Patterico's Pontifications

4/20/2009

Obama to Slash $100 Million Dollars from the Federal Budget!!!!

Filed under: Humor,Obama — Patterico @ 10:35 pm



Say it with me in the voice of Dr. Evil:

100 meeeeeeellion dollars!!!!.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike, and sometimes, so does mine. Turn out (via Instapundit) that another blogger beat me to the obvious joke — and has another video to go along with it:

UPDATE x2: Here is a nice graphic that demonstrates how utterly huge the requested cuts are.

Quote of the Day

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:49 pm



It’s a day old, but it beats anything else I’ve seen today:

“There is a space in the brain where a missile could pass without doing any major damage.”

I Know We Said We Wanted Transparency, But We Didn’t Mean This . . .

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:45 pm



Coming soon to a newsstand near you: Obama’s moobs.

The Broader Implications of the CNN Copyright Thuggery Story, Explained . . .

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:33 pm



. . . by a guy in a Mexican wrestling mask.

He makes several valid points.

No, really. He does.

If, for some odd reason, you’d rather read his analysis, rather than watching him deliver it from behind his mask, you can read it here.

Via Ben Sheffner.

Obama’s budget: The honeymoon and the morning after

Filed under: General — Karl @ 9:09 am



[Posted by Karl]

CNN plans to celebrate Pres. Obama’s 100th day in office as though it was election night.  You might do the same if you were sliding into fourth place with key news demographics.  But other establishment media outlets are starting to grumble.

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus and the New York Times, for example, are noticing that Obama is getting rolled by Congressional Democrats on a series of issues, like farm subsidies, subsidies for private banks making student loans, an assault weapons ban, global warming taxes and non-starters like his idiotic trial balloon on charging veterans’ insurers for battle-related healthcare costs.

The line from the Obama Administration on the budget is the same to both the NYT and Marcus:

More important, aides say, the final product is likely to provide for passage of health reform by a majority vote if the Senate is gridlocked this fall. That could pave the way for a major victory — enough to erase memories of compromises and capitulations.

However, today’s New York Times foretells a different outcome:

President Obama is running into stiff Congressional resistance to his plans to raise money for his ambitious agenda, and the resulting hole in the budget is threatening a major health care overhaul and other policy initiatives.

The administration’s central revenue proposal — limiting the value of affluent Americans’ itemized deductions, including the one for charitable giving — fell flat in Congress, leaving the White House, at least for now, without $318 billion that it wants to set aside to help cover uninsured Americans. At the same time, lawmakers of both parties have warned against moving too quickly on a plan to auction carbon emission permits to produce more than $600 billion.

The unwillingness to embrace some of the major White House tax and revenue proposals has frustrated administration officials.

(And that is before the threatened attempt to railroad healthcare reform runs into the Byrd rule in the Senate.)  Obama’s tax plans are as unrealistic as his miniscule spending “cuts,” which the administration tells us “are intended to signal the president’s determination to cut spending and reform government,” but which accomplish the exact opposite result, as the Washington Post editorial board recently noted.

CNN can pretend it is election night at the end of the month.  The Obama Administration can pretend its budget is moving forward (and whatever the Congressional Democrats produce will be bad enough).  But like a married couple, when the honeymoon is officially over, the big arguments are likely to be over money.  Expect a lot of pouting from progressives in the fall.

–Karl

Happy Conception Day!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:03 am



Many people believe life begins at conception.

Yet we tend to celebrate birthdays and not a Conception Day.

So I’m curious: do you know anyone who celebrates a Conception Day? Who believes life begins at conception, and knows what day they (or their baby) was conceived — and holds a celebration on that day?

I started thinking about this again after reading Ruth Marcus’s column on Sarah Palin’s comments in which she (elliptically) suggested that she had considered aborting Trig Palin when she first found out about the pregnancy. Marcus argues that, by recognizing that she has a choice under the law, but denying that choice to others, Palin is “deliberately obtuse” and essentially hypocritical.

This argument doesn’t fly. Palin recognized that having this baby would be difficult, and she (very honestly) disclosed that she was tempted to do something she considered immoral and wrong. Christians recognize that people are tempted to commit all kinds of sins, and that often they yield to temptation. That doesn’t mean that it’s not sin, and when it involves the destruction of what they believe to be a human life, it makes sense for them to seek to pass legislation to protect that life. There is no contradiction there.

I think this is what Gov. Palin was talking about, and I admire her for being forthright about it. And I believe her thoughts are rooted in her belief that life begins at conception.

But if people believe life begins at conception, it seems to me that they should celebrate a Conception Day — and perhaps measure their ages according to that day.

What do you think?

Another Copyright Lawyer Weighs in on the CNN Copyright Thuggery

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:41 am



Copyright lawyer Ron Coleman on CNN’s copyright thuggery:

It is a kind of censorship, I think we can say by now, to cynically use the copyright laws to shut down embarrassing publication of obviously non-infringing works. It’s particularly ugly when media outlets do it, though.

Via Instapundit.

If you weren’t reading this weekend, be sure to check out my post on the issue. Also, see the follow-up about Susan Roesgen and the “Jena 6” story.


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