Perfunction

Obama: Saaaaay, About That Deficit Thing...

It appears that someone was on the receiving end of the clue bat after last week's electoral wipeouts in New Jersey and Virginia:

President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.

The president's plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s Democratic election setbacks, represents both a practical and a political calculation by this White House.

On the practical side, Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives.

Having never seen it put in such stark comparative terms, I nearly stopped reading after that Obama-Clinton spending factoid. Thanks, Politico, that's a FunFact^tm I'll never tire of deploying.

But do please read the whole thing. It's quite entertaining to see the horror in the eyes of the Dems as they realize what exactly they've done in the past 9 months. It's like they woke up from a drinking binge in a bed full of their own vomit.

(h/t: memeorandum)

UPDATE: Go ahead, dip your balls in it:

October’s report from the Department of Labor showed the unemployment rate hitting 10.2 percent last month, the highest level since April 1983.

Unemployment wasn’t expected to hit double digits that soon, and many economists now warn they do not expect the jobless rate to drop until at least next summer; in the most recent recessions, unemployment has not stopped rising until a year after the recession’s end.

That could doom dozens of incumbent lawmakers in the House and Senate, jeopardizing the large majorities Democrats enjoy in both chambers. That, in turn, could make it impossible for Obama to move his agenda forward in the latter half of his first term.

The gloomy statistics are “a wake-up call,” according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

But, QUICK!, remove your balls ... for here's what the lefty economist is prescribing:

“Unless Congress authorizes substantial additional spending for job creation, unemployment will remain elevated for years to come,” Shierholz said in a statement responding to the Labor report.

In other words --- Stimulus II.

Heidi, here's a hint: When it's MASSIVE DEFICITS that has Independents sprinting into the open arms of Tea Party-enthused Republicans, you really shouldn't spend anymore.

How about verboten ax-tay uts-cay instead?

Anyway, it's sad to see Dems finally conclude that their spending binge is a real, structural problem now. But it's downright hilarious that they're gonna double down on a failed stimulus.

Video: Balloon Boy's Media Whore Parents Make Balloon Boy Sick

The only recap of this circus you need. Includes young Falcon Heene's confession, his dad's vomit-inducing spinning, and some choice scenes from the Heene Family's modest appearance on Wife Swap:

UPDATE: Welcome, Ace of Spades.

US Warships Raid German Ship Carrying Arms From Iran To Hezbollah

Busted: MV Hansa India

As Secretary of State Clinton arrives in Moscow to continue trying to get all the P5+1 (US, Russia, China, Britain, France -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- plus Germany) on board with tougher Iranian sanctions, the "+1" gets a big, black eye, as a German ship is caught smuggling Iranian weapons, reports Der Spiegel:

An "embarrassing affair," is how one German diplomat described it. The official could also have added: potentially damaging to trans-Atlantic relations.

In an operation reported on by SPIEGEL over the weekend, US soldiers entered the freighter Hansa India in the Gulf of Suez at the beginning of October and discovered seven containers full of 7.62 millimeter ammunition suitable for Kalashnikov rifles. An eighth container was full of cartridges suitable for the manufacture of additional rounds. The incident is particularly awkward for Berlin as the Hansa India is registered to the Hamburg-based shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg.

Investigators suspect that the arms were part of an Iranian shipment bound for either the Syrian army or for Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group. US officials have pointed out that the delivery is in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, which prohibits arms shipments either into or out of Iran.

Clarifying further, a shipping news website reports:

The consignees were probably Hezbollah (not as reported elsewhere the Syrian Army – Syria manufactures its own 7.62 mm cartridges) and the ship has been under long term charter by Leonhardt & Blumberg of Hamburg to Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, a state funded company.

We are informed that the raid was conceived following intelligence received and that two US warships stopped the German managed vessel which then proceeded to port after an intervention from the German government.

The contraband arms were off-loaded and secured in Malta, and the Hansa India is currently steaming off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal, presumably back to Germany.

Nice to have a trusted UN partner like Germany flouting UN sanctions against Iran ... in the midst of trying to secure more UN sanctions against Iran. Ausgezeichnet.

UPDATE: Welcome, Surber, memeorandum, Ace headlines, Gateway Pundit, HotAir and Ed Driscoll.

Video: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

And other trophies...

Many thanks to my buddies at The Hostages for the pics.

UPDATE: Welcome, STACLU, Nice Deb and Pundit & Pundette. The next 50 people that watch my video get one of these babies.

Everyone Gets A Trophy! Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

 
Now no better than the trinkets handed out to children at a youth soccer league pizza party, the Nobel brand has been diluted beyond repair:

Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

In other words, Obama got the Nobel for three telepromptered speeches about vaporware.

Awesome! Way to go, you special lil fella! You're special! Yes you are! Piiiiizzzzaaa!

UPDATE: Traditionally, the Nobel Prize is just a medal, but word comes from Oslo that this year's Special Winner shall receive a Special Statuette.

UPDATE: Much, much funnier updates and a complete gallery of Obama Trophies at one of my other stomping grounds, The Hostages.

UPDATE: VIDEO of this glorious achievement added.

Chubby Lib Blogger Concerned About Corzine's "Fat" Ad

 

Yglesias Dressed as a High BMI, High Value Target

As the New Jersey governor's race heads into the home stretch, Democrat incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine gets desperate:

Entering (double)chin-stroking mode, tubby blogger Matthew Yglesias is concerned:

On the one hand, this seems like it couldn’t possibly work. Who’s going to be anything but repulsed from Corzine by these tactics? On the other, it does often seem that prejudice against the overweight is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice. But this really looks to me like a (deserved) backlash waiting to happen.

