* The White House website still touts Obama’s pledge to halve the deficit. It was $1.3 trillion, and for the fiscal year of 2012, the deficit is projected to be $1.3 trillion. I would check the math on whether $1.3 trillion is one half of $1.3 trillion, but my calculator doesn’t accept numbers that big.

So he didn’t divide the deficit by two, but he did divide it by one. That’s halfway there.

* I was thinking: Isn’t good economic news bad for Obama at this point? Right now, it’s starting to look like the economy is doing better, but a lot of that is because people are so discouraged that they stopped looking for work thus taking themselves out of the unemployment statistics. That gives an artificially low unemployment rate, but if word gets out that the economy is doing better, those people may start looking for work again and suddenly unemployment will go up again because of more people in the workforce. So, best strategy for Obama may be to keep the economy hurting — which he’s much better at than helping it anyway.

* There’s a huge protest at U.S. base in Afghanistan over rumors that a Koran was burned. Things must be going great in that country such that they have no other problems to deal with other than rumors of a book being burned. No wonder things are so awesome in the Middle East!

* Apparently a teenaged girl was knocked up by Hitler. Expect this to enter the contraceptive debate. Of course, you may believe contraceptives will protect your daughter from having Hitler’s love child, but you probably should raise your daughter in a way where she wouldn’t sleep with Hitler in the first place.

* Dick Cheney is lobbying in Maryland for gay marriage. And did you know that the Koch brothers are also pro-gay marriage? So there you have it: The nexus of right-wing evil all in favor of gay marriage. So what’s the chance gay marriage is a right-wing trap that will lead to higher profits for oil companies and more baby seals being clubbed? 99.9%.

* Mexico put up a billboard at their U.S. border saying no more weapons — a jab at America. I’m just surprised the Mexican government functioned long to enough to erect a billboard.

* Wisdom of the Day from Dan Cronin:

Sure, angels can fly, but don’t forget, they live in constant fear of scalpers who want to turn their hair into pasta.

* Here’s another article to file under “Why again are they called ‘progressives’?” It’s a fearful left-wing article about home schooling. Basically the conclusion is that everyone needs to stick to the current school system because that’s how we’ve been doing things and it shouldn’t be questioned and though it’s not great we need to subject our kids to it anyway and just hope eventually it will get better. It’s about as mindlessly dogmatic to an old system as you’ll ever see. As I’ve said, whatever the left accuses us of, that’s what they’re doing — even when they accuse us of being mindlessly conservative.

* Joe Kennedy III is going to run for Barney Frank’s seat. I think his slogan is going to be: “I’m a Kennedy; I’m entitled to this.”

Anyone who willingly elects a Kennedy shouldn’t show his face among fellow Americans. The whole point of a democracy is that we wouldn’t be forced to be ruled by a line of incompetent nitwits like in a monarchy, but for some reason some people willingly subjugate themselves to this. That’s un-American. When Big Fat Teddy K was chucked in the sea after the Navy SEALs broke into his compound and took him out, that should have been the end of that.

* Decrepit old white man questions Marco Rubio’s authenticity as a Latino. Here’s that patronizing racism I was talking about that’s so prevalent these days and not enough people are speaking out against it. You have Harry Reid, old racist loser, thinking he can characterize other people based on their skin color since supposedly he’s the caring liberal and that’s his privilege. People should be yelling him, “Why don’t you and your racist friends get out of our face before we break your hip, grandpa!” But some people cheer this on. And that’s why racism is still a problem.

* Canada is ending gun registration. Apparently it cost billions of dollars and never once helped catch a criminal — useless and expensive, the perfect left-wing program.

Views on guns have moved in one direction in America in the past fifty years — towards a stronger belief in freedom — and it’s nice to see that maybe that’s finally starting to move to other countries to. Too much of the world is backwards on this issue.

* According to Nancy Pelosi, actual rights like freedom of religion are less than made up rights like the right to have someone else paying for your contraception.

A lot of people think this whole thing is a distraction from the larger issue of the debt, economy, and jobs, but you have to remember there is no bigger issue in America than freedom of religion… at least there shouldn’t be. If we don’t have that, the rest is worthless. People didn’t come over on the Mayflower because they were escaping debt.

That’s probably how the first colony on Mars will be founded, though.

* Israel says the nuclear sanctions against Iran aren’t working. Are they getting ready to attack? Maybe. If I were them, I would totally bomb all the countries around me all the time. They all hate Israel so much already, it won’t make a noticeable difference in anyone’s attitude about them. That is one way we could get a much more modern, peaceful Middle East — have the whole area be conquered by and run by Israel.

* Wisdom of the Day from Ken Jennings:

“Bros before hoes.” –the dictionary

* Apparently there is 50 square miles of Idaho where I can commit felonies unpunished. Good to know. Hope there are things to burn there. My favorite felony is arson. What felony would you commit?

