Obama modeling US economy after Europe's

Today, S&P downgraded Spain's long-term sovereign rating from AA+ to AA.  Yesterday, Greece's long-term sovereign credit rating was downgraded from BBB+ (which is investment grade) to BB+ (which is 'junk' status).  Portugal's rating was downgraded two notches to A-.

The USA currently has a Aaa rating but, earlier this year, Moody's warned  that continued pursuit of Obamanomics, see plot below, would threaten that rating.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Obamanomics and how it differs from economics:
• Obamanomics prolonging the recession
•US Aaa bond rating threatened by Obama's budget says Moody's
•Obamanomics illustrated II
•How Dems are prolonging the recession
•How Obamanomics destroys jobs
•Obamanomics illustrated
•Deficits: Obama goes where no man has gone before (illustration)
•How to raise the standard of living
•Obama's anti-intellectual economic theory
•Obamanomics and the test of science
•Obamacare may raise insurance costs by 54%
•Harvard economist explains why Obamacare will raise premiums
•HHS says Obamacare will cause costs to go up and cause employers to drop coverage

Obama's vitriol

The Politico has noticed a troublesome trend: Obama's attacks are becoming increasingly personal. For example:

Mitch McConnell is in bed with Wall Street “movers and shakers” — and is fronting “cynical and deceptive” arguments on their behalf.

John Boehner is a health care Chicken Little to be mocked for predicting Armageddon if the Democrats’ reform bill passed.

Sarah Palin can be ignored on arms control because she’s “not exactly an expert on nuclear issues.”

And Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are just a “troublesome” twosome spreading “vitriol.”

Obama substitution of vitriol in place of rational argument is reflected by his supporters. FreedomWorks published a hate-message left on its answering machine by a spokesman for Geico insurance. After Geico fired the spokesman, many Obama supporters have called the FreedomWorks number to voice their own vitriol:

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Democrats and hate:
•If only hate could change false to true
•Air America projects their hate onto others
•Air America fantasizes about a right-wing hate machine
•Alec Baldwin projects his hate onto Republicans
•Progessives and prejudice and hate
•MSNBC's Garafola gets her hate on
•MSNBC responds to tea party protests with obscene jokes
•Bush-hater divebombs IRS

If Pres. Obama was "amused" by the tea parties....

Nate Beeler imagines what Pres. Obama's reaction to the Federalist Papers might be:


PREVIOUSLY on the humorous side of our present predicament:
•Comedy in the tragedy
•Obamacare, illustrated
•Seeing the humor in a disaster
•Obamacare and trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates

PA State House candidate outed as "straight"

In Philadelphia Center City's 182nd state House district, the last thing that a Democrat candidate wants to be is heterosexual. From Philly.com:

Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, as some in the audience gasped or laughed, "and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

Kravitz, 29, said that he is sexually attracted to both men and women and called Josephs' comments offensive.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Democrats, sex, and identity group politics:
•Majority Leader Reid declares: men are abusive.
•It was all about the racism and sexism
•MSNBC's sexist attacks on Sec. Rice and Obama's sexist attacks on Hillary
•DailyKos opposed to treating Hillary "fairly"
•Two examples of sexist stereotyping
•Sexists in the Senate
•A Democrat opposes sexism
•Media sexism backfires
•Salon has a sexual fantasy about Palin as a dominatrix
•Sexist attack on Palin or merely an example of Obama's "silver tongue"?
•Dem Gov says Dem primary voters are sexist and racist
•What is the victim status of your identity group?
•Dems urged to vote their gender

Comedy and Tragedy

From Mere Rhetoric's twitter stream:

It'd be reassuring if Obama came out as a radical hellbent on detonating US hegemony. At least we'd know he's competent

Not sure why Israel is upset re Obama tossing them under the bus. They've always said they want to be just like every other Western nation.