Cheap Shot, thy name is Cuffy.

UPDATE: OHAI, memeorandum and Instapundit.

White House Props Up Unpopular Policy With Props

I hate it when Typepad randomly mixes up my posts/pics. It's as if it's trying to make a subtle point about media double standards or something...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama yesterday rolled out the red carpet -- and handed out doctors' white coats as well, just so nobody missed his hard-sell health-care message.

In a heavy-handed attempt at reviving support for health-care reform, the White House orchestrated a massive photo op to buttress its claim that front-line physicians support Obama.

A sea of 150 white-coated doctors, all enthusiastically supportive of the president and representing all 50 states, looked as if they were at a costume party as they posed in the Rose Garden before hearing Obama's pitch for the Democratic overhaul bills moving through Congress.The physicians, all invited guests, were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.

But some docs apparently forgot, failing to meet the White House dress code by showing up in business suits or dresses.

So the White House rustled up white coats for them and handed them to the suited physicians who had taken seats in the sun-splashed lawn area.

Here's the White House staff handing out plastic turkeys lab coats yesterday:

PS: If you've never read Treacher's mythbuster episode about Bush's plastic turkey, take the time. Spoiler alert: not plastic... Keep f*cking that turkey, libs.

UPDATE: Welcome, Ace headlines, HotAir, Treacher's twitter, Driscoll, Nice Deb and IMAO.

Heh --- ask and you shall receive. A comment this morning on Democratic Underground:

22. Handed out or not, the lab coats in the Rose Garden did look odd -

- and made the event appear to be only a photo op. Let's face it, doctor's don't wear lab coats in public and they certainly wouldn't wear one to the White House. Personally, I thought it a bit much and took the focus off the event itself and onto the lab coats. It reminded me of Bush's Iraq fake turkey Thanksgiving photo op - a comparison I don't think that anyone would want.

While they are still f*cking that turkey, at least some Dems acknowledge the laughably fake optics of Obama's lab coat stunt.

World = Racist: Entire Planet Rejects Obama

As Drudge snarks, the Ego Has Landed:

UPDATE: Welcome, Confederate Yankee, Ace of Spades, doubleplusundead, Nice Deb and Jim Treacher's twitter.

Obscene Photo Of Budding Child Actress Removed From Museum; Whoopi Shrugs "Hey, It's Not Child Porn-Porn"

With the Roman Polanski case getting a thorough re-airing, some of his Hollywood defenders have latched onto the fact that the 13 year old victim's mother gave permission for her to do a photo shoot with Polanski. Seeing a once-in-a-lifetime chance for her daughter to break into showbiz via a Celebrated Director, mom said yes. This initial approval clearly meant that her subsequent drugging, rape and sodomy were also A-OK with mom, according to Polanski apologists. Motherhood FAIL, they cluck.

Well at least his victim, Samantha Geimer, didn't have Brooke Shields' mom during the golden age of Hollywood debauchery in the mid-1970's:

Cropped: It's not Child Porn-Porn...

A display due to go on show to the public at Tate Modern tomorrow has been withdrawn after a warning from Scotland Yard that the naked image of actor Brooke Shields aged 10 and heavily made up could break obscenity laws.

The work, by American artist Richard Prince and entitled "Spiritual America", was due to be part of the London gallery's new Pop Life exhibition. It has been removed from display after a visit to Tate Modern by officers from the obscene publications unit of the Metropolitan police.

...

"Spiritual America" is a photograph of a photograph. The original – authorised by Shields's mother for $450 – had been taken by a commercial photographer, Gary Gross, for the Playboy publication Sugar 'n' Spice in 1976. Shields later attempted, unsuccessfully, to suppress the picture.

The Guardian's art critic comments on the (now removed) exhibition:

If "Spiritual America" is a comment on the commodification and premature sexualisation of Brooke Shields, who was complicit in turning her into a 10-year-old sex object? Not Prince. That had happened almost a decade before he re-used the image.

There is something horrible about the photo. I feel uncomfortable.

Ummmm, no shit.

So, of course, expect the very same depraved defenders of Polanski's Art to come out swinging against this heavy-handed, benighted censorship:

As Polanski's brutal seduction of a young girl is overridden, even negated, by his supposed status as a great artist, so the provocatively sexual picture of a minor will doubtless be celebrated, even more enthusiastically now that it has been removed, on the bogus grounds that it constitutes art.

It is as though art and artists occupy a different moral sphere to the rest of us.

...

Indeed, if a paedophile were caught downloading the very same picture he would almost certainly be in serious trouble.

And with that, no link to these easily-googlable pics from here. I'll leave it to your own judgment whether your morbid curiosity outweighs the risk of a) having child porn on your computer and b) the nausea of experiencing this Grade-A Polanski Art.

Filling In For Bin Laden Today

Still no special 9/11 message from Osama today, so Obama's own terrorist friend will have to suffice. Pinch-hitting for Bin Laden ... Weatherman Bill Ayers:

‘‘Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them." [William Ayers, Fugitive Days, 2001]

"Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever stand innocently fixed in my mind. Big buildings and wide streets, cement and steel were no longer permanent. They, too, were fragile and destructible. A torch, a bomb … and they, too, would come undone or get knocked down." [William Ayers, Fugitive Days, 2001]

Above quotes are from Ayers' terrorist memoir Fugitive Days, which he was ironically flacking in the pages of the New York Times on September 11, 2001.