* So Obama is still pushing those Truth Teams. I notice they have a long list of lies they’re trying to fight, but one is “The Truth Teams hunt down people they don’t believe are telling the truth and drag those people away from their homes in the middle of the night.” But instead of listing that as “False”, it just has the label “Unverified.”

* There’s this controversy where Dana Milbank said, “The chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos.” And the White House’s campaign manager retweeted it. And then some people said that’s racist.

I don’t really care about the “chimichanga” part as being racist, but it’s the underlying sentiment that’s the harmful racism. Once again you have liberals who are very desperate to force people into groups based on race. To say the GOP has nothing to offer Latinos is to say that one race all has a single monolithic viewpoint. There are no individuals, only groups, and liberals will tell you what they should think.

The basic view of a liberal on race is that white people are bad and racist, but a caring white person — much like themselves — knows what’s good for minorities even more than they do. And the minorities who get into the Democrat’s leadership seem to adopt the same view; they’re the smart one who needs to carefully care for and herd the dummy minorities who can’t take care of themselves. This is the most prevalent and harmful for of racism we have today, and at some point some people need to take a stand against if we ever really want to get past racism.

But the Democrats don’t want to get past racism. It’s the glue holding their party together.

* So a guy from Megadeth has endorsed Rick Santorum. It’s only interesting in how much some on the left are freaking out; they really don’t like apostasy in the entertainment industry.

Still, shouldn’t someone from a group called “Megadeth” endorse someone who is pro-abortion?

* Scientists have discovered a new chameleon that’s only as big as a match head. It makes me wonder: Why would you need to be both a chameleon and super small? Isn’t the super small all you need to keep predators from seeing you? Why does it also need to be able to camouflage? Why doesn’t it need to hide so much? What’s it up to?

Man, there could be one in my house right now and I wouldn’t even know it. WHAT’S IT WANT?!!!

* Wisdom of the Day from John Scalzi:

When you really think about it, “sweater” is really an unappealing name for an article of clothing.

* IN THE MAIL: I just received the book Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun. It’s all about the development and spike in popularity among police and civilians of that ugly, ugly extremely reliable gun (I myself own a Glock 17). Looks interesting; I’ll definitely give it a read.

* Obama says the fight on the payroll tax cut isn’t over, as he hasn’t quite gotten the political mileage he was hoping out of it. Apparently, he was expecting the Republicans insist on him actually budgeting for it, but Obama doesn’t like budgets and numbers which are all racist. But the Republicans are apparently going to totally cave. Maybe after seeing the $1.33 trillion deficit in Obama’s budget, they were all like, “This is all pointless. Who cares now. Let’s just spend and spend and spend, and I’m going to get some scotch and drink and drink and drink.”

Actually, the quickest way to a small government now may be to just spend so much the government eventually collapses on itself and the whole country is thrown into chaos. And then we rebuild from the ashes.

Smart power!

* One of the reasons Obama cited as why people need the payroll tax cut is that gas prices are so high. That leads to his best argument of all: “People really need this tax cut because their president — me — is an incompetent idiot, so everyone is basically on their own.”

* Obama is going to end dozens of business tax breaks. Is this going to hurt the economy by putting more strain on businesses? No, as Timothy Geithner says, “We think they can handle it. We think they can afford it.” Oh, so the guy who can’t figure out how to use TurboTax is pretty sure about other companies’ financial situations. Why do such useless, inept people have such influence on our economy? Where did this system break down? I blame childhood obesity — primarily because fat kids are fun to yell at.

Fat kids! ::shakes fist::

* A school ordered a preschooler to buy the cafeteria lunch because they didn’t think the mother’s lunch was healthy enough. Now, you’d think that you’d be able to decided what your kid could eat, but that’s what they do in a free country which you have read about in science fiction. But in a nanny state, useless idiots make all your decisions for you. If you want to feed your own kid, then I guess you can just join a militia and live in a compound, you right-wing nut.

* New movie coming out – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Liberals don’t like first Republican president Lincoln because he took people away from guaranteed jobs, food, and shelter and gave them horrible horrible freedom instead. Instead of a war, couldn’t Lincoln just compromised and gave everybody free contraceptives?

* Obama says his 2013 budget reflects tough choices. With a $1.33 trillion deficit, what were the choices?

“I could spend an obscene amount of money or a buttload of money. It’s like Sophie’s Choice times a million!”

Oh, here’s one of the choices: Out of a budget of $3.8 trillion, Obama decided to remove $20 million for the highly successful D.C. voucher program. Sorry poor kids; you have to stick to failing schools run by uncaring unions. But hey, Obama will make sure you get free contraception, and isn’t that all that poor people really need?

