July 2010 – A Review

Once again, I got snowed under (if I can use this expression in July) on a couple of engineering projects, so here’s a brief rundown of a few happenings in the past few weeks.

Even with congressional approval at an all-time low of 11%, it appears big national money and voter amnesia may still win out this fall, as both John McCain and Harry Reid have now taken leads in their respective states of Arizona and Nevada.

In the “sacrifice is only for the common folks” department, John Kerry, who repeatedly voted to raise taxes in Congress, has moored his new multi-million dollar yacht in Newport, RI to avoid a six-figure state tax that he (along with Ted Kennedy) helped increase on the other citizens of Massachusetts. Mr Kerry’s chief of staff claimed that the Senator is only berthing his yacht in Rhode Island due to maintenance considerations rather than to avoid paying the tax.

Similarly, Al Gore, after calling for his subjects to decrease their carbon footprints while he maintains his mansion in Tennessee, has now purchased a nine million dollar ocean-view manor in Santa Barbara. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Doesn’t it seem just like yesterday when he was declaring that the California coast would soon be under 20 feet of water due to global warming? Due to Mr Gore recent massage scandal, he’s been keeping a low profile on the climate change issue, but Mr Kerry appears to have picked up the baton. Last week, he told a town hall meeting that the Arctic would be ice-free in 5-10 years. On the bright side, this will give him some additional ocean on which to sail his yacht.

Our final entry in this department, which could also be called “do as I say, not as I do”, is FLOTUS Michelle Obama taping all those commercials urging people to come on down to the Gulf Coast to spend their vacation and money, before jetting off with BHO for a Maine vacation. Meanwhile, their family dog was flying in on his own private jet. As Publius’ Forum notes:

As the rest of us toil on the unemployment line, as millions of Americans find their retirement accounts dwindling, their hours at work cut, and their pay scale trimmed, King Barack and Queen Michelle are flying their little doggie, Bo, on his own special jet airplane for his own little vacation adventure.

Now, Ms Obama is planning a five day trip to Spain during the first week of August for a "private visit in the company of old friends", reserving about 30 rooms at a five-star hotel on Costa del Sol. This will precede another a ten day vacation at Martha’s Vineyard.

Changing subjects, remember the op-ed that Rep Bart Stupak wrote in the Washington Post back in March on why he withdrew his demand for federal funding of abortions to be taken out of healthcare as a condition for his vote:

Therefore, I and other pro-life Democrats struck an agreement with President Obama to issue an executive order that would ensure all Hyde Amendment protections would apply to the health-care reform bill. No, an executive order is not as strong as the statutory language we fought for at the start. We received, however, an “ironclad” commitment from the president that no taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions.

As we’ve seen this month, both Pennsylvania and Maryland received federal tax dollars to pay for abortions under the new health care law. At least Mr Stupak still has his airport grant money.

Finally, Mr Obama is now officially in campaign mode for the 2010 elections and the strategy continues to be “blame Bush and claim things could be worse”. He repeatedly claims that the economy would be much worse without his policies, and paints those of his opponents as “job killers”. He counts on the media to continue to cover up the facts, such as the two million new jobs created the final year that the Republicans controlled congress, and that the “Bush recession” only began after Ms Pelosi, Mr Reid and their fellow Dems took control of congress. The next few months will tell whether or not this strategy will work.