Big Dogs House

Biden Rewrites History

Feb 11, 2010 Political

Obama and Biden opposed much of what George Bush did in Iraq and Obam told us that the surge was not going to work and would only increase sectarian violence. Of course, now that he pulls the levers, Obama employed a surge in Afghanistan. Obama did what Bush did and what he [Obama] said would fail.

Biden was on Larry king’s show and told the crypt keeper that Iraq could be one of the greatest achievements of the administration.

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences. LA Times

Biden is happy they are using the political process rather than guns to settle their problems? What happened to the notion that the surge would lead to more violence? The successes there are not the result of Obama magically waving his wand and sprinkling fairy dust.

It seems to me that Bush should get the lion’s share of the credit for the successes in Iraq. Obama has not implemented any tactical changes that made the outcome different.

What amazes me is that when there is a problem the first thing Obama does is blame Bush. He inherited any problem but he takes credit for the successes.

You can’t play the game that way folks. If Obama is going to blame Bush at every turn for things that started when he was in office then it is only right that Bush get the credit for the good things that have transpired from those items which started when he was in office.

Anyone who has trouble seeing this double standard has overdosed on Kool Aid.

Tags: biden, Bush, Iraq, Obama, success

The Most Transparent Government

Jan 14, 2010 Political

Nancy Pelosi promised it and Barack Obama promised it but both have failed to deliver on it. These two radical liberals promised the most transparent government in the history of the universe (or something like that) and they tell us how transparent they are every chance they get.

They tell us after the emerge from closed door sessions where secret deals are struck, they tell us after they vote in the middle of the night and they tell us after they are challenged for not being transparent (as in breaking the C-SPAN promise). They honestly believe that if they say it enough people will believe it.

Joe Biden is out to correct all that. His schedule for today shows that he met with the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board.

Unfortunately the transparency meeting was CLOSED TO THE PRESS.

Here is the rest of Biden’s schedule. Notice how much of it is CLOSED.

DAILY GUIDANCE FOR THE VICE PRESIDENT, Thursday, January 14, 2010:
In the morning, the President and the Vice President will receive the Presidential Daily Briefing and the Economic Daily Briefing in the Oval Office. These briefings are closed press.

At 11:30 AM, the Vice President will meet with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This meeting is closed press.

Afterwards, the President and the Vice President will have lunch in the Private Dining Room. This lunch is closed press.

At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will meet with Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi in the Roosevelt Room. There will be a pool spray at the bottom of this meeting; gather time is 1:45 PM in the Brady Briefing Room.

(UPDATE 2:20 p.m.: The White House issued its own report on this closed meeting. Both paragraphs are added below at the end of the VP’s schedule.)

Then, at 2:15 PM, the Vice President will meet with Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. This meeting is closed press. Los Angeles Times

I left his lunch out because I would expect that to be closed and I imagine that they have to announce that it is because some are photo ops depending upon who is eating there or whatever. No one can begrudge these men the chance to eat lunch in private. I also left out the PDB because it should be closed.

But, that leaves three meetings that are CLOSED including the one on transparency in the Recovery Act and one that is a splash, where they allow reporters in for a few brief photos after the meeting while the participants pretend they are still in a meeting.

Four meetings and not one of them was open.

How is that for transparent?

I guess Biden was trying to keep up with the rest of the Democrats who were locked in rooms where they discussed the health care debacle in private.

Yep, change you can deceive in.

UPDATE: This is at least transparent. The head of weatherization for Obama has funneled business to her husbands window company.

Tags: biden, lies, Obama, Pelosi, transparency

Human Cost Of War No Longer Important

Sep 29, 2009 Political

When George Bush was president there was a rule that the media were not allowed to photograph the caskets of our returning war dead. This caused a stir because the media claimed that Bush was hiding the human cost of the war. The claim was that he did not want the media to show caskets on TV, on the Internet, and in papers because then more people would oppose the war.

The thought never occurred to them that he wanted our war dead to come home in dignity without being exploited by the media and the America haters on the left.

Joe Biden said our heroes were brought in in a clandestine fashion:

“These young men and women are heroes,” Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. “The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong.” Examiner

Note to Biden, the past tense of sneak is sneaked.

I have been to Dover on business a number of times and our heroes are not sneaked in. When an aircraft carrying remains lands it goes to a special place on the base and all other operations stop while they are off loaded and taken where ever they go before they are transported home. I have been there at all hours of the day and everyone on base knows what is going on so they are hardly sneaked in.

When Obama took office he lifted the ban on allowing caskets to be photographed as long as the family agreed. I really have no problem with that because the family has a say in the matter and about 60% of them allow it. As far as I know the photographers have been respectful.

The funny thing is, now that Obama is in charge and the ban has been lifted the press is not very interested in taking pictures. The AP has a photographer there for every arrival but that is about all now. After all the fuss they are not interested in being there.

I guess now that Obama is in charge of the wars and now that they both belong entirely to him (especially Afghanistan), the human cost of war is no longer an issue. The media cannot risk showing all the caskets coming home and demonstrating that Obama was full of E. coli when he said that he would bring our troops home right away and that he would put an end to things.

Hell, Obama has blown off his commander and has delayed taking a decision on increasing troop strength in Afghanistan. He is too busy to ensure the needs of our military are addressed but he had time to fly to Copenhagen to beg for Chicago to get the 2016 Olympics. Another payback to the thugs in Chicago and all being done while our troops are ignored.

