Turns out it’s not as big a scam as I’d thought it was. It’s a much bigger scam. For one thing, anything states do to increase the number of people on welfare will automatically increase the “exit” rate–what the 20% rule measures–since the more people going on welfare, the more people leave welfare for jobs in the natural course of things, without the state’s welfare bureaucrats doing anything at all. Raise caseloads by 20% and Sebelius’ standard will probably be met. (Maybe raise caseloads 30% just to be sure.) So what looks like a tough get-to-work incentive is actually a paleoliberal “first-get-on-welfare” incentive. But the point of welfare reform isn’t to get more people onto welfare. . . .
Meanwhile Obama defends Biden's comment to a group of mainly blacks that Republicans want to put them back in chains
Biden's remarks are available here: Fox News provides the remarks some context by mentioning in more detail than other reports the racial composition of the audience.
It has recently been announced that Mr. Davis will speak at the Republican National Convention so his comments might be dismissed as someone who has already left the tent as an important Obama supporter, but the same cannot be said of Mr. Wilder. The People Magazine (via Politico) reports this:
CNN has this discussion. You can see ABC News' has a discussion available here, but the report doesn't mention in any way the composition of the audience, which is extremely important. My summary: I am happy to give Mr. Biden the benefit of the doubt if he says that he simply misspoke, but it is very clear that Obama and Democrats have long been playing up racism issues to motivate black voters. Take this example:
Biden in the wrong century again and about GM being "largest automobile maker in the world"
I haven't tried to keep track of Biden's misstatements -- they are simply too numerous. But here is one he said today: "Once again General Motors is the largest automobile maker in the world. Folks, where's it written we cannot lead the world in the 20th century in making automobiles?" Clearly, Vice President Biden is in the wrong century. In addition, he didn't get the other part of the statement right either.
US poster boy General Motors came in seventh position among the car makers and 63rd overall (2011: 61). Nissan jumped by 181 spots to 85, while South Korean maker Hyundai was ranked 96th, up from 131 in 2011. . . .
Because of the earthquake in Japan last year, Toyota's output was temporarily constrained, but even with that if you look at the sale of vehicles, GM isn't the largest.
GM, which held the spot for almost eight decades before being dethroned by Toyota Motor Corp. -0.16% in 2008, on Thursday disclosed it sold a bit more than nine million cars and trucks worldwide last year, a 7.6% rise over 2010. That would put it ahead of VW, which recently reported global sales totaled 8.16 million vehicles last year. But shortly after GM's disclosure, Volkswagen argued it, in fact, was the top-seller last year if sales of its affiliates are included. Volkswagen's figures don't include the contributions of majority-ownership stakes in truck makers MAN SE and Scania AB, which will be added in a few weeks, a Volkswagen spokesman said. The truck makers might add 200,000 vehicles to VW's sales total. GM's rivals also point out that the big U.S. auto maker's numbers are boosted by ownership stakes in China's SAIC Motor Corp. and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Co. While SAIC builds GM cars in China, Wuling's 1.2 million vehicles last year are mostly cheap commercial vehicles used only in China. . . .
Obama makes mistake about the Declaration of Independence
This seems like a fairly obvious mistake and one would have hoped that a speech writer would have picked this up. The full speech is available from the White House website:
Of course, Thomas Jefferson didn't think that this was the first time that these ideas were "put to paper." The Declaration reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
CNS News notes:
"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence," Jefferson wrote in a letter to Henry Lee on May 8, 1825. "Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. "Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion," Jefferson told Lee. "All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c."
Again, I personally don't care about these things, but since Democrats make such a big deal about the slightest misstatements by Republicans, I have decided to keep track of them.
“The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government,” President Obama claimed on Friday. His solution to fix the public sector was more government spending.
When people started screaming, Obama clarified his remarks and said “It’s absolutely clear economy is not doing fine,” but he just couldn’t bring himself to disown his statement about the private sector generally doing “fine.” His clarification still asserted that there is “good momentum in the private sector.” But private sector employment growth has fallen in each of the last four months, reaching a pitiful 82,000 in May.
President Obama is also wrong about his other claim that state and local governments are doing poorly relative to the private sector. . . .
The president's remark had drawn immediate complaints from Poles who said Obama should have called it a "German death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland," to distinguish the perpetrators from the location. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called it a matter of "ignorance and incompetence." . . . .
