Origins

Americans must be wondering how much more of this “recovery” they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research , show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama “recovery.”

Yet it gets worse. Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the “recovery” than they did during the recession. In fact, they’ve dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession.

Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this “recovery,” it has fallen to $50,678 — a drop of $3,040 per household. (KFYI)

But he the guy in charge of this will give you free stuff and will make sure he sticks it to “rich” people!!! The other guy is just a gaffe-laden asshole. 🙂

And besides we all know it’s Bush’s Fault, after all… 🙂

The newest viral video is of a woman who says she will vote for Obama because she got a free cell phone from him. Now that’s the kind of intellectual voter response we need as a country! 🙂

The program is called Lifeline, established in 1984, originally created to subsidize landline phone service for low income Americans, funded by government-collected telecommunication fees, paid by consumers.

In 2008, the program was expanded to support cell phones which quickly escalated the cost of the program. In 2008 the program cost $772 million, but by 2011 it cost $1.6 billion.

A 2011 audit found that 269,000 wireless Lifeline subscribers were receiving free phones and monthly service from two or more carriers. Several websites have been created to promote “free” government cell phones, including the”The Obama Cell Phone” website at Obamaphone.net.

After all, a Cell phone must be a Human Right and if you deny it to people you must be a racist!. 🙂

Michael Ramirez Cartoon

What a mean, evil racist! 🙂

But it’s Obama re-election time, so no one in the FCC is going to do anything about it. Don’t want to upset the peasants.

2016 Update

Two weeks ago, Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016: Obama’s America” passed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” for second place on the all-time box-office money list for political documentaries. It now has a box office gross of more than $32 million. But if you’re an independent or a liberal who’s unplugged from conservative websites and talk radio, you’d never know.
You didn’t see D’Souza on CBS or NBC (although he showed up on ABC’s “Nightline” in late night). There were no cover stories in Time or Newsweek. The film opened on just one screen in Houston when it premiered on July 13, and then spread to 10, and eventually to 1,000 theaters in August, and 2,000 theaters in September. A cultural sensation, yes — but somehow not newsworthy.
Al Gore, naturally, had every advantage of a beloved liberal almost-president. When it hit theaters in May of 2006, Time magazine wrote, “The movie got raves at the Sundance Film Festival … In Los Angeles theaters, the trailers have been getting ovations.” On NBC, Katie Couric sat down in the outdoors with Gore and told him that in the movie, “you’re funny, vulnerable, disarming, self-effacing.” On CBS, anchor Harry Smith gushed, “The box office receipts would indicate that it’s an action movie — you did better per screening than almost anything that’s come out this week.”
Even after Gore’s slideshow lecture/film eventually sputtered out at the Cineplex, several more rounds of fawning followed: an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize, and in between the gushing lines came the idea that Gore might (or should) run again for president. The “Goracle” gush was so heavy that Time collected it all together. He was “Al Gore — the improbably charismatic, Academy Award-winning, Nobel Prize-nominated environmental prophet with an army of followers and huge reserves of political and cultural capital at his command.”
And yet, D’Souza’s film was the Little Engine That Could — the film that could surpass Gore at the box office. He didn’t need MSNBC to put him on, although in August, he slammed them as cowardly: “You could watch that channel and not even know we have a film out — unless you saw a commercial that we’re running for our film. You look at Lawrence O’Donnell, you look at Rachel Maddow, you look at Chris Matthews. I mean, look at those cowards! … I would love to cross swords with those guys, but I think they’re all hiding under the desk.”
Whatever media elite notice D’Souza received began trickling in once it made the top ten of the weekend box-office hits in late August … and it wasn’t positive at all.
A Washington Post critic scoffed on August 24: “It is doomed to win precious few converts. It’s a textbook example of preaching to the choir. It has the air of a ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ sequel, pandering to the franchise’s hardcore fans, while boring everyone else.”
And “An Inconvenient Truth” was different?
On August 29, ABC’s David Wright told D’Souza his film was “disingenuous” in suggesting Obama wanted to downsize America’s power and influence, and complained “D’Souza spins out the conspiracy theory” of America in dramatic economic and geopolitical collapse by 2016. The screen read “Conspirator-in-Chief.”
NPR weekend anchor Guy Raz took a few rhetorical swings at D’Souza in a September 1 interview. “Dinesh D’Souza, if you wanted to criticize or attack President Obama, why bend the truth? Why not just offer a policy critique rather than conjecture, and in many cases in this film, conspiracy?”
But what dominated Al Gore’s documentary if not a gloomy conjecture about the destruction of the planet through global warming? Wasn’t Gore a “Conspirator-in-Chief” that some people deny the “truth” of impending planetary doom for nefarious political ends? Gore’s film ridiculously claimed a 20-foot rise in sea level that would flood Manhattan.
The media weren’t negative about that conjecture. ABC’s story on Gore’s movie was summed up with the words “The Comeback Kid? Al Gore Takes On The World.”
Reporter Claire Shipman hailed “Gore’s personal journey toward environmental evangelism.” On NPR, anchor Robert Siegel hailed the film’s success, and began with a “quibble” and moved on: “Our science correspondent had only a couple of quibbles on claims about the melting snows of Kilimanjaro or the increasing power of hurricanes.” Gore quickly shot that down as unworthy. And The Washington Post reviewer (Desson Thomson) raved: “We’re pressure-cooking the planet to death — and Al Gore has the flow charts to prove it. We know what you’re thinking, but as this surprisingly absorbing film shows, Gore’s lectures are anything but dull.”
D’Souza’s movie was comparable to an over-the-top horror movie. Al Gore has proven we’re all about to bake and/or drown, and all that can be said about that spooky spectacle is it is “surprisingly absorbing.” Their arrogance knows no bounds. (Brent Bozell)

That’s very true.

Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy

Michael Ramirez Cartoon

Political Cartoons by Glenn Foden