I'm pretty excited to see what kind of health care bureaucracy the party of teachers unions sets up for us

More like Berlin 1938 | RT @jimsciuttoABC: Today is Army Day in Iran, big military parade. Iran 2010 looks like Moscow 1980

No sympathetic media writeups of "root cause" of rightwing militias? I guess only jihadists have "legitimate grievances"

WH condemnation in 5, 4, never |RT @MediaBackspin: Fayyad sponsors sports event named 4r terror leader Abu Jihad http://is.gd/bs9pZ

He really is a walking punchline | RT @markknoller: Obama thanks fellow summit leaders for "a day of unprecedented progress."

PREVIOUSLY on humor (or the lack of it):
•Where has the laughter gone?
•Seeing the humor in a disaster
•Humor requires insight

The dawning of the reality of Obamacare

Last night, in response to a question, Bookworm mentioned to a liberal friend, who happens to work in the insurance industry, two MSM articles on problems with Obamacare. One was on the rising premiums brought on by Massachusetts' version of Obamacare. The other was on the unsustainable costs of Obamacare. Bookworm writes (RTWT) of her friend:

My friend was shocked: “Why didn’t anyone tell us about this before?” I replied, quite mildly, “I did.” She had the grace to fall silent.

It turns out that my friend didn’t raise the issue randomly. The people in her insurance office are getting panicky because they’ve suddenly realized that they’ve entered the insurance Twilight Zone, where all the rules are upside down.

Democrats always seem shocked when they find out that the policies that they advocate might actually apply to them in the real world.

PREVIOUSLY on liberals' failures to apply the rules to themselves:
•Environmentalists more likely to cheat: being a liberal means not having to follow the rules
•The UN's global warming advocates vs. their own carbon footprint
•Eco-hypocrite of the day: supermodel Giselle
•The hypocrisy of ACORN and others on minimum wage
•It is outrageous to make Hitler analogies, or not
•Dems, taxes, and hypocrisy
•Poll: Dems think it OK to cheat on taxes
•The rules apply only to other people
•The ever-increasing energy use of Al Gore's mansion
•With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming.
•Dems supported enhanced interrogation.
•UN humanitarian hypocrisy
•Poster child hypocrisy
•Edwards' hypocrisy toward the poor
•Liberals bash gays

Trial starts of Obama supporter who allegedly hacked Palin e-mail

The jury has been selected and testimony has begun in the trial of David Kernell over his alleged hacking of Gov. Palin's yahoo e-mail account. Kernell was a member of his college's "UT for Barack Obama" organization and is the son of Tennessee State Rep. Mitch Kernell (D-Memphis). The first to testify was Kernell's former college roommate who discussed Kernell's dislike for Palin's politics. According to the indictment (PDF):

On or about September 16, 2008 … Kemell gained unauthorized access to the e-mail account gov.palin@yahoo,com, by resetting the password using Yahoo’s password-recovery tool. Specifically, he reset the password to “popcorn” by researching and correctly answering a series of personal security questions. . . .

Remember this the next time that you decide whether to pick an easy password or how simply to answer those "security questions" for a computer account.

PREVIOUSLY on liberals and crime:
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Surprise: EU's carbon trading riddled with fraud
•Yet another hate crime hoax
•Top Dem fundraiser pleads guilty
•Convicted for being in the wrong identity group
•Superior Court: your right to privacy does not include your hard disk
•How Al Sharpton escaped trial
•Should punishment be televised?

Tea Partiers talk back to the pale voices at MSNBC and the NYT

From Reason:

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of Democrats and their racism:
•Democrats move to their comfort zone
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
•"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
•A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
•San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
•"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."
•NAACP defends racism.
•Stanford finds Democrats are racist.
•Obama nominates a racist.
•Leaders acknowledge Democrat base is racist.
•"That's just how white folks will do you." ---Barack Obama.
•Dem says Dem primary voters are racist.
•Dems accuse Bill and Hillary of racism.