Let me be quite clear, I don't care about the gaffes that someone makes. Everyone misspeaks, but since the media so focuses on Republican gaffes and view it as a sign of low intelligence, I have been collecting a few of Obama's gaffes. Here is another one:
In two campaign speeches over the last two days, President Barack Obama has twice mistakenly mentioned “my sons” when defending his administration’s regulation requiring virtually all health-care plans in the United States to provide women, without any fees or co-pay, with sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.
Obama, of course, has two daughters--10-year-old Sasha and 13-year-old Malia--but no sons. . . .
"Jews" and "janitors" are something that most people get confused all the time, right? Well, I personally don't put a lot of weight in misstatements, but the media is all over them when a Republican makes them. In addition, in this case, Obama corrected the mistake right away. Still, this is something that would get attention if a Republican said it. Andrew Malcolm is on the case here.
That's what the president of the United States flat-out said Thursday during what was supposed to be a photo op to sell his jobs plan next to an allegedly deteriorating highway bridge.
A railroad between continents? A railroad from, say, New York City all the way across the Atlantic to France? Now, THAT would be a bridge!
It's yet another humorous gaffe by the Harvard graduate, overlooked by most media for whatever reason. Like Obama saying Abraham-Come-Lately Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. Or Navy corpseman. Or the Austrian language. Fifty-seven states. The president of Canada. Etc. .
Feb 9, 2009 at a FL town hall at the 5:20 mark into the clip available here.
May 1, 2010 - University of Michigan commencement speech at 4:20 into the clip.
For some reason I suspect that Time Magazine will not be running an article correcting Obama's mistake. The media is always correcting mistakes that Republicans make, but they seem to constantly ignore mistakes made by Democrats. However, I thought that this is one fact that everyone knew.
"He gives a good speech, but he’s loose with the facts. He called Abraham Lincoln the ‘founder’ of the Republican Party. Nope. Lincoln was not the founder of the party; he wasn’t even the first Republican nominee (John Fremont was, in 1856). Lincoln was, of course, the first Republican to be elected president.” - Jay Carney, TIME Magazine bureau chief, on Mike Huckabee’s GOP Convention Speech, September 3, 2008 “We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our union. Founder of the Republican Party.” - President Barack Obama, address to Congress, September 8, 2011 Hat tip to Byron York. – Jake Tapper
"We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future - a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set." . . .
[Princeton Professor] McPherson in the "Battle Cry of Freedom" summarizes Lincoln's argument:
The founding fathers, said Lincoln, had opposed slavery. They adopted a Declaration of Independence that pronounced all men created equal. They enacted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banning slavery from the vast Northwest Territory. To be sure, many of the founders owned slaves. But they asserted their hostility to slavery in principle while tolerating it temporarily (as they hoped) in practice. That was why they did not mention the words "slave" or "slavery" in the Constitution, but referred only to "persons held to service." "Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution," said Lincoln, "just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time." The first step was to prevent the spread of this cancer, which the fathers took with the Northwest Ordinance, the prohibition of the African slave trade in 1807, and the Missouri Compromise restriction of 1820. The second was to begin a process of gradual emancipation, which the generation of the fathers had accomplished in the states north of Maryland.
The argument of "Necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery; and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they could not help; and they cast blame upon the British King for having permitted its introduction. BEFORE the constitution, they prohibited its introduction into the north-western Territory---the only country we owned, then free from it. AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit," &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.
In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.
As for Obama's parents getting together in part because of the march in Selma, Alabama, Bloody Sunday happened on March 7, 1965. Obama was born August 4, 1961.
57 States
Obama forgets soldier's heroic death
Far from calling attention to an Obama mistake, George Stephanopoulos very quietly corrects alerts Obama to a mistake that he made in an interview where Obama accidentally refers to "my muslim faith."