* There are further subsidies for wealthy buyers of electric cars, though. You know how liberals are always accusing Republicans of only caring for the rich at the expense of the poor? Whatever liberals accuse others of doing, that’s what they’re doing. Always.

* Justice Breyer was robbed by a machete-wielding intruder. In my utopia, Supreme Court justices would be threatened with machetes constantly. It would keep them from getting too arrogant.

* I don’t get the logic of the Greek riots.

“We can’t afford all these entitlements, so we’re going to cut them.”

“Then we’ll riot and burn businesses!”

“Well, since a bunch of businesses have been burned and our economy harmed, WE EXTRA CAN’T AFFORD ENTITLEMENTS!”

The rioters should just try a more relaxing camping out in front of banks like OWS. Doesn’t achieve anything, but it apparently makes them feel like they’re doing something while being a lot less intrusive.

* Samuel L. Jackson says he voted for Obama because he’s black. Well, the first step to ending racism is to fess up to it, so bravo. Still, I have to say, enough is enough! I have had it with these @#$% racists in this @#$% election!

* John Hawkins has a bunch of pictures from CPAC. I also found out that IMAO was mentioned at CPAC, for we were nominated for best humor blog… but totally didn’t win.

One of these days, I need to start attending CPAC and acting like an actual pundit or something. I do write in a newspaper and am a published author, so I’m like totally a big deal now. Maybe I could give a talk at the next one on being awesome. Hopefully they have a stage that will accommodate puppets.

* Wisdom of the Day from Andy Borehol:

time to update my bog [ writes 400-word opinion about lana del rey in the mud with a mudstick ]

* My state, Idaho, is not afraid of wild gorillas.

* Obama has a new budget proposal! And he projects a deficit of $1.33 trillion. He’s getting really serious about tackling that debt, isn’t he? But we have to spend that extra money to get all the great… I have no idea where all that money goes. Apparently, the more awful government gets, the more expensive it is to keep up. Maybe we should pay for less awful government, but I’m not politician so what do I know?

* Obama is going to set up Truth Teams. I assume their purpose will be to hunt down and destroy any truths they can find as those could be quite destructive to Obama’s reelection chances. If people actually look at Obama’s performance and ability and the results he’s obtained, he has little chance or reelection. Thus his Truth Teams will eliminate truths when they find them and try and muddy things up so people might actually considered reelecting the miserable failure. Truth is another one of those things like freedom that gets in the way of truly important things like free contraception.

* Mitt Romney won the CPAC straw poll. Does that mean anything? Probably not, but it’s better than not winning.

It looks like the only hope left for a not-Romney is Santorum… either through him winning the primary or forcing a brokered convention. It’s not a huge chance of happening, but it’s not a remote one either.

Still don’t get how we dropped the ball on this primary, though, with all the conservative enthusiasm to take down Obama and finally do something about the debt. If we want to get things done, we’re always best working outside of politics. Nothing there but heartache and disappointment and sociopaths.

* Andrew Breitbart claims he has video of Obama in college. Yes, the mysterious college years of which we’ve still never seen the transcripts. So what’s the chance Obama was some complete screw up in college opposed to American values… because that would be totally different than what he is now.

* Apparently there’s an obesity problem in the military. It’s probably all that lazy sniping where you just lie on the ground hundreds of yards away from the enemy and shoot them. We just need more hand to hand combat. If our soldiers had to stop lying around and actually run those hundreds of yards to hack the enemy to pieces with katanas, then everyone would be in better shape. Plus katanas are awesome. The military should have those.

* This has to be the greatest indictment of liberalism yet: It makes you believe the Star Wars prequels are better than the original trilogy.

* New Crowder video — first in a while — with him rapping about the situation our country has found itself in:

There’s a lot we need to change in this country. I guess rapping would be the first step.

* Talking about changing the country, I’ve finished the first draft of my book on how to fix all the problems in America. I’m excited for you all to see it, but it will still probably be a while. Get pumped!

* So Santorum is doing well in the polls. And what does this mean? It means we have a three way race, i.e., a chance for a brokered convention.

A lot of people are hoping that will be our cure-all, allowing us to finally pick the none of the above, but isn’t going to be the Republican establishment making the pick? What are the chances they’ll come up with the RINOiest ticket ever?

“Hey? Do you think Arlen Specter might want to still run as a Republican? What if we told him Chuck Hagel would be his running mate?”

Everyone is thinking we’ll get someone like Mitch Daniels, but I don’t know. Risky move. But the alternative is Romney, Gingrich, or Santorum. So there are no bad choices. Only awful ones.

* Whales at Sea World aren’t slaves. A judge ruled that. For reals.

