Mr. President, are wee having fun yet?

The answer is "yes". Listen to Obama:

"There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-wee'd up," the world's most powerful man observed. "I don't know what it is, but that's what happens."

Ooh, ooh! I know what it is! A majority of Americans don't like your big health care idea! They like you, though, so why don't you give up and watch your poll numbers bounce back?

"I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, 'Look, let's not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, '94, when [Bill] Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the midterm elections and we got the majority.' And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook," he said.

Hey, sounds like a plan to me. But seriously, isn't this phrased in a strange way? Is the placement of words this threatening in the collective mouth of a weak minority party convincing to anyone besides the haters and head-nodders? The Republicans should be commended for not being overly interfering as the President acts on his present political suicide wish.

But, mindful of his audience, Mr. Obama said he would "love to have more Republicans engaged and involved in this process," and even said he had sought input from the party now dwelling somewhere in the deep wilderness.

Riiiight. I guess the Democrats in the house never got that memo. It's all such a goofy narrative. Who buys it? The same people who bought Hillary's "right-wing conspiracy"? I don't know... at the time she said that the Rebublicans had taken the house and her husband was on the ropes. Well, I suppose we'll have to wait to see which way the political winds are blowing when the wee wee season is over.

Obama Hits Record Low in Recent Zogby Poll

Newsmax has the story.

President Barack Obama's popularity has plummeted to a record low, with just 45 percent of voters now approving of his performance, according to the latest Zogby International poll.

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president's job performance, just 45.3 percent of likely voters say they approve. That compares with 50.5 percent who disapprove of the job Obama is doing.

The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president's popularity.

Those numbers also indicate that Obama clearly is in serious political trouble, Fox News analyst and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
among likely voters . . . he is in deep political trouble."

"As soon as Obama dropped below 52 percent . . . he was leaking real voters who had backed him in November," Morris tells Newsmax. "Now that he is down to 45 percent among likely voters . . . he is in deep political trouble."

I was interested in some remarks made by John Zogby about Walmart shoppers and investors. These are two of the poll questions he always asks in his online polls. I take these polls, probably once a month or so mainly out of curiosity. Then aren't as accurate as the old-fashioned cold-call telephone, but I guess he asks the same types of qualifying questions. Other standard group-identity questions include one about whether you are a Nascar fan and how frequently you attend religious services.

I Nominate This Guy for Technology Czar

In case President Obama's current CTO, Aneesh Chopra, doesn't work out, I think I found a possible replacement on the Fail Blog of all places.


see more Fail Blog

Rakim from Oakland explains why "computers are racist" and doesn't just call white people to account for it, but blames the Chinese as well. His rhetoric is simple and easy to understand. He should run for office.

More Fun: Busting on Pepsi Logos

I'm late to the game on this, but it's cracking up nonetheless so I'm sharing it. I think when you have a bunch of kids jumping around and you're self-employed with a number of projects going on you are somewhat entitled to neglect important developments in the silly world of advertising, marketing and brand logos. Suddenly, one of your projects is a possible logo change so you turn to El Goog for ideas. Then the gods of internet search grant you more than you requested; this Denver Egotist post on the relatively recent (10 months ago) Pepsi logo change had me howling.

I guess that Pepsi is now saying "Tired of doing Coke? Here, have some crack, man."

The comments were priceless, as are the comments for this post which also accuses the new bottle design of phallic imagery.

Here's another picture inspired by the logo, possibly even funnier.


I don't know; it's probably all a big Rorschach test and these folks are revealing what's really in their heads. I likewise plead guilty, but I'm still laughing.

Friday Fun

moar funny pictures

AARP Loses 60,000 Members Over Obamacare

That's gotta hurt.

As many as 60,000 seniors have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, news outlets have reported.

The reason is because they are angry about AARP's position on healthcare reform. While it has publicly stated it has not endorsed any legislative proposals, it has leaned in favor of the bills that are being debated. Many seniors are switching to the American Seniors Association, a conservative alternative to AARP, CBS News reported.

I guess they didn't get President Obama's "joke" about the silly old lady who liked her Medicare any more than I did.

It's a worthy question to ask of President Obama

In his latest press release, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League asks the question, "Is Obama lying? or just misinformed?"

President Obama went on BlogTalkRadio yesterday to address health care reform. At one point he told the left-wing religious audience, “You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion. Not true.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue replied as follows:

On July 17, the House Committee on Ways and Means approved the America’s Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200). In the course of the debate, it considered the following amendment, sponsored by Rep. Eric Cantor:

No funds authorized under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) may be used to pay for an abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of forcible rape or incest.

