Free Republic

So much of an idiot, in fact, that according to Tapper’s source, at least one Japanese paper isn’t running the photo out of embarrassment. This tool actually groveled himself into a minor international incident. The good news for O-bots? It wasn’t unprecedented. Nixon evidently made a modest bow to Hirohito in the early 70s. The bad news? “Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush’s back-rub of Merkel. “Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first...

Who is failure? If you trust Google's top search result to point you to the right answer, it's President Obama. The culprit is not a politically charged search engine but rather a Google Bomb. Such tricks have plagued the White House for some time. Nefarious bloggers exploit the way Google's algorithm surfaces relevant information by linking a word or group of words -- in this case, "who is failure" -- to a central Web page -- Barack Obama's White House profile page. During President Bush's term, George W. Bush's profile frequently showed up on searches including "failure," "miserable failure" and...

I’d thought the googlebombs relating to “miserable failure” and “failure” had finally been defused earlier this year. Guess not. Ranking tops in Google right now, the official White House page for US President Barack Obama: I’ve not heard of any active campaign to linkbomb Obama to the top for these words, so I’m guessing this is fallout from the long-standing “miserable failure” googlebomb that was impacting his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Below, some key background from our archives: Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs from January 2007 provides detailed background on what googlebombing or linkbombing...

Here is video of former President George W. Bush today in a speech he gave at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, admitting that he went "against" his "free market instincts" when he decided to move forward with the Wall Street Bailouts in the Fall of 2008. But Bush warned: "History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much."That's exactly right. He should have stuck to his principles and instincts. Obama is sticking to his principles and instincts in trying to ratchet up government involvement in everything to the greatest extent possible. Bush...

What a difference a year makes. On a balmy Tuesday evening in November just under a dozen long months ago, Barack Hussein Obama's unlikely journey to the presidency reached its heady conclusion. Americans had shown, he proclaimed, that they could "put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day". The then Illinois senator told the enraptured crowd, and a world that watched in awe at what the United States had achieved, that "all things are possible", that "our union can be perfected" and it was time for the "partisanship...

American taxpayers paid a lot of cash for those clunkers: $24,000 for each new car sold, according to a study released Wednesday. The government could have done almost as well by just giving away cars for free, instead of creating an elaborate incentive program, according to an analysis by the automotive information firm Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, Calif. ... to look at how many people purchased cars that otherwise wouldn’t have been bought. The firm says that number is about 125,000 cars. By that measure, the government spent $24,000 to generate each sale of a new car. In all, the...

If vindication means anything its name is spelled George Bush. As former U.S. president George W. Bush spoke to a Saskatoon audience, I stood in the wings, sneaking a peek through the curtains at the spectators beyond the footlights. The crowd was friendly to be sure. But more than that, the relationship was like a musical virtuoso carrying the audience through every nuance, crescendo and dynamic of a composition. With every pause, smile, laugh and down stroke of seriousness, Bush had the crowd in his hand. Before the show, a friend who recently dined with the former Texas governor and...

The Olympics will not be held in Chicago. So has Obama failed Chicago? Not really: hosting the Olympics is a decidedly mixed blessing and this will be forgotten soon. Obama, however, has failed black America, and that failure may linger for a long time. The election of a black president, all other things being equal, is a good sign in American politics. All things, though, were not equal in the case of Barack Obama. He was not and is not wedded to the grand principles of American greatness. The blessings of citizenship are squandered on Barack Obama, just as the...

President Obama says he's glad he went to Copenhagen to make a bid for the Olympics, but conservatives say the high-profile failure has exposed the limits of Obama's popularity abroad, Politico reports. Some conservatives are even celebrating Chicago's loss. Below, Richard Wolffe on what went wrong.

I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago. As I wrote on NRO’s corner, I know I was. But Rio had a really convincing hope and change/ multicultural/new guy on the block case. And consider: given the recent bad windy city publicity (You Tube beatings, state and city corruption, Blagoism, Daley ward mobsterism, rumors of pre-Olympic wheeling and dealing on land angles, administration Chicago hard-ball Rahm Emanuel/David Axelrod politics, etc.), Chicago, Illinois ,was seen abroad as less competitive, far less competitive, than the other cities. I think almost any fair-minded neutral judge could grasp how those realities were going to...

Before first lady Michelle Obama set off for this Danish capital to lead the charge for Chicago's valiant -- but ultimately unsuccessful -- bid for the 2016 Olympics, she joked that the last-minute lobbying effort would be "a battle." "We're going to win," Obama said. "Take no prisoners." At a G-20 dinner in Pittsburgh, she teased Brazil's first lady, Marisa Leticia da Silva, that when the time came for the last-ditch arguments for the Olympic and Paralympic Games coming to Chicago -- over competitors Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid -- the "gloves are off." Back in September, that all...

