EckerNet.Com

Don\’t count on it.

Today Rasmussen brings word that a strong plurality of Americans think the rest of Porkulus should be cancelled since it doesn\’t appear to be working.

Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure.

It\’s nice that they are finally on board.  And with the shift in opinion Democrat approval ratings have started to shift downward.  This is an issue that Democrats can\’t blame on Bush like they have everything else.  They\’ve invested their reputation on this and nobody has had a bigger part.

With the economy still tanking and porkulus floundering (as if it was designed to do anything else) some have started opining that this bodes particularly horrible for Democrats in the 2010 elections.  And I\’ll agree this looks bad for Democrats and public opinion is starting to show it in polls.

But let\’s also not forget that 2010 is a long ways away.  The election is a full 17 months away.  A lot can happen in that time.  For one, economic downturns always have an end.  Even the Great Depression would have ended eventually without a World War.  It\’s quite possible, maybe even probable, that by 2010 the economy, if not recovered, could certainly be in the process of recovering.

If the public is starting to see even the most basic signs of economic improvement, in spite of Porkulus, what\’s the chance that they\’ll want to change drivers?  And keep in mind Obama\’s oratory abilities and skills at spinning reality to meet what the public wants to hear.

The GOP would be wise not to depend on the craptastic performance of Porkulus.  It needs to be considered that even Porkulus might not hold this economy down until after 2010.  I don\’t know that, and I hope it\’s the case, but either way, it\’s not something one should be basing a political strategy on.

France appears like it\’s trying to push a terror attack as the potential cause of the Flight 447 crash.

Two names on doomed Air France Flight 447\’s passenger list also appear on a list of radical Muslims considered a threat to France, according to French investigators.

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.

Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.

I\’m all for due diligence and yeah, explore the option but I would be highly skeptical of any suggestion that a terror attack was responsible for the crash.  That should have been obvious before the wreckage was even found, when after days (now almost two weeks) have gone by, nobody has claimed credit for the attack.

Terrorists exist to….well, terrorize (cue quotes from Jeff Dunham\’s act).  If a terrorist terrorizes in the middle of a forest and nobody is around, is anyone scared??  Well no.  So there really is no benefit to performing an attack and then not taking credit for it.  And terrorists organizations have not been shy about claiming credit, it\’s a win-win for them.  They get to terrorize but also raise their profile and it serves as a recruitment tool.  And finally achieving a successful attack on a Western airline would certainly be a coup for them.

Plus blowing up an airline over the middle of the Atlantic doesn\’t exactly sounds like the preferred way of blowing up an airliner.  Lessens the collatoral damage and a lot less visible.

So by all means pursue all leads, but if this is one that is seriously opined as a possible cause, I\’ll start suspecting ulterior motives.  Like protecting the image of both your nation\’s airline and it\’s largest airplane manufacturer by diverting blame.

Just upgraded from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.8.  Everything seems to have gone smoothly but if you see something funky let me know.

The Obama administration has delayed implementation of a rule requiring most federal contractors to use the federal E-Verify system to check the work authorization status of their new hires.  They have delayed it for the FOURTH time.

E-Verify is a proven, successful tool operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration. It allows employers to quickly and easily check the work authorization status of their new hires. According to DHS, the program has an impressive accuracy rate: \”About 99.6% of all work-authorized employees verified through E-Verify are verified without receiving a tentative non-confirmation or having to take any type of corrective action.\”  It\’s no wonder that this program enjoys overwhelming support in the US House.

The program would seem to be doubly important in these tough economic times.  With unemployment approaching 10%, it would seem wise that the jobs that there are should go to Americans, rather than illegal aliens.  But it seems the Obama administration is too busy tossing fuel on the fire that is our recession to be bother with doing something that is proven and makes sense.

The rule is now set to take effect on September 8, 2009 – nearly nine months after the original effective date.  How many jobs will be lost by then?

Great birthday weekend.  Spent it out of town at the lake, which while it was cold and rainy was still nice to get away.  I\’ve been operating on stressed deadlines at work and lots of projects at home.  A pleasure to get away to a location with no TV, no internet and poor cell phone reception.  Actually the more I think about it the more I\’m wondering why I came home.  Oh well, maybe this will make it all better….

PATHETIC!!!  House GOP finds $23 Billion over five years to cut in the budget.  That\’s it??? Seriously?  GOP you\’re worthless.  I could find $23 billion in cuts THIS MONTH….while drunk.  Try again….try harder.

Alaska\’s Chukchi oil field upgraded from huge to fucking huge….even aside from the oil it now accounts for 30% of the world\’s supply of natural gas alone.