In other words, the amendment barred “government funding of abortion.” It failed: 19 voted for it and 22 voted against it.

Obama said yesterday that there is “a lot of misinformation” about this issue. So which is it? Was he lying when he said there would be no government funding of abortion? Or was he just misinformed? If it’s the latter, then someone needs to get him up to speed real fast. If it’s the former, then we have the makings of an ethical crisis in the White House.

Great Europe cover

This dude is a great, undiscovered talent. His solo interpretation is immediately recognized due to the ubiquity of this tune on the FM airwaves of the late eighties.

"Seen us" is definitely the best rhyme for Venus.

Evil and Stupid Misconceptions, Right

William McGurn's piece in WSJ shows the grasping quality of the defenders of the health care bill. Unwilling to discuss details of the bill, they attack the unbelievers with accusations of evil, stupidity and misconceiving. First he deals with Harry Reid's latest "evil" remark:

We saw it again in 2002, when George W. Bush characterized North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as an "axis of evil." Tom Daschle, a Democrat and then Senate majority leader, warned that "we've got to be very careful with rhetoric of that kind"; former President Jimmy Carter called it "overly simplistic and counterproductive"; and comedian Will Ferrell parodied it on Saturday Night Live. Soon the phrase became acceptable only in the ironic sense—as in the Chris Fair cookbook titled "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations."

With all this history, you would think Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had ample warning. Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader invoked the e-word himself last week at an energy conference in Las Vegas, where he accused those protesting President Barack Obama's health-care proposals of being "evil mongers." So proud was he of this contribution to the American political lexicon that he repeated it to a reporter the next day and noted the phrase was "an original."

And then . . . nothing. No thundering rebuke from the New York Times. No outburst from Mr. Carter. In fact, it's hard not to notice that the good and gracious people who instinctively recoil at words like "evil" or "un-American" (the preferred term of Mr. Reid's counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi) have all been silent.

Yeah, well, Reid is a Democrat, so he has immunity. Next, he examines how Obama goes after the stupidity of a straw-woman he carries around to townhall meetings:

It's a point of view Mr. Obama inadvertently encourages when he indulges in, say, the trope about Medicare that has become a staple of his town halls. The president tells the crowd he's received a letter from a woman upset with his plans for health care. "She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want you meddling in the private market place. And keep your hands off my Medicare.'"

Get it? The applause tells us the audience does: How dumb can this woman be?

Gibbs hits it from the misconception angle:

It's much the same with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. In his press briefings, Mr. Gibbs seems to suggest that all hard questions about health care are based on "misconceptions." Really?

Is the Congressional Budget Office's finding that the House plan would significantly raise health-care costs a "misconception"? Was it a "misconception" that the now-abandoned section covering end-of-life issues had an in-built conflict of interest between lowering costs and providing care for the elderly? And is it a "misconception" that Mr. Obama's ultimate goal is a single-payer system, when Americans can watch him on earlier videos saying as much?

Read the whole thing, it's funny yet revealing. He points out that everyone in DC is asking "what went wrong with the administration's sales pitch" without suspecting that it might be substance. He's right; they're trying to sell Americans a shit sandwich for a trillion dollars. If we don't want to buy it, they'll try to ram it down our throats.

Can we please get the number right?

From CNS News, "Once Again Obama Misstates Number of Uninsured Americans — This Time in a New York Times Op-Ed". Yes, but misstates equals overstates, naturally.

In fact, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 35.920 million uninsured U.S. citizens and 9.737 million uninsured foreign nationals residing in the United States. Counting the uninsured foreign nationals, that makes a total of 45.657 million—or “nearly 46 million”-- uninsured people in the United States.

But you cannot say, as President Obama has, that there are “nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance coverage” or that “46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage” unless you count 9.737 million foreign nationals as “Americans” and “fellow citizens.”

The breakdown of the almost 36 million who actually are American citizens is interesting as well. I heard that a large number of these people are eligible for Medicaid and most of the rest are people who have decided not to carry health coverage for whatever reason--cost most likely. So why not concentrate on these folks? Allow a wider diversity of low-cost plans for those who opt-out due to cost, and come up with some kind of auto-enrollment for those eligible for Medicaid? Because Obama wants to blow the current system up. That's the only sensible answer.