A tax day Tea Party breaks out in San Francisco

A Tea Party broke out today on Union Square in San Francisco. Here is an overview of the crowd, which likely numbered one to two thousand:
Here is the crowd from a different angle:
There were some good signs such as "Socialism works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it, and Hell where they already have it":
Everyone in this family had a message for the President. "I'll keep my guns, my money, and my religion, you keep the change":
Below a physician explains the difference between his care and Obamacare: "When I shove something down your throat, I get consent and I give anesthetic: NObamacare":
This man hopes for a change:
The Democratic party seems to be motivated by envy and this woman explains the problem with that:
Democrats do not seem to understand how prosperity is created: "Spread my work ethic, not my wealth":
Unlike previous tea parties, this one had some legacy media coverage. Here you can see two somewhat hostile-looking reporters interviewing a tea partier:

Two liberal infiltrators (below) thought of themselves as smart but their signs portray the vacuousness of their thoughts:
As usual at a Tea Party, the LaRouche Democrats showed up with their Obama-with-Hitler-mustache signs:
LaRouche has run seven times for the Democratic nomination for President. Although his supporters freely describe his philosophy as FDR-inspired, the "unbiased" media is happy to pretend that they are tea partiers.

This Tea Party was organized by the San Francisco Bay Area Patriots. As you can see, they planned ahead to deal with infiltrators.

Michelle Malkin has a round-up on tea party infiltrators.

There were tea parties today all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Photos of the one in San Mateo on the San Francisco Peninsula are here.

WELCOME to readers of GatewayPundit, BigGovernment [updated link], Uncoverage, Lone Star Times and Waggle Room.

UPDATE: Fund47 has more photos.

UPDATE II: Over at PajamasMedia, Zombie has a fascinating look at the infiltrators.

PREVIOUSLY on tea parties in the San Francisco bay area:
•A tax day Tea Party breaks out on the San Francisco Peninsula
•3 in 10 Californians identify with tea party protests
•To protest Obamacare, San Francisco holds a sick-in (Nov. 15)
•A Tea Party greets Obama in San Francisco (Oct. 15)
• Videos of the October 15 San Francisco Tea Party
•San Franciscans speak to Nancy Pelosi (Aug. 14)
•The San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party Protest in Pictures (Apr. 15)
•Farmers protest in San Jose (Nov. 21).
•Tea Party breaks out in Palo Alto (Nov. 21)

A Tea Party breaks out on the San Francisco Peninsula

A Tax Day Tea Party broke out in the city of San Mateo on the San Francisco Peninsula. Well over 400 hundred enthusiastic people attended. The police confined the Tea Party to a sidewalk on El Camino Real:
This picture tries to capture the full length of the crowd (click to enlarge):
Confining so many people to a narrow sidewalk makes it difficult to walk around:

The canine contingent included this pup whose sign. I think, stretched past the limits of good taste:
The sign on his other side was no better:
The overall message was Taxed Enough Already:
Someone had an important point to make about morality: "Give Tiger Woods a break: Obama is screwing the whole country":
This mother had revolutionary spirit:


Here is an original: "Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Law!":
Dissent is not racism. That seems obvious but then, if there were any "unbiased" reporters present, it was probably a good idea to remind them:
This event was organized by MyLiberty of San Mateo County.

Welcome readers of Waggle Room.

PREVIOUSLY on tea parties in the San Francisco bay area:
•3 in 10 Californians identify with tea party protests
•To protest Obamacare, San Francisco holds a sick-in (Nov. 15)
•A Tea Party greets Obama in San Francisco (Oct. 15)
• Videos of the October 15 San Francisco Tea Party
•San Franciscans speak to Nancy Pelosi (Aug. 14)
•The San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party Protest in Pictures (Apr. 15)
•Farmers protest in San Jose (Nov. 21).
•Tea Party breaks out in Palo Alto (Nov. 21) UPDATE: Police called in

Best video of the day: Gov. Christie on the greed of teacher's unions

Part 1:

Part 2:


PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
•NY State Dept. of Education spending priorities
•Public school caught spying on kids at home
•Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
•LA pays teachers not to teach
•What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
•Obama promises to throw money at schools
•How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate

Deep denial

Fox News reports on the White House's latest attack on clear thinking:

President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy....