Summary of a conversation that happened recently….
Obama To China : We\’re totally cool, we got this debt thing under control.
China to Obama : Prove it.
Obama : Shit….

USA Today does a really spectacular job breaking down the debt that each US Household is now faced with.

Obama uses another strawman to justify his Cyber Czar position.  He\’s been using strawmen like this an awful lot lately.

Obama kept claiming during the campaign that we need to be smarter in our diplomacy in order to gain more allies.  Well so far we\’ve gained no new allies, but we\’re certainly pissing off our current ones.

I\’ve been sooooo underrating Latvia as an awesome vacation destination.

Another hate message from Bin Laden….I wonder if Obama will learn that being nicer doesn\’t generate good will from crazed assholes.

Happy Birthday! SETI@Home is 10 years old!! No word on if ET sent a gift.

Still trying to decide if this is totally cool, or more evidence of the downfall of civilization…..introducing Bikini Jeans.

The history of LSD…in summation, the CIA, with a little help from the Nazis, accidentally helped invent hippies while they were trying to figure out how to brainwash communists.

A successful US investor is claiming this isn\’t a recession after all, and that all the panic is just a hoax.

Ok seriously, can we all just agree that Meghan McCain\’s 15 minutes were over about 15 hours ago and stop mentioning her?? In fact, can we just pretend she doesn\’t exist?  No conservatives take her seriously anyway.

Sonia Sotomayor gives us an opportunity to finally talk about race?? Yeah, liberals don\’t want to talk about race except to use racism as a campaigning tool.

Obama has been making a habit of siding with the terrorists in a number of situations….he does so again.

Back when Bush was President, if our allies said anything even remotely ill of us, it was concrete proof that our President was a failure and an incompetent boob.  It\’s amazing how quickly those double standards were imposed.  Oh and don\’t forget the rift with Germany.  Or Britain.  Or Poland.  Or the Czech Republic.

Unbelieveable….Gitmo detainees get laptops.  Is Gitmo too big to fail now as well?? Seriously are we screening these bailout requests at all?  Where do I apply??

New dancing craze resulting in alot of \”broken penises\” (uh, wouldn\’t that be penii??).  Oddly enough this \”new\” dancing craze doesn\’t look all that different than the dance moves you can find happening in any club or High School prom in the US.  Ok Americans, stop hiding your broken penii.

Heh, when oil was costly during the Bush administration it was proof that Bush was in with the oil companies and directly profiting from their price gouging.  Now that it\’s getting high under Obama, what\’s the rationale now?

Oh goodie, now we\’re taxing health benefits….and here I thought taxes wouldn\’t go up on me unless I was rich.  Or so I was promised.

Unemployment now at 9.4%.  Which is significant since we were promised that unemployment would peak at 8.8% if we did NOT pass the porkulus bill.

So how is unemployment comparing to past estimates….well…I\’m starting to think this whole stimulus idea was a bad idea….and by starting I mean have been thinking that since it was passed.

What??? A massive government program is backfiring?? I am shocked I tell you.

Turns out people ditch half their friends every seven years.  Coincidentally, EckerNet.Com is seven years old, which means half of you are gonna have to go, start counting off…

Yeah, you\’re all gonna pretend you didn\’t watch it but I know secretly you all will…..turtles humping….bizarre.

[Courtesy of Adam]

….and I really don\’t feel like it.

So instead of reading something I wrote, you should all spend that amount of time leaving a comment telling me how wonderful I am.

The hilarious words of Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) in the even more hilarious movie Caddyshack never fails to leave me laughing.  But more and more I\’m starting to understand Ty\’s confusion over whether Danny Noonan had to do something.  I\’m not talking about the impending socialism, or even the loss of freedom\’s from an overreaching government, or even the government owned companies (want a People\’s Car eh comrade?).

No I\’m referring to the fact that we seem to have more czars than cabinet members.  Obama seems to create a new one every day, but already we have:

Intelligence Czar
Bailout Czar
Education Czar
Drug Czar
Border Czar
Health Care Czar
Cyber Czar
Car Czar
Energy Czar
Urban Czar

And now today a Great Lakes Czar, which officially gives the Obama Administration more than twice as many Czars as the entire reign of the Romanov Dynasty had in Russia.

Even the Democrats are starting to get nervous.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) became concerned enough to send a cautionary letter to Obama last week. At times, he said, past White House staffers have assumed duties that should be the responsibility of officials cleared through the Senate confirmation process. He cited President Bush\’s naming of homeland security czar Tom Ridge as an example.