A stunned media was left speechless when President Barack Obama’s personal sales pitch on behalf of Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Games failed to sway the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Of the four contending bids, Chicago’s was the first to be rejected—giving it a last place finish in the event. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz called the outcome “fishy.” “When the most persuasive man on the planet can’t sell a bunch of Eurostiffs on the benefits of a great city like Chicago, something ugly and obscene is going on,” Schultz opined. “One can only wonder if the racism fomented by...

That's it Folks wow Chicago tossed out in the FIRST round!

The IOC was afraid Obama would give them all DVD's in Chicago.....

Our new research shows no evidence of a Keynesian 'multiplier' effect. There is evidence that tax cuts boost growth. The global recession and financial crisis have refocused attention on government stimulus packages. These packages typically emphasize spending, predicated on the view that the expenditure "multipliers" are greater than one—so that gross domestic product expands by more than government spending itself. Stimulus packages typically also feature tax reductions, designed partly to boost consumer demand (by raising disposable income) and partly to stimulate work effort, production and investment (by lowering rates).

Former President George W. Bush addresses a Fourth of July crowd at the Let Freedom Ring 2009 festival at Crystal Beach Park Arena in Woodward, Okla., Saturday, July 4, 2009. (AP Photo) How many times during the last eight years did you hear that George W. Bush was a dangerous right-wing extremist? Probably too many to count.What you heard less often were expressions of the deep reservations some conservatives felt about Bush's governing philosophy.Conservatives greatly admired Bush for his steadfastness in the War on Terror -- to use that outlawed phrase -- and they were delighted by his choices...

Barack Obama’s initial approach to the office of the presidency has been as grandiose as Bush’s was restrained. It’s not hard to recall that he ran as a transformative candidate, promising sweeping, though somewhat fuzzy, “change” during the campaign. For the first several months of his presidency, Obama has labored to deliver on that pledge. He pushed a controversial stimulus bill through Congress to help rev up the economy, turned Bush’s reluctant bailout of Chrysler and General Motors into a giant government auto buyout and appointed a record number of “czars” to help regulate bureaucracies in both public and formerly...

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Former first lady Laura Bush praised the performance of her husband's successor Monday, breaking with many Republicans in telling CNN that she thinks President Obama is doing a good job under tough circumstances.

I have nothing but good things to say about the American Obama ideal. But its rationale and its outcome are fundamentally flawed from the idealistic indulgence upon which it was conceived. Here was a man, who was reared by elderly European-Americans, the product of a European-American woman and an African man, who was able—through all the trials and tribulations of his personal plight—to make himself into an educated, intelligent, and cultured individual. And Americans, in droves, who—thirsty for redemption from their own warped version of American national legacy, bitter on the reality of national priority and blind to the value...

WASHINGTON -- A group called the Herndon Alliance -- a coalition of liberal health-care groups, unions and patient-advocacy groups created in late 2005 -- was only a few months into its work planning a health-insurance overhaul by the time it asked focus groups what they thought of the idea of a government-run plan to compete with private ones. The public-option was an article of faith for many in the alliance, but the focus groups' reactions were sobering. Skepticism ran high. The chief worry: Giving access to inexpensive government insurance to America's 46 million uninsured would boost costs, or reduce care,...

~ EXCERPT ~ ~ snip ~ President Barack Obama's job approval rating is down to 42%, with a decline in approval from Democrats the leading factor. The latest Zogby Interactive poll of 4,518 likely voters conducted from August 28-31 found 48% disapprove and 42% approve of the job Obama is doing. The poll found 75% of Democrats approve of Obama's performance, a drop of 13 points among Democrats from an interactive poll done July 21-24 of this year. That same poll found 48% of all likely voters approving of Obama's job performance, and 49% disapproving. ~snip~ In the time between...

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China. George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too...

All the analysts warned GM about emphasizing GM branding before creating and marketing great products. Turns out Obama’s first big GM marketing push with eBay is an epic failure. The pilot GM eBay program, currently being tested at 225 California dealerships, has not generated substantial sales to the disappointment of GM executives. GM dealers have posted 16,000 new vehicle listings, but sold only 45 vehicles through the ‘click & drive’ promotion. And while the first four listings are free, eBay charges $20.00 per vehicle for an eBay motors insertion fee–or in GM’s case, $360,000.00–which does not include the successful listing...