How about we just call it "the philosophy which must not be named."

UPDATE: What would Obama get in exchange for this proposed change in policy? Hope n' Change explains:

Consumers outsmart Massachusetts' version of Obamacare

The Boston Globe reports on how certain young consumers are gaming Massachusetts' health care system at the expense of everyone else:

Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe.

The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company’s data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions. [Emph. added]

Hat tip: BotW and Instapundit.

RECENTLY on Obamacare:
•Obamacare threatens high tech jobs
•Obamacare and trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates
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•Pelosi: Pass Obamacare so artists can quit their day jobs
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•Britain's Obamacare: Hospital patient dies of thirst as nurses ignore his pleas for water
•Nobel Laureate economist explains why socialized medicine always fails
•Rep. Ryan explains the dishonesty of Obamacare economics

Obama ushers in golden age of lobbying

The Wall Street Journal writes:

The National Journal last week rolled out its 10th annual survey of pay levels for Washington trade associations, confirming that for lobbyists this is the Golden Age. And needless to say, the political class is not clamoring for a pay czar.

The Washington insider magazine looked at 514 tax forms between 2007 and 2009 and found that no fewer than 89 executives for trade groups earned more than $1 million. That's a 30% increase from the 2008 survey. Perhaps you recall the now-distant promise of a Presidential candidate who said he would reduce the influence of lobbyists. Who was that guy?

With Congress taking over management of medical care, and considering taking over energy production, it is not surprising that top lobbyists are in demand.

RELATED: Silicon Valley will likely need more lobbyists now that Democrats are now threatening to impose "frankly ridiculous" regulations on angel investors.

Frighten yourself to better health!

Instead of exposing test subjects to actual sick people, psychologists at the University of British Columbia exposed their test subjects to a slide show of photos of sick people. After exposure to the slide show, they found that their test subjects' immune systems became significantly stronger than before. For comparison, they also exposed subjects to slide shows of furniture and to slide shows of guns, neither of which produced significant increases in immune system activity.

The immunes system's response to the sight of sick people may help, in part, to explain why nurses stay as healthy as they do despite their constant exposure to disease.

This study will be published by Psychological Science (preprint as PDF). You can read more about the study at Boing Boing and Psychology Today.

PREVIOUSLY on the general subject of psychology:
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•"Ironically," conservatives and their children are happier
•Democrats and Ethics: some poll results

Your tax dollars at work

The New York Post reports on how NY State education bureaucrats want to spend your money:

The state failed to get a penny in education funds doled out by Washington this week after clueless bureaucrats were dopey enough to admit to the feds they would have blown more than $200,000 on expensive furniture for their offices.

They apparently thought designer chairs, desks and bookcases for themselves were more important than training teachers or turning around failing schools.

Their proposed spending included  bookcases that cost $3,000 each.  When confronted on the issue, the education bureaucrats said it wasn't their fault the furniture cost so much.  They were just following NY State policy to mandates overpaying for furniture:

State education officials said they were hampered by Albany's purchasing rules, which forced them to order supplies from a vendor named CorCraft -- whose goods are made by New York prison inmates.

"It's not a state Education Department decision -- it's a state procurement issue," said Deputy Commissioner John King Jr. "We are mandated to purchase from CorCraft,"

But the state did not have to use a federal grant for office furniture or equipment. It could have spent the money on things like more social workers or longer class hours.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
•Public school caught spying on kids at home
•Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
•LA pays teachers not to teach
•What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
•Obama promises to throw money at schools
•How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate

Reuters makes discovery

This just in from Reuters: (a) Obamacare is unpopular; and (b) Democrats know it is unpopular: