JAMES SIMPSON: Rick Sanchez made a bald-faced lie on CNN yesterday in defense of President Obama’s budget numbers. He was attempting to methodically debunk Republican claims about Obama budgets, arguing that most of the trillions in spending came on Republicans’ watch and Obama just added a little bit.

He started by claiming that Obama came into office facing a $1.2 trillion budget. Obama makes the same claim. Actually, the deficit for 2008, Bush’s last year in office, was $459 billion. Bush does share responsibility for TARP though, so you could say that Obama was only partially responsible for 2009’s deficit, even though his proposals added $787 billion in new spending through the failed “Stimulus,” which was not supported by Republicans.

I know, I know. It was all Bush’s fault, so Obama can’t be blamed even if he had to shell out $800 billion of our dollars to save his Wall Street and union friends. In fact, Bush and the Republicans do share some of the blame for the financial crisis, but it was a sin of omission, not commission. The truth is that the financial crisis was the direct result of a half-century of Democrat meddling with the housing market. Bush and the Republicans failed in that they did not push hard enough for needed reform.

But however you want to argue it for 2009, Obama owns the 2010 and 2011 budgets all alone. FY 2010 included the largest regular budgetary increase in recent history, a whopping 15 percent higher than Bush’s 2009 proposal. According to Obama’s 2011 budget, deficits for 2010 and 2011 are projected to be $1.6 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively. And while Obama continues to call for health care reform, no spending for it is included in the 2011 budget.

The 2011 budget does, however, include an assumed $150 billion in deficit reduction from passage of healthcare reform. Who is he kidding? This is the same smoke and mirrors game the Senate played in claiming “savings” from overhauling healthcare. Don’t believe it! The true cost will be in the trillions. Read more…

CHAPPAQUIDDICK, MA: Tuesday’s earthquake in Massachusetts has brought to mind an incident now over 40 years old. Some visitors to our YouTube channel have reminded us about it with their comments on our video “The Truck That Ran Over Socialism.” It seems appropriate that I comment on the tragic drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne as I was there shortly after it happened on July 19, 1969. I believe there is a lesson yet to be learned regarding that tragic evening, a lesson worthy of our attention here at the NIP.

The Drowning. While vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard Ted Kennedy attended a party. He left the party early with a young girl, Mary Jo Kopechne, a staff member who served on his brother Robert’s 1968 presidential campaign. Kennedy took the unusual step of taking the car keys from his chauffeur, leaving his driver to fend for himself. Kennedy, driving back home with Mary Jo, left a paved road and made an abrupt turn onto a bumpy dirt road leading to a secluded beach. It was a dark night, with less than 1/4 moon for light. Kenney drove a considerable distance until he inadvertently drove off a bridge over what amounted to a drainage ditch for Poucha Pond. The car capsized and Kennedy escaped while Kopechne drowned.

I visited Chappaquiddick not long after the accident back in the summer of 1969. As an eye witness to the conditions of the roads at the time, I can personally testify that there is no way that Kennedy was “lost” or made a bad turn. The road was very bumpy (a condition not reported by anyone as far as I know). This road was barely a one lane dirt track. It was such a contrast from the 2 lane paved road that no one could have made the mistake of following that route and thinking it was leading back to the ferry for Edgartown.

Kennedy drove some distance on the dirt road before reaching the bridge, a distance long enough that both he and Mary Jo would have realized that they were on “the wrong road.” It took Kennedy to a beach that, even on the sunny day when I was there, was very secluded. That midnight Kennedy knew it would be deserted. Read more…

ST. BARTS & KAILUA: What’s up with Hollywood that it has such a fascination for dictators? Bill Maher articulated it often when he has shown his impatience with the US political process. He seems to be enamored with the efficiency of a despot’s rule.

Apparently we can add Microsoft founder Paul Allen to the list of starry-eyed admirers as he was seen partying last week with Beyonce and Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s son Hannibal:

Popstar Beyonce Knowles reportedly performed at a party thrown by Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi’s son Hannibal, notorious for violence against women, for almost an hour on New Year’s Eve, New York Post reported.

The 28-year-old singer performed five songs in a sexy black leotard at the Nikki Beach club on St. Barts in front of a crowd that included her husband Jay-Z, Usher, Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Lindsay Lohan…

Just a week earlier, on Christmas Day, Hannibal, 33 — also known as Moutassim — allegedly attacked his wife, Aline Skaf, in his suite at Claridge’s in London. Three of his security staff were arrested for obstructing police. Skaf was reportedly hospitalized with a broken nose while Hannibal was whisked away in a diplomatic car.  New York Post

Hannibal (well-named) gets whisked away with diplomatic immunity while his wife is hospitalized. Then a few days later he jets to St. Barts and parties with Paul Allen, Beyonce, and other celebrities.  Despotic rulers love their glamour and their luxury and celebrities love to party with them.

