Well, Nero allegedly fiddled while Rome burned. Why shouldn't Obama croon while the American economy collapses?

This news story is definitely at variance with President Barack Obama's 

State of the Union Lies ... er ... I mean speech on Tuesday.

Fed Signals That a Full Recovery Is "Years Away"

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Published: January 25, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve, declaring that the economy would need   help for years to come, said Wednesday it would extend by 18 months the period that it plans to hold down interest rates in an effort to spur growth.
The Fed said that it now planned to keep short-term interest rates near zero until late 2014, continuing the transformation of a policy that began as shock therapy in the winter of 2008 into a six-year campaign to increase spending by rewarding borrowers and punishing savers.

The economy expanded “moderately” in recent weeks, the Fed said in a statement released after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, but jobs were still scarce, the housing sector remained deeply depressed and Europe’s flirtation with crisis could undermine the nascent domestic recovery.
The Fed forecast growth of up to 2.7 percent this year, up to 3.2 percent next year and up to 4 percent in 2014, but at the end of that period, the central bank projected that the recovery would still be incomplete. Workers would still be looking for jobs, and businesses would still be looking for customers.

Truth in Taxation: Why 46 percent of American households will pay no federal individual income tax for fiscal year 2011

‎"About 46 percent of American households will pay no federal individual income tax in 2011, roughly half of them because of structural features of the income tax that provide basic exemptions for subsistence level income and for dependents. The other half are nontaxable because tax expenditures— special provisions of the tax code that benefit selected taxpayers or activities—wipe out tax liabilities and, in the case of refundable credits, result in net payments from the government. 
Most important of those tax expenditures are provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families with children. While those factors particularly affect lower-income households, different provisions eliminate taxes for other households. Itemized deductions and credits for children and education are more important for middle-income households, while the relatively few high-income nontaxable households benefit most from above-the-line and itemized deductions and reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends."

~ 'Why Some Units Pay No Income Tax," abstract, Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, available at http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/1001547-Why-No-Income-Tax.pdf

Warren Buffet's Secretary Likely Makes Between $200,000 and $500,000/Year
by Paul Roderick Gregory, forbes.com contributor

Insofar as Buffet (like Mitt Romney) earns income primarily from capital gains, which are taxed at 15 percent (and according to Obama need to be raised for reasons of fairness), we need to determine how much income a taxpayer like Bosanek must earn in order to pay an average tax rate above fifteen percent. This is easy to do.

The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an adjusted gross income between$100,000 and $200,000 pay an average rate of twelve percent. This is below Buffet’s rate; so she must earn more than that. Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanke a salary above two hundred thousand.

....................................................................................................

I have nothing against Debbie Bosanke earning a half million or even more. Buffet is a major player in the world economy. His secretary deserves good compensation. At her income, however, she is scarcely the symbol of injustice that Obama wishes her to project. [More]

Sheesh! Obama can't even come up with NEW lies!

The Truth vs Obama's State of the Union Lies

“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.

“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did."

~ Governor Mitch Daniels (R-I) in the Republican response to the president's State of the Union Speech, excerpt

The Nerve of This Man

Obama Asks Congress for Debt Limit Hike

President Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday of his intent to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he hadpostponed the request to give lawmakers more time to consider the action.

Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation’s debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.

In a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama wrote that ”further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.”

In other words, we overspent and need to borrow another cool TRILLION dollars from our Chinese masters to cover the difference. Is this what it's going to be form now on? Borrowing a trillion dollars every year "to meet existing commitments?" What commitments are those anyway? More money for bankrupt "green energy" companies that happened to be owned by Obama's campaign bundlers?

Welcome to Barack Hussein Obama's AMERIKA!

Homeland Security Watches Twitter, Social Media

A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards."

Alarmed yet? You should be.

Hope and Lies

Guantanamo Closure Hopes Fade as Prison Turns 10

Open for 10 years on Wednesday, the prison seems more established than ever. The deadline set by President Obama to close Guantanamo came and went two years ago. No detainee has left in a year because of restrictions on transfers, and indefinite military detention is now enshrined in U.S. law.

Gotta have a place to indefinitely imprison all those American citizens who are arrested without charge or trial, don't you know.

Maybe if she weren't so ... well ... angry.

Michelle Obama Says People Have Inaccurately Cast Her As An "Angry Black Woman"

(AP) (AP/CBS News) WASHINGTON -- First lady Michelle Obama is challenging assertions she's forcefully imposed her will on White House aides and says people have inaccurately tried to portray her as "some kind of angry black woman."

Mrs. Obama tells CBS News she hasn't read New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's new book that characterizes her as a behind-the-scenes force in the Executive Mansion, whose strong views often draw her into conflict with President Barack Obama's top advisers.

It's damage control time and a willing sycophant corporate media is eager to give Angry Black Woman in Chief Michelle Obama a venue for rebuttal of every damning information about her angry and confrontational behavior revealed in Kantor's book "The Obamas."

0bama in His Own Lying Words

Defend Your Freedoms!

Senator Rand Paul Defends American Citizens Against Indefinite Detention

Obama’s Signing Statement on NDAA: I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t

0bama's Imperial Presidency

"As Americans look upon the treacherous legislation passed under NDAA 2012, it it should first be remembered that the very bill President Obama threatened to veto was controversial due to the language the Obama White House itself pressured Congress to add to the bill, according to Sen. Carl Levin.

"Second, signing statements are not law, and are not a Constitutional power granted to the executive branch; any reassuring (or troubling) language within has no binding status– though it may shed light on the intent/character of the chief executive. However, the statement itself does not indicate any deviation of intent from the law as written and signed."

Didn't 0bama use to criticize Bush for "signing statements?" What a hypocrite! Besides, 0bama doesn't guarantee our constitutional rights. He can't say out of one side of his lying mouth that he has the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without evidence, charges or a trial while saying out of the other side of his lying mouth that he won't.

American Citizens off to Guantanamo

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Bill Into Law

“Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today. Thankfully, we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.”

~ Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director, on 0bama's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDDA)

Inquiring Minds Want to Know ...

The Slaves

Praxagora: "I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; [...] I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all. [...]"

Blepyrus: "But who will till the soil?"

Praxagora: "The slaves."

Aristophanes
(tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus)
Ecclesiazusae, line 590-591 & 597-598 & 651