You want earmarks? There are lots and lots and lots of earmarks in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill coming down the road. Not that any of the people who are going to vote for it will actually read it, of course. If they did, they couldn’t look into the camera and sanctimoniously declare that, uh, you know, “There are no earmarks.”

The Modesto Bee reports:

Hill staffer Tom Jones is going through the omnibus spending bill with a fine-tooth comb, and Twittering his earmark findings, including:

* $200,000 for “Tattoo Removal Violence Prevention Outreach Program,” pg. 283;

*Maine lobster earmark in the omnibus, pg. 173;

*$5.8 million earmark for the “Ted Kennedy Institute for the Senate…for the planning and design of a building & an endowment,” pg. 232;

*and National Council of La Raza, $473,000 earmark from Sens. Bingaman and Menendez, pg. 212.

9:20 p.m.
"We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."

According to the Energy Information Administration, the official keeper of energy stats for the U.S. Department of Energy, oil imports to the U.S. fell through 2008 and demand is projected to continue to fall through 2009. --Frank Ahrens

9:23 p.m.
"Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."

That was the estimate for the size of the stimulus package President Obama asked for of more than $830 billion. But as the package was whittled down in Congress to $787 billion, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, and other outside analysts have lowered their projections to just more than 2 million jobs saved or created.
--Frank Ahrens

9:27 p.m.
"You should also know that the money you've deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system."

If you have more than $250,000 in a bank, it is not necessarily covered by federal insurance. Further, insurance companies are struggling and state guarantee pools have only limited coverage.--Frank Ahrens

9:27 p.m.
"Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks."

Banks actually created pools of loans or bought loans for profit. Bad loans did not wander onto balance sheets by themselves.--Frank Ahrens

9:41 p.m.
"As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices."

This is part of the story. The other part is trade barriers set up by foreign nations to limit the import of U.S. vehicles. South Korea, for instance, has until recently been a market largely closed to Detroit automakers, thanks to high tariffs, while Americans bought Hyundais and Kias by the thousands.--Frank Ahrens

"And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

It's doubtful that President Obama is referring here to Germany, home of Karl Friedrich Benz, inventor of the first true, four-wheel, gasoline-powered, internal-combustion-engine auto, or his contemporary, Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler, who did same. America -- Henry Ford -- invented mass production of the auto.--Frank Ahrens

From earlier in the speech
"A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway."

By pairing it with the Bush tax cuts and housing boom, Obama here casts financial deregulation as something that happened only this decade, under Bush. It is true that several key deregulatory moves occurred this decade, including a little-noticed 2004 SEC decision that allowed investment banks to greatly increase their debt levels, which helped drive their move into mortgage securities. But other key actions occurred during the 1990s, such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which took down the wall between commercial and investment banks and was supported by many Democrats in Congress and by Robert Rubin, mentor to many Obama economic advisers. Rubin also fought attempts to regulate credit default swaps, which played a big role in the current crisis.--Alec MacGillis

From earlier
"Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office."

That's going to be a tough one. President Obama wants to halve the national deficit over the next four years, largely by cutting spending in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and raising taxes. But Dave Walker, the former Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office, warns that tax hikes and slashing war spending will barely make a dent in the deficit and debt without serious reform to government entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Without these reforms, Walker argues the debt will grow to 2.5 times the gross domestic product over the next 30 years, as the Baby Boomers enter the entitlement system. --Frank Ahrens

9:54 p.m.
"In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them."

We won't know the details backing up this claim until the budget is released. But it is doubtful that Obama will be able to save very much in cutting education programs, given that the bulk of the federal education budget goes into supplementary programs such as Title I, for schools with high levels of low-income students, and IDEA, for students with special needs. In fact, his stimulus plan increased funding in both of those areas.

Secondly, Obama's promise to attack subsidies for big agribusiness is undermined by the fact that he voted for the $290 billion farm bill in 2008, which, as critics like John McCain noted, continued big corporate subsidies.--Alec MacGillis

I guess we knew he was lying . . . after all, his lips were moving!  Bobby Jindal delivered the Republican response.  His delivery was characterized by most as less than stellar.  I've seen worse (remember, Obama was speaking to an adoring throng, Jindal to a camera lens).  The ideas of smaller government, tax cuts, school choice, personal responsibility and faith in the individual, not the state are good ones.  Yes, we've heard it before but it's been a while since we practiced it.  Though it may not be a new message, neither is socialism and that's what Obama was peddling!

 

UPDATE:

Here's another fact check from apnews.

Funny, or offensive?



This one enrage you?



Or how about this one?







How's that grab you, Al?

(all of these cartoons and images were found doing a simple Google search, if you enjoy being offended, pull up Google and knock yourself out!)

WASHINGTON — Police officials here are close to making an arrest in the killing of Chandra Levy, the former federal government intern whose disappearance in 2001 ended Gary A. Condit’s Congressional career after his relationship with her was revealed, several law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said on Saturday.

Law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because charges had not been filed, identified the suspect as Ingmar Guandique, 27, who has previously denied any involvement in Ms. Levy’s disappearance and killing.

. . . No, not that one!



No, no!  Not that one either!