Obama celebrates his 100th day in office today, so in honor of that DWTDBs would like to commemorate the event with the top 5 Obama flubs:

Number 5
Obama Cannot Nominate Anyone Who Paid Their Taxes

President Obama admitted he made a "mistake" in his handling of Tom Daschle's Cabinet nomination, telling FOX News on Tuesday that he takes full responsibility for a process that ended in Daschle withdrawing his name amid tax problems. 02-03-09

He also nominated Timothy Geithner, Nancy Killefer, and Hilda Solis. Killefer's and Solis' problems were relative small, but tax cheat Geithner would go on to run the economy carte blanche with the authority of a little line from TARP "NECESSARY ACTIONS.—The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation, the following: Designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Federal Government, and such institutions shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Federal Government as may be required."



Number 4
Released Guantanamo Detainees Return to Terrorism

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says the U.S. hasn’t done a good job sorting out who should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Obama says in a broadcast interview that some of the people released from the facility in Cuba have rejoined terrorist groups. He also says U.S. officials have not always been effective in determining which prisoners will be a danger once they are let go.

The current proposal has Obama placing the terrorists in American jails where they will be granted American rights. There has even been talk of having to release some of them onto American soil because no other country will have them.

Number 3
Obama White House Stages 9-11 Re-enactment

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and a 747 from the presidential fleet to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD, the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.

Causing thousands of New Yorkers to relive the horror of 9-11 is definitely worth $328,000, isn't it?

Number 2
Obama Chooses His Brackets

Duke Coach Mike Krzyazewski didn’t care for President Obama’s picks for the Final Four after he was told that his team wasn’t chosen. Coach K said that Obama should focus more on the economy than brackets. Obama replied by saying that Duke wasn’t picked because they have no inside game.
Here is what Coach K said to the AP about Obama’s bracket, "Somebody said that we're not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets.” Of course, I think the coach might have a different reaction if Obama would have chosen his team instead of hated rival North Carolina to win it all . 03-19-09

There is a kind of a sub-flub to go along with this that he only got one team right.

And the award for Number 1 Flub of the First 100 Days goes to:
Obama Bowls Like He is in the Special Olympics

And then, fatally, he visibly relaxed. The arms waved around more, he made camp little asides to the rapturous audience. Leno asked, laughing, about the bowling alley he inherited at the White House, first built as a birthday present for Truman in 1947, upgraded by the Nixons — paid for by friends — in 1969, and upgraded again by Bush.

"I imagine the bowling alley has just been burned and closed down?" Leno asked.

"No, no," Obama protested, "I have been practising bowling, I bowled" — fluttering his eyelashes with mock modesty, to audience whoops, "a 129."

"Oh no, that's very good, yeah," Leno said sarcastically, "that's very good — Mr President."

"Like Special Olympics or something ..." Obama said, laughing.
Replaying the clip — as people did endlessly today — it sounded more a response to Leno's mock patronising fulsome praise than his own bowling skills. But the cameras also caught a nanosecond flicker of shock on the faces of both men, knowing that the damage was done. 03-19-09

Really! One would think that the most liberal senator, now the most liberal President would be a little more caught up on PC things to say on a talk show. Then again, I don't think guests on the Tonight Show get a teleprompter.

Honorable Mention goes to this teleprompter failure at a recent speech to the National Academy of Science:



Mr. President, if I may offer you some advice, and since you are asking for ideas that will work: "Have a Plan B. Buy some notecards."

One more thought - If Bush was learning how to be President from Cheney, then it appears that Obama is indeed learning from Biden.

President Obama announced plans (really just intentions, not plans) to cut dozens of government programs deemed inefficient. How is he going to do that? By creating two new positions of course!

President Obama said Saturday that he would soon announce “the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective,” and he used his weekly radio address to name two new high-level officials to assist him in that effort.

If I were running a business, and had to cut my workforce, you can bet I wouldn't do it by hiring someone else. The city of Alexandria tried the same thing when they hired Michael Gillette, an ethicist, to make the decisions of what programs to cut. In case you are geographically challenged, Alexandria is very much a beltway town. How's that change working out for you?

The NY Times, in the middle of trying to not go bankrupt and swatting away the scandal of printing a phony letter from the mayor of Paris, has lately turned to launching attacks at Obama in order to regain some of its stature. It's not surprising. From 2000 to 2008, they found good business in bashing Bush. Now that he and any Republican control of Congress is gone, the Times once again is choosing to promote its own agenda rather than focusing on being any kind of fair and balanced.

Oh, the Op/Ed page included the usual schlock from Mo Dowd, but there was another op/ed piece taking potshots at conservatism even though it was disguised as a criticism of Obama:

In what his aides billed as a major economic speech on Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama said that 2009 would “mark a clean break from a troubled past and set a new course for our nation.”

The “clean break” part of the statement seems an apt description for the spending part of Mr. Obama’s emerging, roughly $800 billion recovery package. He has outlined some $500 billion for bolstered unemployment benefits, aid to states and investment in the nation’s crumbling and outdated infrastructure.
But the tax-cut components of the package are hardly a clean break with the Bush years, presuming that is what Mr. Obama meant by the troubled past. To win the support of Republican lawmakers, the package is shaping up to include roughly $150 billion in business tax breaks, even though such breaks are widely recognized as packing very little bang for the buck when it comes to economic stimulus.

The business tax cut talked about here is the $3000 tax credit that a business will receive for spending at least $50,000 to hire a new employee. The writer is correct here. That, coupled with the tax breaks that businesses will undoubtedly receive for green efforts, will have little bang, since businesses will not spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive a few measly thousands of dollars in tax breaks.

The big thing that I took from that section, though? "Wow, they are comparing Obama to Bush! The Messiah being likened to the anti-christ in the Op/ed page of the NY Slime!"

The article has one more attack on tax cuts, though:

The proposed tax break — up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families — makes good sense for low- and middle-income Americans, because the money is likely to be spent quickly, thus boosting demand in a contracting economy. But higher up the income ladder — a couple making $200,000 a year is in the top 9 percent of households — tax cuts are likelier to be saved than spent, providing relatively little stimulus.

Tax breaks for 138 million taxpayers in the amount of $500 is $69 billion. Nine percent of that is $6.2 billion. That means that the plan will put over $63 billion back in the pockets of the american people who make less than $200,000 a year. So sinking $700 billion into banks, the auto industry, and credit card companies is okay. Five hundred billion spent on roads is okay. But try to give the people $69 billion of their own money and that is where the Times draws the line.

I read a very thought provoking and rather well thought out post today at DemConWatch. With the burst of the housing bubble, multiple industry bailouts, and loss of jobs, government at every level is looking at cutting services and raising taxes. But which services to cut? Which taxes to raise? Taxes are, after all, a necessary evil as our government needs to get funding from somewhere.

That article asked for comments from the readers, and I am doing the same. If taxes have to be raised, or services cut, which do you feel are necessary? Below is the comment I posted on their site. Just a little setup: the commenter before me posted a list of things like tax on gasoline, taxing incomes of the wealthy, and sin taxes. Here is my comment:

I heard something today...

The sin taxes might actually be detrimental to a budget in the long run. When they impose a sin tax, it is usually a little more about changing behavior rather than making money. In Virginia, Tim Kaine is proposing doubling the tax on cigarettes in order to offset the cost imposed on medicare and medicaid when smokers develop emphysema/lung cancer. If they didn't smoke, though, chances are that they would live much longer. We would have many more people living many more years and the cost of general health care for all of them, even if all they required were routine checkups and treatment for minor illneses, would equal more than the outlay under the system where individual freedoms may mean that people choose to live a little more recklessly.
As far as what services to cut? I agree with Karen-Anne in that there is a whole lot of waste that needs to be cut before any essential services lose a penny. They should look at expense accounts and future contracts, and they should definitely look for more efficient ways to govern before raising any taxes or cutting any services. If our leaders tell us that sacrifice is essential, they need to set that ball rolling by setting an example.

In the business that I am in, I have seen expenses in certain areas swing to the good by large amounts simply by stressing to the employees the importance of "best practices". I have seen the same accounts swing back terribly when those same practices are allowed to fall by the wayside. The difference? Better management led to the good swings while poor management led to the bad. Our leaders, no matter what the level of government, are being paid to manage their local/state/federal governments. It is time they start doing so.

Bill Richardson, Obama's appointee for Secretary of Commerce, is now being investigated by a grand jury for allegedly giving California firm CDR Financial Services a lucrative government contract in exchange for campaign donations.

A person familiar with the proceedings told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the panel is looking into possible "pay-to-play" dealings between CDR Financial Products and someone in a position to push the contract through with the state of New Mexico.

So, how many corrupt politicians does it take to change Washington?
Just one, but he brings all his buddies with him, anyway.

Alexandria policymakers are finding it hard to make the tough decisions that must be made when budget cuts are unavoidable. Property values in the area have dropped, leaving a sizeable hole in the city budget. Their solution? Pay an ethicist $9,000 a year to make the decisions for them.

Faced with painful choices about who will suffer most from looming budget cuts, Alexandria officials have taken the unusual step of paying a professional ethicist to help them grapple with the moral issues involved.

Michael A. Gillette is an ethicist who works for area hospitals helping them make decisions about patient care, but he has taken a part time job making decisions for the leaders of Alexandria as to who should and who should not bear the brunt of budget cuts. He has proposed things like turning apartments initially being built for the mentally ill into temporary homes for the disabled.