While we’re at it why not compare George W. Bush’s Christmas holidays at his own home with Obama’s Christmas holidays? For the last two Christmases Obama has vacationed at a $4,000 a night villa in Hawaii while he also rents two adjacent villas for his family and friends. Let’s not forget the transportation costs to and from Hawaii for his entourage, and housing for his security staff. Kailua is known as the most beautiful beach in Hawaii and a traditional vacationing spot for royalty. What a better spot for our own royalty to soak away their stress while we are being subjected to attempted suicide bombers? Surely none of his loyal subjects complained when he didn’t even bother to make a statement about the bombing for three days.

The left’s appetite for luxury is never satiated, along with their demand that the rest of us fund them in their extravagance.

MSNBC: We’re delighted with Chris Matthews and the NBC network. First it was the tingling up Matthews’ leg. Now it’s his apparent love affair revealed last Tuesday with “one of our heroes from the past, Saul Alinsky.” We here at the NIP wonder just who exactly he is talking about when he says “our heroes.” Is he lumping himself in as a pal of Obama, since Alinsky is one of Barack’s heroes too? Or is he just talking about his pals at NBC? The clip below came less than a week after he pronounced he was a liberal (surprise, surprise):

You know how you know you are going to win if you pass anything [regarding healthcare reform]? The Republicans will know they have lost…Let them keep score and it’s easy. It’s complicated when liberals get to keep score. We`re always arguing. Well, I’m a liberal, too. Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters

How very brave of him to come out as a liberal! Now in the prevarication business this is news. It used to be that journalists (what’s journalism?) used to pride themselves on objective reporting. Now apparently Matthews has come out of the closet. No objectivity here, just out and out agenda-advancement and propaganda-pushing.

Now Saul Alinsky was no Mao, but Matthews is a lot like Anita Dunn who loved to quote Mao. Alinsky is considered the founder of American rabble-rousing, a radical seeking to bring down our Constitutional government. And if Matthews helps him do it, we guess that will put the tingle up Chris’s other leg.

Yeah, this is real Hardball all right…

BETHLEHEM: Next to Easter, today marks Christendom’s most holy celebration. It is the day when Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the one to whom Christians turn for salvation in this world and the next. It is a by far the most joyous day of the Christian calendar.

Most Christians around the world are oblivious to the stark contrast this particular Christmas offers with Islam. This year Christmas runs headlong into Shiite Islam’s most mournful ceremony, Ashura. The Day of Ashura is observed on the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar. Muharram is one of the four sacred months of the year in which fighting is prohibited. Apparently this only means a holiday from fighting among Muslims themselves, as it appears it is always open season on Christians:

The deadly Christmas Eve ambush of a Christian bus driver in Iraq Thursday and a bombing earlier this week targeting a 1,200-year-old church are driving Iraq’s few remaining Christians quietly underground in the hours before the holy day begins.

Christmas has bumped into Shiite Islam’s most mournful ceremony this year, forcing Iraqi Christians to shutter their homes and hide the signs of their celebration…

Unidentified gunmen ambushed a Christian man in Mosul on Thursday, shooting him after pulling him from the bus he was driving, police said…

That shooting came on the heels of a deadlier attack Wednesday, when a bomb hidden in sacks of flour exploded outside a historic church in Mosul, killing two people and wounding five.

“Instead of performing Christmas Mass in this church, we will be busy removing rubble and debris,” said Hazim Ragheed, a priest at the Mar Toma Church. Fox News

Read more…

All Hail Caesar Obama

Brooklyn, NY: Chris Matthews, move over. We now have an even more devoted follower of The One. We’re speaking of Rocco Landesman, the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Speaking at a NEA conference on October 21, 2009 Rocco Landesman brings clarity and focus to the contributions of our new President.

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.

We guess pandering to the Chief Executive is what qualifies one to rise to the chairmanship of the NEA. Since Obama has the biggest checkbook, it probably makes sense. But we here at the NIP who operate on an infinitesimal budget compared to the NEA think we do better on a lot less money than the NEA, at least in the critical thinking department. Let’s take a look at it. Read more…

DENVER, Colorado: Tea Party protestors across the country descended last Saturday on TV and newspaper offices protesting media bias. Billed as “Can you hear us now?” events, ordinary citizens drew attention to the bias in national media. As reported by LookingAtTheLeft.com, media outlets largely ignored the protestors in Denver. Instead of actually interviewing protestors outside of Channel 7 the media hacks actually interviewed the counter-protestors.

Also interesting to note is EL MARCO’s eye witness accounts of events where official attendance tallies were over one million. By his experience the same size crowd gathered in Washington, DC on September 12th. For the full story visit LookingAtTheLeft.com.