Crazy, or just 21st century stuff?

Honda thinks up mind-controlled robots | Crave - CNET

Obama's budget is a lie

Gregg: Budget forecast a lie - First Read - msnbc.com

He [Gregg] challenged the budget's math on cutting the debt: "When you take the deficit and quadruple it and then you cut it and half, that's like taking four steps back and two steps forward. That's not making any progress; you're still going backwards."

Gregg questioned why any foreign country would continue to buy up U.S. debt: "Because if I'm in the international marketplace, and I'm looking at this budget, I'm saying to myself, ‘Where's the discipline? Where's the containment?' There isn't any."

Obama is not so good after all?

Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth - WSJ.com

A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration's policies and their impact on peoples' lives.

American people are so simple-minded. Where were all these disapproving people on election day?

Inflation rates

Current Inflation Rates | Monthly and Yearly Chart, Graph and Table: 2000-2009 Data - US Inflation Calculator

Table of Inflation Rates by Month and Year (1999-2009)

Year	J	F	M	A	M	Jn	Jl	A	S	O	N	D	Annual
2009	0
2008	4.3	4	4	3.9	4.2	5.0	5.6	5.4	4.9	3.7	1.1	0.1	3.8
2007	2.1	2.4	2.8	2.6	2.7	2.7	2.4	2	2.8	3.5	4.3	4.1	2.8
2006	4	3.6	3.4	3.5	4.2	4.3	4.1	3.8	2.1	1.3	2	2.5	3.2
2005	3	3	3.1	3.5	2.8	2.5	3.2	3.6	4.7	4.3	3.5	3.4	3.4
2004	1.9	1.7	1.7	2.3	3.1	3.3	3	2.7	2.5	3.2	3.5	3.3	2.7
2003	2.6	3	3	2.2	2.1	2.1	2.1	2.2	2.3	2	1.8	1.9	2.3
2002	1.1	1.1	1.5	1.6	1.2	1.1	1.5	1.8	1.5	2	2.2	2.4	1.6
2001	3.7	3.5	2.9	3.3	3.6	3.2	2.7	2.7	2.6	2.1	1.9	1.6	2.8
2000	2.7	3.2	3.8	3.1	3.2	3.7	3.7	3.4	3.5	3.4	3.4	3.4	3.4
1999	1.7	1.6	1.7	2.3	2.1	2	2.1	2.3	2.6	2.6	2.6	2.7	2.2

Current Economic Indicators

U.S. Inflation Rate Forecast

Current Economic Indicators
March 10, 2009 (Close of Day)


Inflation % -0.15
GDP Growth % -6.40
Unemployment % 8.10
Gold $/oz 901.50
Oil $/bbl 45.71
Prime % 3.25

Obama The Great Orator

Obama's safety net: the TelePrompter - Carol E. Lee - POLITICO.com

Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.

Report: Obama intel pick was part of 'Iran lobby'

Report: Obama intel pick was part of 'Iran lobby'

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Phasing Out Gore

Charleston Daily Mail - West Virginia News and Sports - Don Surber - A scientist forces Al Gore to back down 

"When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years.

"The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels."

The slide has since disappeared from the show, Revkin wrote.

This was not happenstance. Pielke called Gore on his assertions. The link between manmade activity and natural disasters has not been established.

Hey Obama, where's hope?

Our Troubled Economy Is a Response to Barack Obama's Policies - WSJ.com

So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year's fourth quarter.

What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital -- financial and political -- to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

Move on. There's nothing to see here.

Buildings sprang up as donations rained down on Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion

The man who is President Obama's newly minted urban czar pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign cash from city developers whose projects he approved or funded with taxpayers' money

Ridiculous Oscar

Rushdie dubs 'Slumdog Millionaire' ridiculous

Rushdie said the central weakness of the film -- which won eight Oscars -- was that it was adapted from a book by Indian diplomat-novelist Vikas Swarup called "Q&A" which is itself "a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief."