Politifact: Obama pushed through a budget that is contrary to campaign pledges

While it is weakened, potentially, by a deference to short-sighted mainstream sound-bite obsessed (hit and run, drive by, smash and grab, scratch and sniff, whatever you wish to nickname it) journalism, Politifact is also going the distance to reflect comments against the tell-tale mirror of -- of all things! -- recorded facts. Something that, for one thing, TV news rarely manages to accomplish (nighttime MSNBC chatter shows, most of all are guilty of this, I opine). It is an offshoot of the Poynter Institute, both based in St. Pete, Florida.

Here, Politifact nobly nails Pres. Obama for letting the pigs run wild out of the barn. So to speak.

PolitiFact | Spending bill wasn't candidate Obama's "type", Boehner points out

Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, said Boehner meant that Obama had broken his campaign pledges, referenced on the White House Web site, to "slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public." That's a reasonable interpretation of what Boehner said.

Obama did indeed make those pledges during the campaign. Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate, pledged to eliminate earmarks and "veto every earmark pork-barrel bill," and Obama, though stopping short of that, did pledge to get tough on them.

For example, here's Obama in the first presidential debate: "Absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

Obama thoroughly proving himself contrary to who he pretended to be, on some levels, while his worst "toss-off" lines are more prophetic of his moves, it seems at this early date, than his detailed rhetoric or denials of allegations.

Are we in trouble, or WHAT?


- jR

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following the money

Following the Money in the Hot House Races

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/10/hot-race-samples.html

McCAIN V OBAMA

Expenditures Breakdown - McCain

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/expend.php?id=N00006424&cycle2=2008&goButt2.x=9&goButt2.y=7&goButt2=Submit

McCain has been stressing media (as one would expect) and travel costs. Media is not even half his costs. It is about 33%, around 1/3.

Since that's not a big deal, the media has found something else to make fun of.

Somehow, the fact that Palin and her family needed $150,000 in suitable clothes to be in front of the media makes the top end of news for three days, when $1500 suits by man-of-the-people Obama does not take that non-story out of the mix? Gag. We are such patsies. Of course, trying to suggest Obama is an outright Socialist won't work, either. (However, the Socialists do back Obama. Go figure. That's a bit creepy to me -- socialism works in very few circumstances, and beyond those it becomes the USSR, Venezuela or North Korea.)

Expenditures Breakdown - Obama

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/expend.php?id=N00009638&cycle2=2008&goButt2.x=14&goButt2.y=4&goButt2=Submit

Obama, with the gobs of bucks from chiefly Hollywood and overseas, has spent virtually HALF, as a percentage and as a dollar amount more than McCain needless to say, on media. Just short of HALF his money goes to MEDIA! Yikes! Talk about buying opinions. This is around 220% of what McCain is putting into media, and it is even far more of a percentage than McCain is using.

A bit ironic, or creepy, that Obama is these days even more of a darling of mainstream, money-hungry media -- he's handed them a hefty $$$ amount in the past quarter alone! $187 million total, which I assume is across 20-22 months.

Obama also stresses salaries -- exceeding McCain's salaries, in dollars but also as a percentage, again. Obama-Biden obviously have a much larger organization, but oddly, while percentage is so high, the overall administrative is not even close to being twice McCain's. How? You won't hear this on the news, but there's talk on the street that Obama supporters are being paid to do what volunteers used to do. And no, this is not the same talk as that from which were borne the weird "Obama is a terrorist" or "Obama is a Muslim" chattering.

Strangely, TRAVEL costs for Obama are more than double McCain's dollar amount. I guess that personal logo-emblazoned jet gets expensive.

Open Secrets is always an interesting read.

Keywording: Obama's dirty secrets or right wing assaults?

Fairly convinced at the moment that Obama will take the White House, I set myself to doing keyword searches to try to understand where things are going after January 2009. This conclusion comes to my regret as I have supported McCain for a broad group of reasons that have nothing to do with the BS this campaign has dumped in his lap, as far back into 1999.

Obama is overconfident, embraces inaction coated by colorful rhetoric (like Bill Clinton), and waits to drop his cards last. I don't like that, but I am perhaps going to have to live with it. So I figure I'd better try to figure out the deeper influences on this professional politician with hardly any real leadership experience who cannot even clearly express his reasons for attending a church for 20 years.

Thankfully, he has smarts, but that is only the wild card; I hope he has the humility and philosophical vibe to be more Kennedy than Clinton, more Eisenhower than GW Bush, more Reagan than Carter.

We'll see how this goes.

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