"If the limb comes off, at least you saved the life. That's what true scarcity feels like," said Gillette, a Lynchburg, Va., City Council member who often uses the battlefield clarity of old "M*A*S*H" episodes to goad his listeners.

First of all, shame on the "leaders" of Alexandria. They were appointed/elected specifically to make the kinds of decisions that they are now pawning off on Gillette. Politicians today are not capable of making really tough decisions because they feel they will not get re-elected if they take services away from their constituency. So they hire an ethicist to make the decision. Now the onus is on the ethicist, and the politicians continue collecting a check for the work that they farm out. Ethical? I think we should ask Mr. Gillette.

In Alexandria, social service officials first began seeking Gillette's advice on clinical quandaries, which represent the bulk of his work. But over time, especially since the weakening real estate market stung the city last year, money questions have gained urgency. They now pay him a $9,000 annual consulting fee.

Second, shame on Mr. Gillette. What kind of ethicist takes money from an already failing economy to do a job that someone else was already paid to do? Even kids in elementary school know that it is unethical to give someone else the answers to the test.

Change.gov recently closed a segment entitled "Open Questions" where the public was asked to pose questions which could then be voted on and ranked by other users. Out of the top 50 questions, 12 questions including question #1 had to do with legalizing marijuana. Research into a high speed railroad instead of a massive highway bill had the second highest number of questions. Others in the top 50 have already been answered by His O-liness:

"What will you do as President to restore the Constitutional protections that have been subverted by the Bush Administration and how will you ensure that our system of checks and balances is renewed?" - Kari

"The constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It only spells out what the government cannot do to you. It does not spell out what government must do for you." Having said that, next question:

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretaps?" - Bob Fertik

"What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."
Obama may have his own witchhunt to deal with after all. But then again, Fitzgerald may want to keep his job. Strangely enough, there were no questions about Blagojevich.

"What will you do to promote science and mathematics education to Elementary and Middle School students?" - JasonWyatt

"You know, sometimes I'll go to an eighth-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just eighth grade. To really compete, they need to graduate high school, and then they need to graduate college, and they probably need a graduate degree too. An eighth-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!"

""What will you do to end the use of mercenary forces (ie Blackwater) by our military?" - Betsie

Obama's new chief of staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (IL), wants to institute three months of "Universal Civil Defense Training" for college-aged Americans. He argued that this mandatory service was necessary, "because we have a lot more challenges." In other words, we won't need companies like blackwater because they will be replaced with the SS Civil Defense Force.

""What will be done to make the banking industry accountable when there are so many substantiated stories about their mismangement in relationship to selling bank owned properties and managing potential foreclosures?" - Robyn

"We've got to have transparency, openness, fair dealing in our financial markets and that's an area where I think over the last eight years we've fallen short. We've got to provide a blood infusion to the patient right now to make sure the patient is stabilized. We can't worry short term about the deficit ... We've got to make sure the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving." So to hell with sound financial planning. Let's just throw money at the problem until it goes away.


We all saw what we were dealing with when Rasmussen did it's poll of Obama voters last month, so I guess it comes as no surprise that people posting questions at Change.gov didn't know that President-elect Government had already answered them.

Ms. Jones-Kelly brought this on her state. Indirectly the Democrat party brought this on Ohio. Perhaps they should pay the price instead of Ohio taxpayers. And just who is opposing this transparency? That's right: the party of President Government.

But why, exactly, was the Pearl Harbor attack "infamous"? The Japanese planes attacked strictly military targets and there were relatively few civilian casualties.[2] The battle was a terrible blow for the American forces, which were taken completely by surprise. But a surprise attack is not infamous in wartime; every military commander would like to attack by surprise if possible. Nor did the bitter facts of U.S. defeat and heavy losses make the raid criminal. President Roosevelt used the word "infamy" because the raid was an act of military aggression. Until that moment Japan and the United States were not at war, although their conflicting interests had been threatening to boil over. The attack turned a dispute into a war; Pearl Harbor was a crime because the Japanese struck first.

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, the administration of G. W. Bush has made "preemption" an official part of U.S. policy. According to this so-called "Bush Doctrine," the United States claims the right to use military force whenever it determines that its security or economic interests may be threatened by another nation in the future. The Bush National Security Strategy of 2002 states that "The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."[3] In other words, if it is to our advantage, we will strike first - begin a war - when we see a potential threat.

The thing is, Mr. Lamperti, we were not the one's who killed six million Jews. Nor were we their allies. We were also not the ones who repeatedly ignored resolution after resolution handed down by the UN. We did not let the world mislead itself by not allowing UN inspectors into our country. We did not round up and kill thousands of our own citizens. So thank you, Professor, but I will continue to think of December 7, 1941 as a day that will live in infamy, just as I will consider September 11, 2001 the same.