a $59 billion debt hole….”

Not just Americans see that Obama is disconnected and inept.  The whole world sees Obama’s flaws, which is unfortunate for the United States as we are back to pre-September 11, 2001 security risk level.

In fact, everyone sees his shortcomings but Obama.  Will somebody please give this guy a gill.

As for the moonbats who voted this goon into office, what were they thinking and what exactly did they expect out of a community organizer from the south side of Chicago.  Barack Obama exposed to the world is viewed as one in it, not to win it, for his own greed.  His actions and/or lack thereof are confirmation of that fact.

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

“Ten months into his presidency, we all know the presidents Barack Obama is not, as well as the presidents he does not want to be.

It is clear that he is not a liberal mirror image of President Ronald Reagan, reshaping the political landscape. Neither is he, as he himself suggested immodestly, an Abraham Lincoln. He has a wonderful turn of phrase but any similarity ends there.

With unemployment rising to beyond 10 per cent, thus far he is proving to be no President Franklin Roosevelt.

Even Obama seems to have abandoned the grand historical comparisons he made before his inauguration. Instead, he appears intent on not being three presidents, especially with regard to foreign policy.

He still defines himself principally as the unBush, at every turn reflexively adding the caveat that his predecessor bequeathed him a ‘mess’. By the time he finally reveals his decision on Afghanistan on Tuesday night, it will be just a day short of three months since General Stanley McChrystal requested 40,000 more troops to stave off American defeat.

This extraordinarily long process has been dubbed ‘dithering’ by his critics, led by former vice-president Dick Cheney, and ‘deliberative’ by his admirers. In fact, it is principally an ostentatious attempt to show that he is not President George W Bush, who once stated that he was ‘a gut player’.

Alongside that, Obama wants to avoid being President Lyndon Johnson, whose ‘escalation’ (a negative term that is now common currency in news reports) of the Vietnam war condemned him to a one-term presidency despite his Great Society domestic reforms.

At the moment, the most powerful player in Washington is probably Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – she is a more skilled operator than the President and has a bigger Democratic majority than Harry Reid, her counterpart in the Senate. Obama is looking nervously at how she will view his increasing the American presence in Afghanistan from 68,000 to more than 100,000….”

Feeling a bit nostalgic.  Nothing like En Vogue.  Love the song and the video.  How can anyone resist sexy Mekhi Phiffer. 

And now just for the heck of it.

There is nothing positive that can be said for a government and system that fails children.  How on earth does one allow pedophiles to work as social workers?  This is the equivalent of allowing the inmates to run the prison.  Children, the innocent and weak, not matter what side of the globe they are on deserves better.  Social services workers know that they have been in their jobs too long when they stop giving a damn and lose the will to do their jobs.

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

“Hundreds of social services staff accused of disciplinary breaches, including paedophile offences, were left free to look after vulnerable people while decisions about whether they should be suspended or struck off were delayed.

Hearings into their cases were put off for months, and in some cases years, so that the regulator could delay paying the costs, according to a report for ministers. Some of the most serious cases were abandoned with ‘little or no’ investigation, by staff who felt under pressure to shelve cases regardless of the dangers to the public.

The head of the General Social Care Council (GSCC) was quietly sacked this month after investigators unearthed a catalogue of failings by the watchdog. Mike Wardle, the organisation’s chief executive, was dismissed under the GSCC’s own conduct procedures.

On Tuesday, the Government will announce proposals to extend training for junior social workers, and to increase pay for the most experienced practitioners on the front line. Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, has defended his handling of the Baby Peter scandal and said a new Royal College of Social Work would speak up for the profession.

Among the social workers who remained free to work for months after allegations were lodged with the GSCC were individuals who were later struck off for sexually abusing their own children, or for repeated attacks on young girls in care homes, according to evidence seen by The Sunday Telegraph….”

CONTINUE

The Democrats and their tainted realities are in overkill mode.  Only a numb nut liberal would deny the truth.  Say no to the snake oil salesman and his bottle of vinegar.

CATO@LIBERTY

“Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years.  Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019).  Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, ‘When all this new spending occurs’ — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — ‘this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.’

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance.  When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax.  When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending.  But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending.  That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan.  And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs.  When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4).

Here’s where things get really ugly.  TPMDC’s Brian Beutler calls ‘the’ $2.5-trillion cost estimate a ‘doozy’ of a ‘hysterical Republican whopper.’  Not only is he incorrect, he doesn’t seem to realize that Gregg and I are correcting for different budget gimmicks; it’s just a coincidence that we happened to reach the same number.

When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion.  That’s not a precise estimate.  It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

Beutler and other supporters of ObamaCare can react to this news in two ways.  They can continue to deny the enormous cost of the legislation they support.  Or they can question how President Obama’s health plan came to be so blessedly expensive, and how (and by whom) they were duped into thinking it wasn’t.”