<p>"At what point do we run out of money?" President Obama was asked in May. "Well, we are out of money now," he replied. That was when he projected the deficit to be $7 trillion over the next 10 years. Now his administration admits the number likely will reach $9 trillion. We sure are out of money -- and the true deficit number probably is at least another $1 trillion bigger.</p>

n a deliciously ironic piece, Joanthan Weisman at the Wall Street Journal talks about how the Democrats spent literally years poll-testing and trying to find just the right words and phrases to sell nationalized health care. In other words, they wanted to know how to fool enough people into thinking it was not nationalized health care. The problem is that you can call something a warm, creamy treat, but that doesn't mean it isn't a still pile of crap.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are...

August 22, 2009, 7:00 a.m. Why the Stimulus FloppedUnder Obama, nothing is certain but death panels and taxes. By Mark Steyn The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several “stimulus� projects — every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK� with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a “PROJECT FUNDED BY...

President Obama is on the way to joining an exclusive club. It is the club of failed one-term presidents. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama sold himself as a pragmatic moderate. In fact, he is the very opposite. He is an internationalist socialist whose policies will lead to ruin at home and defeat abroad. They will also doom his re-election efforts. He is flirting with political disaster. Despite his many flaws, former President Bill Clinton established the model for successful Democratic administrations. Mr. Clinton governed as a liberal centrist. He realized that veering too far to the left early in...

Survey of 800 Dealers: * 97% of dealers who responded, say the government is not reimbursing fast enough * 13% of dealers have dropped out the program because the government is not reimbursing fast enough and overall concern payment problems * 87% percent of dealers are concerned the money will be exhausted * 3% of CARS program deals have been reimbursed * 66% of dealers have not received one payment from the government Full survey results:

To listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to "ObamaCare" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform. Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize many with the actions of a few is the simple fact that ObamaCare -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of health care is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority...

"It's funny how these supposed champions of the Enlightenment can't grasp that people can disagree with them for honest reasons. Instead, we simply must be Limbaugh's automatons, which is to say racist, fascist thugs. In addition to the slander, such complaints are monumentally, incandescently lame coming from a party that controls Washington. Indeed, according to liberals themselves, these evil-mongers are a tiny minority, a bunch of "Astro Turf" frauds. So why not ignore them and get on with the work you were elected to do? Well, because they can't -- or won't. One of the reasons the term "Obama-care" has...

We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack Obama was to be the new FDR and his radical agenda an even better New Deal. What happened,...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), better known as the stimulus package or Porkulus, was supposed to be Barack Obama’s signature economic program. Launched in the first weeks of his presidency, Obama declined to work with Republicans (or order Nancy Pelosi to do so) and wound up getting it approved with just three Republican votes in the House and Senate combined. The $787 billion project was supposed to provide a “jolt” to the economy and keep unemployment from going above 8%. Small wonder that a majority of Americans think it hasn’t worked:

A new CNN poll shows that more Americans consider the first six months of President Barack Obama’s administration worse than the same time period of his predecessor, former President George Bush. When asked whether they thought the first six months of Obama’s tenure in office has been a success or a failure, 37 percent responding to the poll released Friday said they believe it was a failure. After Bush’s first six months in office, a similar CNN poll from August of 2001 showed only 32 percent considered it to be a failure. Those who said the first half year of...

Linked from Real Clear Politics piece that says Obama's numbers are worse than Bush's at the same point in his presidency, but, from the poll intro . . . "Interviews with 1,136 adult Americans, including an oversample of African-Americans, conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on July 31-August 3, 2009." Why oversampling in that group? How much? And how bad are the numbers if the sampling is the normal 11%?

After 6 Months, More View Obama's Presidency as a 'Failure' Than Bush's Posted by Tom Bevan A rather surprising finding from the newly released CNN poll. Question three on the national survey of 1,136 adults (which includes an oversample of African-Americans) asks, "Do you consider the first six months of the Obama administration to be a success or a failure?" Thirty-seven percent (37%) said they believe the Obama administration is a "failure," while 51% consider it a "success" and 11% say it's still "too soon to tell." An identical question was asked of the Bush administration in an August 2001...

<p>Rather surprising finding from the newly released CNN poll. Question three on the national survey of 1,136 adults (which includes an oversample of African-Americans) asks, "Do you consider the first six months of the Obama administration to be a success or a failure?"</p>

A very long time ago, it was January. Barack Obama stood at the mountain top, bathed in the new light of a historic presidency and gazing down on a congressional lake afloat with contented Democrats. Those who spoke against him were vilified for not wanting this smart, vibrant president to “succeed.” How could he fail? Eight months into his presidency, Mr. Obama may do just that—fail. Back then, few would have argued persuasively that at the August recess the Obama plan to redraw the American health-care landscape could be at risk of failure, with Democratic Members of Congress going home...

