...except we were told it would "save or create" X many jobs--where X was supposed to be a positive nonzero integer--and instead the economy lost Y jobs, and Y>X.
So Obama has changed the story; now the stimulus was meant to "save or create" state jobs. That's right; it was actually meant to grow government.
That is the first true thing he's said about it.
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USA Today says that the stimulus money has gone, overwhelmingly, to areas which supported Obama.
So let me get this straight: after we had to listen to the lunatic left tell us that Bush was fattening his own pockets by sending Halliburton into Iraq to do things only Halliburton could do, now those people who were so concerned about imagined government corruption is dead silent when there is actual real "payola" going on.
No surprises, though. Ever meet a Democrat who was critical of the Daley Machine? This is the same crap, only on a bigger scale.
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Why does Obama leave Hillary "home alone"? Kind of odd, isn't it? Is there something that Obama doesn't like about Hillary? And if so, why the hell did he make her his Secretary of State?
Might this be the result of a different sort of "payola"?
Let's just hypothesize a bit: Hillary realized she was losing the primaries last year and held out for the best deal she could muster. She could have kept the Democrats from winning the election by running as an independent; she could have extended the primary fight; she could have done several other things. But instead she gave up and threw her support behind Obama, who then went on to win the election--and she was then appointed Secretary of State.
That seemed a little too convenient to me. What makes it obvious is Obama's cavalier attitude towards his chief diplomat; of course part of this redounds to his arrogance: he doesn't need a diplomat because he can do it all.
But part of it must be that he didn't want Hillary in his administration, and that he resents (resented) having to include her at all--but he couldn't get the win without bringing her on board, either.
Leaving her behind on foreign junkets would seem to indicate there is some truth to this.
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China and India vie for control. Both China and India want the same things, and it's unlikely they can have them t the same time--hence, war.
China has numbers. Both countries have nukes. In the event of a full-on war, expect India to bring nukes to the battlefield first. Expect the resulting nuclear war to be brief, and--since China has better missile technology, thanks in part to the policies of the Clinton administration--India to suffer strategic strikes which make it unable to further prosecute such a war.
This is my off-the-cuff analysis and it probably has no bearing on actual reality. Besides which, I know nothing about the state of India's armed forces. What I do know is that a full-on war between those two coutries won't help anyone, least of all them.
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Michelle Malkin: Only four show up for health care rally.
A post on the pro-eugenicist leanings of certain administration officials. "Remember, kids: Being a progressive means never having to say you’re sorry for advocating the racist, mass abortion of the 'undesirables.'"
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Boortz on "the state of media journalism". Apparently the FCC is looking at "issues" such as "the prevalence of opinion journalism".
WTF is "opinion journalism"? As I recall from my admittedly outdated media classes in high school and college, journalism is the reportage of news, and opinion is not "journalism".
Example: Bill O'Reilly is not a journalist; he's a commentator. Ditto for Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Alan Colmes, Greta Van Susteren, Anderson Cooper, Keith Olbermann, etc, etc.
Journalism used to be about reporting the facts; since the 1960s, however, it has increasingly become about "interpretation" of events. (ie "Screw the facts; let's tell 'em what we want 'em to think.") But this isn't the kind of "opinion journalism" the Obama appointee is worried about; no, he's worried about Limbaugh/Hannity/Coulter/Ingraham/Boortz/e
These people scare the administration--as they scared the Clinton administration--because they don't follow the Democrat party line on issues, and they not only have a significant
following but also keep the inconvenient facts about Democrat policies and initiatives in places where people can see them.
The last thing Democrats want is for people actually to think about political matters. It works out better for Democrats if people don't think, but instead feel: Democrats play up the emotional aspect of every single issue they can, because it for damn sure makes their positions look more palatable than if you examine the facts.
That's why "the prevalence of opinion journalism" is a problem for Democrats: liberal "opinion journalism" is an abject failure every time its tried (hello "Air America"!).
* * *
This doesn't go far enough. Let's build one thousand new nuclear reactors, not a hundred.
There was yet another dumb article on Ars Technica about the "problem" of nuclear waste, and longtime readers of the Fungus know the solution to that non-issue: just recycle the stuff. Well, if we built 1,000 new nuclear reactors we would have to recycle spent fuel, because 1,000 nuclear plants would use a lot of it.
Just imagine how cheap electricity could be if we had 1,000 modern nuclear reactors doing their thing. 1,000 amounts to 50 per state; since coal power is still marginally cheaper per megawatt I don't imagine much displacement of coal plants...at least, not at first.
Do what France does: license a design (license several!) and let the economy of scale do the heavy lifting; it guarantees that reactor #500 wouldn't cost as much as reactor #1 would...and #1,000 wouldn't cost as much as #500. In fact, we would soon find ourselves retiring gas- and oil-fired plants to replace them with nuclear; and almost as if by magic the United States would cut back its carbon production. (And we might even get electric cars out of the deal.)
There are ways to build reactors which are physically incapable of melting down; mandate design criteria which ensure these features are incorporated.
It's not impossible for us to have plenty of cheap and clean electricity, and the solution is not to cover every possible surface with solar cells and windmills.
* * *
We may be seeing the earliest tendrils of a new business model for musicians.
The comments say everything I would say, and plenty of things I wouldn't. I leave it up to you to decide which is which; it's Saturday and I'm tired from working last night.
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Today a B2 bomber flew over my neighborhood, twice. I think Obama's on to me.