Obama says his Health Care Plan will bring more "Inefficiencies to the health care system"
In an interview with WTMJ, Channel 4 Milwaukee on Feb. 16, 2011, Obama insisted that Abe Lincoln built the "intercontinental railroad" during the Civil War.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama often discussed his mother's struggle with cancer. Ann Dunham spent the months before her death in 1995, Obama said, fighting with insurance companies that sought to deny her the coverage she needed to pay for treatment. "I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn't thinking about how to get well, she wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence," Obama said in September 2007. "She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn't have to reimburse her for her medical bills," Obama added in January 2008. "The insurance companies were saying, 'Maybe there's a pre-existing condition and we don't have to pay your medical bills,' " Obama said in a debate with Republican opponent Sen. John McCain in October 2008. It was a simple and powerful story, one Obama would tell many more times as president during the national health care debate. . . . The news is in "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother," a generally admiring new biography written by former New York Times reporter Janny Scott. . . . But Scott, who had access to Dunham's correspondence from the time, reveals that Dunham unquestionably had health coverage. "Ann's compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment," Scott writes. "Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month." . . . Scott writes that Dunham, who wanted to be compensated for those costs as well as for her living expenses, "filed a separate claim under her employer's disability insurance policy." It was that claim, with the insurance company CIGNA, that was denied in August 1995 because, CIGNA investigators said, Dunham's condition was known before she was covered by the policy. Dunham protested the decision and, Scott writes, "informed CIGNA that she was turning over the case to 'my son and attorney, Barack Obama.' " CIGNA did not budge. . . .
Obama seems to have made many inaccurate claims about family members.
I have a long list of Obama's misstatements available here. So if people care about these misstatements, who is the flake?
Even the media can't ignore this. Note however how the stories all attempt to give an explanation for why Obama made this mistake. My impression is that if Dan Quayle had made this mistake, it would have been heavily covered. It is also interesting how Obama uses the European, rather than American, way of writing dates. The Washington Post has this:
On a tour of Westminster Abbey in London, President Obama signed the guestbook, writing, “It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage, and common sacrifice.”
Then, he goofed. He added “24 May 2008.” It’s not clear if he was having more fun on May 24, 2011, that he had three years ago on the same date, when he was in Puerto Rico for one of the last Democratic primaries . . .
Headline: Possibly Jet-Lagged President Obama Gets Year Wrong Text: "It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage and common sacrifice,” President Obama wrote in the guest book at Westminster Abbey, where he today placed a wreath at the grave of the unknown warrior.
The president also wrote the date to commemorate his trip: 24 May 2008.
2008?
Whoops.
A White House official suggested the president’s jet-lag may be the reason why he got the date so wrong. . . .
From Politico, the only place that didn't give a strong push towards an explanation for the mistake:
He got it right in Ireland, even signing the Dublin presidential guest book European-style rather than American: “23-05-2011.”
But President Obama seemed to have a quick lapse in memory on Tuesday when he signed the guest book at Westminster Abbey in London “24 May 2008.”
In addition to their signatures and the wrong date, the president and first lady wrote, “It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage, and common sacrifice.”
Could the president be longing for the good old days? . . .
There may be less than meets the eye to President Barack Obama's statements Monday night that NATO is taking over from the U.S. in Libya and that U.S. action is limited to defending people under attack there by Moammar Gadhafi's forces.
In transferring command and control to NATO, the U.S. is turning the reins over to an organization dominated by the U.S., both militarily and politically. In essence, the U.S. runs the show that is taking over running the show.
And the rapid advance of rebels in recent days strongly suggests they are not merely benefiting from military aid in a defensive crouch, but rather using the multinational force in some fashion - coordinated or not - to advance an offensive.
Here is a look at some of Obama's assertions in his address to the nation Monday, and how they compare with the facts: . . .
Weren't we supposed to get massive job creation this summer?
Last year it was the prediction that unemployment would not get above 8 percent. This year it was promises of massive job growth.
Usually the Obama administration downplays expectations for job growth, but apparently Vice President Joe Biden didn’t get the memo – or he did, but just blew it off.
“Some time in the next couple of months we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month,” Biden said at a fundraiser today in Pittsburgh.
Next month, Biden predicted, the nation’s employers will add between 100,000 to 200,000 jobs to their payrolls.
If employers were to increase their payrolls by half a million jobs at some point in the next few months, that would mark a massive turnaround for a country that was hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs a month just one year ago. But with the big boost expected from the government’s 2010 census, on top of an improving employment picture as evidenced by the 162,000 jobs created in March, such future job growth is a distinct possibility, analysts say. . . .
We have had the Obama administration predict multiple times that the economy had already turned around. Now when things keep on being bad, the reason for the continued weakness is George Bush.
: “Was he talking about slavery? You bet your ass he was. Was he using the vernacular? Yes, he was. Did he think it was cute? Yes, he did. Was it something stupid to say? You bet your life it was stupid.” . . .