'Cash for Clunkers' Already a FlopTemporary boost in sales probably won't last By SARA K. SMITH Updated 4:00 PM EDT, Tue, Jul 28, 2009 The fuel economy of the nation's fleet may increase ever so slightly due to massive government subsidies -- but the "cash for clunkers" program is hardly a game-changer. Several months ago the president unveiled a wonderful new plan to rescue the economy. It consisted of bribing people with crappy old fuel-guzzling cars to buy slightly less crappy new cars, which was going to give the American auto industry a much-needed shot in the arm! But, like...

It is surprising that the national debate on Obamacre has thus far excluded any real examination of the state wide healthcare program signed into law in 2006 by Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. But maybe the fact that Romneycare, a system closely resembling Obama’s policies, is failing on several levels serves as a reason that Democrats want to pretend that system doesn’t exist when debating their own programs. The Wall Street Journal had a July 11 editorial that looked a little closer at Romneycare and found the whole thing wanting, suggesting that Obamacare might be “dead on arrival” if Romneycare...

Heard this late this morning on a talk segment about Obama's enormous failure with the economy. New Hampshire has received $ 350 million in economic stimulus money. As a result, according to the radio, NH has created a grand total of 50 (fifty) new jobs, and 34 of THOSE are auditors for the stimulus program! I have no further confirmation, but if this is symptomatic of Obamanomics, by next fall, the Dems will be in the crapper.

The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected. Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983. The two advisers who wrote the paper, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, went on...

Presidents generally enjoy a honeymoon both because the public wants their presidents to succeed and because in the early stages of a presidency the mistakes, lies, and screw-ups have not yet materialized. But soon they do. And in the case of this presidency, the non-stimulus plan is proving to be the equivalent of the first serious fight between the newlyweds. The stimulus plan was bad policy, poorly conceived and oversold. It isn’t working, yet the president insists his policy was perfect. The result now is a surprising agreement between the Left and Right. On the Left, Bob Herbert chimes in:...

In his visit to Moscow late last week, President Obama tried to satisfy all sides, and accomplished nothing other than sounding good in the moment and feeling good about himself. Americans have seen this sort of personality type before. In his immortal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King explained that he felt people he referred to as "white moderates" were a bigger threat to black civil rights than the membership of the KKK. Violent racists are clearly identifiable, and they are an external threat that the valiant King was sure he could confront and defeat. But, echoing Barry Goldwater's...

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) continued his assault on President Obama's stimulus package on Sunday, calling the economic legislation a "flop." Cantor, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said the $787 billion legislation is not working. In particular, he said small businesses aren't hiring. The Virginia Republican has been a leading critic of Obama and the stimulus package in the last week. He delivered the Republican weekly radio and internet address on Saturday, saying that Obama's economic policies aren't working. Obama has stepped up his defense of the stimulus and his economic policies. He dedicated his Saturday radio and internet...

Jared Bernstein, chief economist for the office of Vice President Joe Biden (who knew that the Vice President needed a chief economist?), is quoted as saying "We're hitting the right balance between speed and oversight." Unfortunately for the American public, sound economics teaches that, regardless of how fast the money is spent or how much oversight is provided by bureaucrats, the money doled out by the stimulus plan will be wasted and will have a detrimental impact on the economy in the long term, because that is the nature of profligate government spending. From an economic perspective, Obama's stimulus plan...

"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week."

Defense minister briefs senior cabinet members on London meeting with Obama's Mideast envoy; one of them quoted as saying Barak 'offered dismantling of illegal West Bank outposts in exchange for nothing' Roni Sofer "(Defense Minister Ehud) Barak returned with nothing from his talks with (special US Mideast envoy) George Mitchell; it appears that he offered the dismantling of illegal West Bank outposts in exchange for nothing," a senior minister said Tuesday. The minister, who asked to remain nameless, was also quoted by his associates as saying, "The inclusion of Syria and Lebanon in the statement on a comprehensive peace agreement...

A news leak has surfaced indicating that Scott Rasmussen will issue a shocker poll on Wednesday showing that Barack Obama is in a free-fall with regard to public approval of his policies. If the information is correct and the poll accurate, the numbers will only confirm a trend we have witnessed over the past 2 weeks.

That's the Obama administration's "stimulus" plan, which mainly stimulated Democratic constituencies with great gobs of pork. The web site Innocent Bystanders has done a service by plotting the actual unemployment rate against the Obama administration's prediction of what would happen with and without the "stimulus." Here is the latest, updated through June; click to enlarge: The administration's forecast provides a benchmark against which we can judge the success or failure of the $700 billion porkapalooza. The result is obvious: it was a failure. The best thing Congress could do is to cancel the rest of the program--the large majority that...