The Hammer (read here: The Krauthammer) Strikes Again

NewsBusters h/t:

Here is a portion from NB:

Moments later:

KRAUTHAMMER: Colby.

KING: Sir.

KRAUTHAMMER: Colby said it was a good speech. We really have to talk about the quote-unquote “investments,” which of course is what Democrats say when they want otherwise to say spending but they won’t use the word. And then he said it was okay on that, except that it didn’t address spending, which is a bit like saying, “Yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

KING: Cranky, cranky, cranky.

KRAUTHAMMER: Spending and debt is the issue of the day. That is the President’s own deficit commission had said, and I thought all of you un-cranky liberals had approved their conclusions.

Indeed they had, which raises another interesting point.

Totenberg said the electorate is not serious about trimming the budget. She later commented that the cuts being discussed are trivial because discretionary spending is a small part of the budget, and no one wants to talk about reducing entitlements.

We’ve been hearing this a lot lately from liberal media members. Now that the Republicans control the House, folks that came out en masse against any plans to reform Social Security in 2005 are now teasing this subject again.

As such, it is really the press that want entitlement cuts generically but are going to balk and balk loudly at the specifics. This is important because what we saw in 2005 is how powerful the media can be in impacting public opinion and preventing legislation.

George W. Bush was re-elected with a strong mandate having been the first President since Roosevelt in 1936 to win back the White House while expanding his Party’s majority in both chambers of Congress.

The public was ready for significant Social Security reform, but the media wasn’t having any of it. Instead, so-called journalists – led by minority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid – went on a full-court press to shamefully convince the American people the program was fiscally sound for decades to come, and Bush was lying about its imminent insolvency to scare the public into supporting his agenda much as he did with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, six years later, these same folks are mocking any attempts to cut spending by ridiculing Republicans for not going after Social Security and Medicare.

It makes you wonder not only how they sleep at night, but also how they so effectively manage their hypocrisy instinctively knowing which side of an argument they need to be on when it fits the prevailing template.

Gotta hand it to ’em – this takes talent.

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(Emphasis Added)

Favorite Quote in a While~Obama and Plagiarism

From NewsBusters:

“President Obama’s second State of the Union address contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince,” quipped Felzenberg, himself a former presidential speechwriter. “Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean.”

Ask and ye shall receive

NewsBusters h/t:

  • Ex Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin working as the No. 2 tech policy guy in the White House discussing net neutrality with Google lobbyists (registered and unregistered) while Google stood to profit from the administration’s Net Neutrality rules.
  • Former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson taking a job as Treasury Department chief of staff within 9 months of his work for Goldman.
  • Former H&R Block CEO Mark Ernst being hired by Obama’s IRS and then writing new regulations on tax prep — regulations that H&R Block has endorsed, and that will help H&R Block.
  • Obama officials meeting off campus for official business for the sake of avoiding the Presidential Records Act.
  • And this nugget from the same NYTimes piece: “Two lobbyists also cited instances in which the White House had suggested that a job candidate be “deregistered” as a lobbyist in Senate records to avoid violating the administration’s hiring restrictions.”
  • The firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. As my colleague Byron York has explained: “The method of Walpin’s firing could be a violation of the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which requires the president to give Congress 30 days’ notice, plus an explanation of cause, before firing an inspector general.”
  • Giving a car company (Chrysler) to a political entity that spent millions to get you elected. This deal involved alleged threats by a since-indicted car czar to knee-cap investors who didn’t want to agree to the White House’s deal.

…(read more)…

Change-In the wrong direction

This disturbing report comes from Gateway Pundit and shows just how radical the Left is in this country. The popular Left, to be clear.

We’re starting to see a pattern here…

  1. When the Iraqi people were being slaughtered in the street Obama said genocide was preferable to continued US presence in the region.
  2. When the Iranian freedom protesters were being shot at from rooftops, he turned his back on them.
  3. When the Honduran people rose against their socialist tyrant, he supported the tyrant.

And, now we learn that the Obama Administration has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars of business with evil anti-democratic regimes – including the Iranians who are supplying terrorists with bombs to kill US soldiers.

The New York Times reported:

Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.

In an interview, the Obama administration’s point man on sanctions, Stuart A. Levey, said that focusing on the exceptions “misses the forest for the trees.”