To be fair, President Obama is not the first president to use the \”czar\” position.  Nixon was the first with his Energy Czar, and in fact one of Obama\’s current czars was originally appointed by President Bust.  The difference is in the extent at which Obama has used this concept.

The former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK is right to be concerned.  \”Czars\” are essentially super-aides that work across agency lines to push the administration\’s position in a certain field.  But they also subvert the basic building block of our system of government, checks & balances.

Now Checks & Balances is a concept that isn\’t taunt in public schools anymore (perhaps Obama can get his Education Czar on that), but it\’s a fundamental concept critical to the functioning of our government.  Each branch of the government holds powers that allow it to bitchslap (check) another branch if it starts getting too uppity (not balanced).  Congress retains the right of congressional oversight, which each cabinet member is accountable to.  Czars on the other hand are accountable only to the White House.

And Obama can\’t even use the excuse that there isn\’t an existing branch of government to handle these issues.

Intelligence Czar -> Department of Homeland Security
Bailout Czar -> Department of Treasury
Education Czar -> Department of Education
Drug Czar -> Department of Justice
Border Czar -> Department of Homeland Security
Health Care Czar -> Department of Health and Human Services
Cyber Czar -> Department of Commerce
Car Czar -> Department of Commerce
Energy Czar -> Department of Energy
Urban Czar -> Department of Housing and Urban Development

Now a cynical person might suggest that the Obama\’s narcissism is leading him to create new levels of government beholden only to him.  While \”czar\”-like positions do have their place they have been, and should be, exceedingly rare.  Situations where the full might of multiple agencies need to be quickly mobilized under one command to respond to a critical situation strikes me as a situation where a \”czar\”-line position could be justified.

It\’s why the cyber-czar sort of makes sense.  A cyber attack on our nation\’s infrastructure would need an immediate response from a variety of agencies.  Already having the command structure in place to do that does make some degree of sense.

But many of these positions are direct duplicates of an already existing Department fully dedicated to exactly that.  Education Czar and the Department of Education.  Energy Czar and the Department of Energy.  And seriously….the Great Lakes Czar?

It\’s pretty clear this is a concept that\’s being used soley to abuse and subvert the concept of Checks&Balances already in place in our government.  Not what you\’d expect from the most open and transparent administration ever is it?

[Crossposted at True North]

UPDATE : You couldn\’t make this up….now Obama is appointing a Pay Czar.

Liberals have looked to Obama as their shining star since he announced for Presidency.  There was nothing he couldn\’t do for them.  Every promise he made was sacrosanct and cynicism was verboten.  He was the Messiah, bask in his holy light!

But now liberals are starting to wondering if that light they thought they were following is really a train.

President Barack Obama’s promises of change are falling short for one core Democratic constituency: gays and lesbians, whose leaders say Obama’s administration isn’t keeping up with the times.

Gay rights campaigners, most of them Democrats who supported Obama in November, have begun to voice their public frustration with Obama’s inaction, small jokes at their community’s expense and deafening silence on what they see as the signal civil rights issue of this era.

And gays aren\’t the only ones fretting…

Speakers at the closing session exhorted the liberals to take back America — from Obama. \”The president of the most powerful country in the world is doing all right, but there are a lot of people in this country who are not doing all right,\” writer Naomi Klein told the crowd. \”Obama is making us stupid,\” she added. \”Love can make you stupid.\”

And Leo Gerard, head of the United Steelworkers, warned that if his fellow activists don\’t \”seize the opportunity to lead with our progressive ideas,\” then \”Rahm Emanuel will lead.\” And while \”Rahm has the president\’s back,\” the union leader said of Obama\’s chief of staff, \”I don\’t think he has our back.\”

I hate to say I told you so….er, nevermind I love to.  WE TOLD YOU SO.  Every promise Obama made comes with an expiration date, subject to change without notice, rhyme or reason.

It\’s been obvious to conservatives for a long time, that the only principle guiding Obama is his own narcissism.  I mean seriously, this is the guy that is tickled pink that he sees his own image in the fucking pyramids.

Granted all politicians suffer from narcissism to some extent.  If they didn\’t when they started, they did after winning their first election.  You can\’t have that many people telling you how wonderful you are without falling victim to it to some extent.  But Obama has taken it to new levels by making it a guiding principle of everything he\’s done.

If it weren\’t so tragic, it would be amusing to see liberals finally waking up to the fact that Obama doesn\’t care about you.  He cares about himself, and unless you\’re of use to him, you\’re of no use to anybody.  Welcome to this brave new world liberals.  You wanted Hope and Change….well you got Change, Hope you\’re happy with it!