In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

About 44 million Americans – one in seven – lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.

The snapshot captured by the census for 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, shows an America in the throes of economic upheaval.

My favorite part is this bit of propaganda:

Obama said the numbers could have been much worse were it not for government assistance.

It’s impossible to either prove or refute a statement like that. It’s just as easy to say ‘the numbers could have been much better were it not for government interference.’

However, we do know that just over 50% of the stimulus has been spent and we also know that the money was used to increase government employment by 10% since January of 2008 while private employment dropped by 6%.

Obama’s cabinet has the least amount of private-sector experience since at least Roosevelt.

That explains a lot…if you don’t know how American businesses work, how can you help American businesses recover?

Graph source: Originally from Investors.com, by way of Dinocrat.com

Hat tip: Maggie’s Farm

Krauthammer says it much more eloquently than I do:

The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There’s no natural, inherent, or enduring international community. What community of interest is there between, say, the United States, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Burma?

The international community is a Hobbesian state of nature with no universally recognized norms. Anarchy is kept in check not by some bureaucracy on the East River, not by some inchoate expression of world opinion, not by parchment promises adorned with disingenuous signatures, but by the will and the power of the Great Powers and, most important in our time, the one remaining superpower: namely, the United States.

One of my favorite T-Shirts says it all in one neat little sentence: Peace through superior firepower

Last week President Obama addressed the GOP and said this (video):

The last thing I will say, though — let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

I have the following points to make on this statement:

1. He immediately pre-empts the debate by framing the broken promises as “stray cats and dogs”. Oh how cuddly and worthy of our sympathy those stray cats and dogs are.
   
2. He claims they were “in the process of eliminating” those pesky, but cute and cuddly broken promises but how can we verify that they were being eliminated? And until a final bill emerges, we’ll never know for sure if they were eliminated.
   
3. He’s beginning to talk of health care reform in the past tense. Is he conceding defeat, even sub-consciously?
   
4. The fact that provisions are being admittedly “snuck in” should alone be cause enough for a full stop and full analysis of exactly what is in these monstrous bills.

For a quick recap of the health care reform process, under the banner of Hope and Change:

• Democrats routinely “bought” votes to pass healthcare
  
• Despite campaign promises of transparency, closed-door negotiations abound
  
• Provisions are being “snuck in” that inflame key points of contention
  
• Promises have admittedly been broken, which is akin to lying, something we expect from the average politician, but not from someone who’s primary platform throughout the campaign was Change.
  

When this ‘most fascinating person’ was asked what her personal paradise is she replied “just clicking through mindless shows” with her dog.

How truly fascinating. Please, tell me more…

I mean, if you think about this year, I had to get these two beautiful girls settled into a new city, into a new home, into a new school. We got a dog. I visited eight countries with my husband. I planted a garden. I’ve started a mentoring program. It has been everything.

How absolutely fascinating. They moved. They got a dog. They planted a garden. Holy riveting stories batman!

At least now she’s proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Now that her husband, the most recent Nobel Peace Prize winner has set a course to triple the number of troops in Afghanistan, had, by September, exceeded last year’s number of Predator drone strikes, has failed to close Guantanamo in a year, and has failed to produce the transparency he so often promised on the campaign trail. Truly things to be proud of for a most fascinating woman.

[ADDENDUM: Lest we forget, this is the First Couple that gave the Queen of England a very thoughtful iPod and Gordon Brown a boxed set of DVDs.]

Social justice indeed.

The problem is that’s precisely what precipitated the sub-prime mortgage crisis, which precipitated the current recession.

Why are we still forcing lenders to lend money to people who quite simply do not have the means to repay the loan?

The U.S. government is likely to inject $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion of capital into the Detroit company, on top of the $12.5 billion that GMAC has received since December 2008, these people said. The latest infusion would come in the form of preferred stock. The government’s 35.4% stake in the company could increase if existing shares eventually are converted into common equity.

…

While GMAC would be the only U.S. company to get three capital injections from the government since the financial crisis erupted two years ago, thousands of banks and other financial firms remain weakened by exposure to fallen real-estate values and clobbered financial markets.

You don’t suppose this has anything to do with the $4.5M the UAW contributed to Obama’s presidential campaign?

That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.

Then he broke that promise by having closed-door meetings with pharmaceutical companies. In those closed-door meetings, which were not aired on C-Span, the Obama administration cut a deal with the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA). In exchange for the White House opposing any attempts at lowering drug prices or importing drugs from Canada, PhRMA agreed to cut ‘up to $80B in costs to taxpayers.’

Now we learn that closed-door meetings between the Obama administration and various lobby groups for physicians produced the equivalent of a $247B payoff for their support of Obamacare.

It’s time to recognize that Obama is not the Obamessiah, but just another corruptible politician that must be treated with skepticism.

Health care reform isn’t what’s needed at this point. Government reform is what’s needed. Lobbyists have become too powerful and politicians too corrupt. True health care reform is unobtainable in the current state of the U.S. government.

Personally I think it’s a good idea. It promotes pride in our country, it’s a commendable cause, and hosting the games could possibly bring revenue to Chicago and like many other cities, we need it. Besides, presidents personally pushing to host the games in their country is nothing new.

There are better debates to focus on like Afghanistan, health care reform, the economy, etc.

Among the reasons is the simple fact that human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time. The concentration, the emotional fervor, even the physical energy, a particular experience that is exciting, challenging, and inviting, can last just so long–this is true of the gamut of human behavior from sex to conflict. After a period of time it becomes monotonous, repetitive, an emotional treadmill, and worse than anything else, a bore. From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.

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