Still glowing from his multi-million dollar Hawaiian vacation, Barack Obama happily announced that the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% last month... but was a little skimpy on the details.
And small wonder; although jobs increased by 103,000 last month, experts had expected the number to rise by as much as 300,000. Additionally, the jobless rate went down statistically because a surprisingly large number of people simply gave up on the Obama economy once and for all, and decided to just accept the fact that they'll be watching the Oprah Network 24 hours a day for the rest of their hopeless little lives.
Which, in Obama's world, is viewed as a success. Not to mention a profitable kickback to Oprah for all of her invaluable political support.
Economists say that the tepid job numbers indicate that it will be at least five years before the economy can restore all of the jobs lost in the current downturn.
Or nine years in the tragic event that Mr. Obama is re-elected.
- Because the most important job is making Obama look good. -
Robert Gibbs, the highest-ranking member of the Obama administration who can speak without a teleprompter, has announced that he's resigning his position in self-disgust and will be entering a monastery where he will take a permanent vow of silence.
No, wait - that last part was what we wish. Actually, Gibbs is quitting...but only so he can take advantage of lucrative speaking engagements and become a semi-permanent fixture on alleged news programs where he can more effectively (and less accountably) shill for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election efforts.
Besides speaking engagements, Gibbs will be a "paid political consultant" to Obama. This means that the talented orator can finally break free of his miserable, "barely scraping by" salary of $172,000 a year, and start enjoying the sort of multi-million dollar "evil rich" paychecks that, according to Gibbs when he was behind the podium, can only be gotten by stealing from widows, orphans, and minorities.
There is no official word yet on who will replace Gibbs as spokesman, but Hope n' Change has it on good authority from Whitehouse insiders that the position is going to be filled by someone with whom Obama has a long and close relationship stretching back to the Chicago days. Someone who not only shares the president's philosophies, but has experience with public speaking and is unafraid of confrontation: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Remember, you read it here first.
"It's like Obamacare! It sucks, but you'll love it!"
Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi passed the gavel of Speaker of the House to Republican John Boehner, who deserves a medal for "courageous restraint" in not using the opportunity to whack Ms. Pelosi on the noggin like a carnival test-of-strength game ("The bell rings! Give that man a cigar!")
Ms. Pelosi, who claims to be a champion of the little people, had just returned from a Hawaiian vacation in which she stayed in a $10,000 per night suite... presumably because Motel 6 had no vacancies. The House Democrats voted to keep Ms. Pelosi as minority leader (officially known as "Shrieker of the House")...but 18 party members chose to either vote against her or simply vote "present" - which is apparently considered an insult except when the vote was cast by Barack Obama. In fact, no candidate for minority leader has garnered so little support since 1923 - a clear indication of many Democrats' resentment of the woman responsible for their "shellacking" in November.
And so a new era dawns in Washington. But will it be a time of constructive bipartisanship...or ugly in-your-face confrontations, investigations, and bloodthirsty battles?
On Tuesday, the world was made a little safer for political correctness (and more dangerous in every other respect) when Naval Captain Owen Honors was removed from duty as commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier...for making humorous videos in which he used "inappropriate language" like the f-word. Several years ago.
Captain Honors, whose career has been both exceptional and unblemished until now, performed in short video skits which had a distinctively "locker room" quality to them - but seem far more tame than the average primetime sitcom. The purpose of the videos, which were shown aboard ship via closed circuit television on movie nights, was to raise morale. Which they did.
But because some of the skits had content which could be construed as anti-gay (sailors were shown soaping up each other in the shower a bit too happily, although even in the skit Honors simply shrugged it off and moved to another shower stall), and because the skits made liberal use of the f-word, the powers-that-be are now saying that he has to go.
Of course, anyone with half a mind fully expects men to speak in a raunchy way when they get together. Especially military men. So was the crime doing it on video, where it could be seen by six thousand entertainment-starved sailors?
Well, no. Because Joe Biden, who would become commander-in-chief should Barack Obama suffer a serious basketball injury, previously said that the signing of Obamacare was a "big fucking deal" on live television, for the entire world to see.
Granted, he thought he was simply whispering it to the president of the United States. Because, even at that level, that's just how real men talk to each other - right?
Right...?
The hypocrisy here is stunning, but not surprising. The Navy loses a good man, additional fear is instilled in every commanding officer, military morale plummets, and our nation takes another step in the wrong direction as it strives to make our warriors more sensitive. All because it's unacceptable for anyone who's putting their life on the line to "swear like a sailor."
But apparently it's still okay to swear like a vice-president. -
As we enter 2011, it's a bit distressing that the news reads like a checklist for the Apocalypse. Thousands of birds have fallen out of the skies over Arkansas... a 20-mile stretch of river is covered with dead fish...poisonous serpents are filling the streets and homes of people in Australia owing to unprecedented flooding... and in New York, thousands of people have turned to salt.
Okay, actually they've turned to using salt to clear snow from sidewalks and streets, because the city's overpaid union members don't feel like cleaning it up. Still, it's scary.
Here at Hope n' Change, we believe that these are all dark portents that a plague of politicians is returning to Washington to get up to new mischief. And Barack Obama, the prophesied AntiCapitalist, will preside over it all...assuming he can be dragged kicking and screaming from the golf courses and shave-ice stands of Hawaii.
But as bad as all of this sounds, there's reason for hope. After all, a new batch of Republicans is coming to Washington, saying "Let my taxpayers go"... and plans are already underway to start rigorous investigations of the Obama Administration's blatant misuse of taxpayer funds.
We like to think of it as a potential "parting of the Red Ink." -
Under Nancy Pelosi's leadership, the House Democrats were good at writing (turning many bills into 2000 page monstrosities), but not very good at reading.
This being the case, new Speaker of the House John Boehner has announced that when the Republicans take over this week, the Constitution will be read aloud to the Democrats so (to paraphrase his predecessor) "you can find out what's in it."
Democrats and the mainstream media are calling it a meaningless stunt, pointing out that the reading is a waste of an entire hour of valuable governmental time. Oddly, the same Democrats and media types weren't concerned about two years' worth of wasted time under Nancy Pelosi, when many critical issues were delayed - or ignored entirely - before being rushed through in the last days of her evil reign.
If hearing the Constitution in full (perhaps for the first time) transforms the House Democrats into responsible guardians of our nation's heritage and future, it will be a miracle.
But on the hopeful side, it wouldn't be the first miracle the Constitution has been responsible for.
The first big news story of 2011 is that Baby Boomers are turning 65 and will be added to the rolls of Medicare...at the rate of 10,000 per day, every day, for the next 19 years.
Which is suddenly causing the mainstream media to notice that there's no way that Medicare can actually pay the bills (currently being short by a staggering $23 TRILLION dollars)...and causing the pundits to blame the baby boomers, rather than the politicians, for getting us into this mess.
These would be the same baby boomers who have paid into the system for their entire working lives under the expectation that their money was either being carefully invested by the government or at least put into a safe place. In other words, the baby boomers were played for suckers in a scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush.
Meanwhile, the same media which touted dependable, rock-solid Medicare-style coverage for everyone when pushing Obamacare is now saying things like the baby boomers will "swamp the struggling Medicare program," and referring to older Americans as "burdens" on younger taxpayers.
In other words, the boomers were fine when paying in to the system...but are a problem for the politicians now that they're expecting promises to be kept. And that's a lesson voters of all ages would do well to pay attention to. -
