"Irresponsible and unpatriotric"

Just over three years ago, presidential candidate Barack Obama was angry. He was upset with President Bush's handling of the federal budget, and lashed out at the President. The full clip is below, but here's the money quote:

"The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up the national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added 4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have 9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic."

Got that? Driving up the debt is "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic."

So, 37 months later, here we are, and President Obama has already added $4 trillion in debt, much of it on the "credit card from the Bank of China," so that we now have $13 trillion of debt, just about $47,000 for every man, woman and child.

By his own definition, Obama is an "irresponsible and unpatriotic" president. Expect this clip to be seen in a lot of campaign ads next year.

It's baseball....Don't leave early!

I've been around baseball most of my life, and I've been fortunate enough to have been involved in a number of different capacities: Player, manager, sportswriter, broadcaster and umpire. I don't know how many games I've actually been around, but I know I have umpired more than 1,500 at the high school, college and town team level, plus played at least a couple hundred more, gone to at least a couple hundred major league games....well, you get the picture.

And I'm not saying that to boast, I'm just saying it to help explain the notion that in baseball, there's no way you've ever "seen it all." No two games are alike, and as the cliche goes, you never know what can happen, as evidenced by these two clips.

The first is from a minor league game in Omaha, and involves a bizarre triple play that begins with two runners on, and the batter hitting a long drive to center field. The Nashville outfielder gets a glove on it, bobbles it off his head, makes the catch and doubles two runners off base for a triple play.

He makes the catch for the first out, and throws the ball in. When the infielder steps on second, the runner who started the play on second is out, and with the throw to first, the runner who started on first (and has already rounded second, not thinking the ball would be caught) becomes the third out of the play.



The second clip comes from Atlanta, where a Braves fan makes one of the greatest catches of a foul ball that I've ever seen. It's stuff like this that always makes me reluctant to ever leave a game early, because you never know what you'll see. Enjoy:

An insight into Obama's priorities

You may have noticed that the stock market is tanking, the economy is stalling (again), unemployment remains over 9.0%, the federal government is running a deficit of more than a trillion dollars and housing values have stagnated. If you've noticed these things, you might think to yourself, "What's the most important thing government could do to help the economy?"

Well, here's what's at the top of Obama's list: More diversity! From The Hill:

President Obama issued an executive order Thursday intended to coordinate a “government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce.”

The order creates a council of deputy agency chiefs and federal workers tasked with developing a government-wide plan to improve diversity in recruitment, training, and promotion of federal workers. The plan is due within 90 days, and each federal agency has been tasked with developing its own guidelines within 120 days after that.

“The federal government has a special opportunity to lead by example,” said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in a conference call.

Because, you know, the economy just isn't going to get going until we have more people of color and women in government. According to OPM's own numbers, minorities currently have ONLY 38.8% of the federal jobs, and women make up ONLY 43.9% of the federal workforce. Clearly our top economic priority needs to be increasing those numbers! Because if we can just turn over 50.1% of all government jobs to women, the economy will immediately pick up.

Fair and balanced?

The Star-Tribune sent staffer Mike Kaszuba to Cannon Falls today to live-blog the President's visit. In the space of four blog posts, Kaszuba managed to find three people with nice things to say about Obama. Who were they?

Well, the first was a man described as having "sympathy" for the President. "I blame Congress for most of the problems," he said.

Then came a fellow who said Obama needs to attack Republicans more. "We tend to forget what he's accomplished in two years," he said.

Finally came a review of Obama's speech. "I thought it was terrific," said a guy named Bruce Roberts.

So who were these three? Well, the first guy, named Bud Widholm, was described as "a retired state employee."

The second, Tim Bowes, was "a public school teacher from Red Wing."

And Bruce Roberts? "A professor at St. Olaf College."

So there's your sampling: Three guys who make their living as recipients of taxpayer dollars. Yes, I'm sure they think deficit spending, higher taxes and a bigger, more intrusive government are all wonderful things. Another nice bit of balanced reporting by the mainstream media.

New Olympic symbol

This is making the rounds right now as a replacement emblem for the 2012 London Olympics. Funny, but the British riots are a very serious symptom of the sickness that is consuming European society.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the unions that spent nearly $30 million in order to retain the Democrats' minority status in the Wisconsin Senate. That has to make your members feel really good about seeing that "union dues" deduction line on their paychecks.

In a somewhat related story, it was announced today that cleaning up and repairing the Wisconsin Capitol building after the union thugs occupied it earlier this year cost taxpayers about $8 million. Seems like we could have hired quite a few teachers with that money, eh?

He's just not that bright

Over the past couple of years, I have argued here, here, here and here, that Obama just really isn't that bright a guy. I've yet to read anything that would change my mind.

Now Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has come to pretty much the same conclusion, and has a long list of evidence. You can read the piece here, and it's worthwhile.

As the U.S. loses its AAA credit rating for the first time in history, unemployment stays over 9.0% and the economy continues to tank, we sort of have to ask ourselves: "Really? We elected a guy who never ran a business, never ran a state, never served even a full term in Congress and never held a real job in the private sector in his adult life? Really? We turned leadership of the free world over to him? What the he** were we thinking?"