Since Obama is ignoring the troops and since he is not sending any reinforcements there will likely be more casualties.

They human cost of war will rise under Obama but now we don’t need all those pesky pictures.

Tags: biden, caskets, dover, heroes, Obama, pictures

Monday Morning Buffet

Jul 6, 2009 Political

Sheep Grow Contrary to Evolutionary Principle, Blame Global Warming

Evolution is another of the “settled” scientific ideas that is still unsettled. A gene in humans that appears to be the combination of two genes from a primate could be evolution or it could mean that a Creator used the same model for different similar animals and changed the code slightly to give the observed differences. When evolution theory does not fit neatly in the science, an excuse is needed.

In Scotland, a breed of sheep is getting smaller. According to CBC News:

Evolutionary theory holds that species get bigger and stronger over time because larger, more dominant animals are more likely to reproduce. But wild sheep on the Scottish island of Hirta have baffled scientists since 2007 when the animals’ average size appeared to be shrinking.

So what could be the problem here? Well of course it is Global Warming. Scientists believe that “climate change” is responsible for this.

So the questions are, if evolution takes place over a period of time how could global warming since 2007 (a mere two years) effect such a rapid change? Also, if evolution involves adaptation of the sepcies and survival of the fittest, would not the sheep adapt to the warming? I guess one could claim that the smaller size is an adaptation but that brings us back to how it occurred so quickly?

About That Free Government Health Care

The Obama Administration is working on government run health care. It would cost a fortune and it would leave people waiting in line for services. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so the saying goes and this is true with government run health care. The government will use taxes and it will have to tax more. Medicare is poorly run despite claims of a 2% overhead. This is a fallacy resulting from creative accounting practices used by the government. You see, many government agencies perform functions for Medicare and the cost of those functions are not reported (how much does it cost for the IRS to collect Medicare from paychecks) but in private industry those costs must be directly borne and reported. Government has never run anything efficiently. Government will ration care to contain costs and if it needs more money it will raise taxes.

The wonderful British and Canadian systems are the subject of a John Stossel report:

In England, health care is “free”—as long as you don’t mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over.

~snip

“People line up for care, some of them die. That’s what happens,” says Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure. He liked Canada’s government health care until he started treating patients.

“The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house.” “You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! Just wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! Just wait six months.”

Polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren’t sick when the poll-taker calls. Canadian doctors told us the system is cracking. One complained that he can’t get heart-attack victims into the ICU.

Video here

Biden Says Everyone Misread Economy

In an ABC interview, Joe Biden stated that the administration and everyone else misread the economy.

“The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy,” Biden told me during our exclusive “This Week” interview in Iraq.

Of course Joe had to say that they misread how awful the mess was that Bush left them but quickly acknowledged that the mess was now all theirs.

Yes there was an economic mess when Bush left office. Bush’s abandonment of capitalism and acceptance of huge government bailouts made the problem worse than it would have been. If it had been left alone it might have begun to rebound by the time Obama took office or not long after. But the government meddled and made the problem it created worse. The government created the mess with the Community Reinvestment Act and government continued to push for practices that were disastrous. While many friends of the Democrats got rich, the country was heading south fast.

Contrary to what Joe Says, not everyone misjudged the economy. Some economists saw the downturn coming (Bush and McCain warned, a number of times, about impending doom with Freddie and Fannie). Others advocated doing little in regard to government intervention and that things would rebound, as they had plenty of times before. It is called an economic cycle for a reason.

The Obama Administration could not wait to get in and start spending. They could not let a crisis go to waste so they passed a nearly one trillion dollar stimulus that has done nothing to stimulate. Unemployment will be 10% before the end of Summer.

In the interview Biden admits they were overly optimistic when they predicted that unemployment would not go over (would peak at) 8% with the stimulus (that should settle the critics on this issue, there was no caveat. He spelled it out plainly for the Obamabots).

This was never about helping the economy. This was about spending for Democrat pet projects. This was about forcing more and more government involvement into the free market. This was an excuse to take over businesses and the banking system. This was an excuse to move us closer to Socialism. Obama did not misjudge anything.

He knows exactly what he wants to accomplish.

Tags: biden, britain, canada, evolution, global warming, health care, Obama

The Stimulus And Jobs; A Visual Tutorial

Jun 14, 2009 Political

Joe Biden was on Meet the Press where he said this about the failing stimulus:

Biden tells “Meet the Press” that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought.

Isn’t it nice to know the supposed leaders are guessing about how things will be? I know that much of what happens is based upon predictions and supporters are quick to point that out (since a prediction is an educated guess). They seem to have problems with reconciling the issue of what Obama said would happen with the Stimulus and what would happen without. While I realize jobs lag in any recovery, it was not I who said I would create or “save” so many jobs by certain points in time by spending nearly a trillion dollars.

Seems to me if you are going to spend that much money you really ought to have better people making the predictions. Obama predicted we would be at a certain place at a certain time and we are not there. Biden ducked that issue; “[Biden] Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer.”

Here is a video that shows this with training aids, for those who learn better that way:

Please feel free to comment (a penny for your thoughts…)

Source:
Time
Big Dog Salute to Stop the ACLU

Tags: biden, failure, job losses, Obama, stimulus