I hope the judge dismissed the case by yelling, “Shut up, hippie!” and punching the plaintiff in the face.

* George Lucas is now claiming that Han Solo never shot first in Star Wars. It’s like he’s trying to do special editions of our memories now.

Man, I wish George Lucas would just hand over Star Wars to someone else now. Think of the awesome movie someone who actually knows what makes Star Wars great could make if George Lucas were out of the way. One day, someone will be able to make another great Star Wars movie. We may have to wait until George Lucas dies though. Hopefully he doesn’t come back as a Force ghost to continue giving his creative input.

BTW, if you go see The Phantom Menace in 3D, you are part of the problem and are my enemy.

* Wisdom of the Day from Dave Holmes:

Obviously, the main reason I was initally so disappointed by The Phantom Menace was that I couldn’t tell which items were in the foreground.

* Still chugging away at my new book. Hope to get the first draft done (and a lot of pressure off my back) this weekend. Are you excited? You should be excited. But you won’t see it for a while. Until then, by another copy of Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything.

* Obama is apparently dumber than we thought. He knew that forcing religious organizations to pay for contraception — and abortifacients — would be controversial, but he thought it would play out as, “This is about contraception; no one finds contraception controversial anymore.” Of course, it’s played out as religious liberty issue, which is huge deal to Americans. But Mr. Bitter Clinger isn’t really in tune with Americans, so it caught him by surprise.

Obama: no useful experience or abilities, arrogant, and completely out of touch with the concerns of regular Americans — I’m starting to think he might be a bad president.

* Government dependence has shot up 23% under Obama. He probably considers that a success — “Look at how many more people government is helping!” — but he’s an idiot. And now that’s just another obstacle to cutting government; you get people dependent on it, and then they’ll freak out like a guy going through withdrawal if you try to take it away.

We have a lot of problems with our government in this country, and we’re not going to fix it without some sort of long term plan. Does anyone running actually offer that?

* Liberals now love drone strikes and keeping Gitmo open. Ends up all the things they screamed about most were just partisan bluster. Who could have guessed that… other than anyone who has ever dealt with the left before.

What are the core beliefs that liberals have that they will turn on their own side if a Democrat goes against them? That babies should be aborted? I think that’s about it. Basically just any view they feel to guilty about to ever walk back on.

* Apparently we might be going to war with Syria. Do they have oil? I think that’s only okay to do when the country doesn’t have anything of interest to the United States.

And while we’re in Syria… Iran is right there. Might as well get to it now and save some money. It’s like when they film a movie and its sequels back to back — it’s way cheaper that way.

* The iPad 3 will reportedly come out in March. I still have an iPad 1, which compared to the new stuff now looks like something a caveman would use to beat to death a woolly mammoth. I’ve also saved up my allowance (SarahK gives me an allowance every month if I’m good) to upgrade my tablet. So wow me, Apple. I’m ready this time. Make me a believer.

* I have a new New York Post column on why Occupy Wall Street is the greatest political movement and will be around forever.

Nothing ruins a political movement like achieving its goals. No one wants to keep yelling and waving signs after they get what they want. OWS wisely avoided this pitfall. The Occupiers roared in with nonspecific anger — about such things as Wall Street, with its walls and its streets, and the rich, with their money they got somehow — but it never set any actual goals.

* So not only did Rick Santorum win the caucuses in Minnesota and Missouri, but he also won Colorado. Yesterday, Intrade had Romney at a 98% chance of winning Colorado. No one saw this coming. I’m still not sure what’s going on. Someone explain this to me. Who is this Santorum? Where did he come from? Why are people voting for him?

Apparently, Santorum has like no money and no big name endorsements, so who knows if he can keep this up. But this has to be scaring Romney. People just really don’t like him and want another viable choice. And finally it’s Santorum’s turn in the spotlight. They say he’s a big government conservative, but the other option, Romney, is a big government not conservative.

* So what happened to Newt? Is he still around? I guess there’s a limit to how many times you can be frontrunner and lose it.

* And I’m out of blogging time. Working hard on my new book that will solve all of America’s problems, though. I should be back to my normal blogging capacity next week.

* Oh yeah, feel like I should mention something on the Prop 8 decision. No time for meaningful commentary — which IMAO is always abundant with — but I think the best way to keep people from tinkering around with marriage until it’s completely asinine is to get it out of government.

* Obama says he’s getting better at being president and deserves a second term. Well, for the first claim, maybe he is getting better. He had the advantage of starting so poorly, it was hard for him to do any worse. As for the second part, it’s more a question of whether we as a country deserve him. And since we haven’t genocided anyone recently, I’m going to say “No.”

* Is Santorum going to finally have his day? Polls show he could win Minnesota and Missouri while coming in second in Colorado. The party hasn’t really given him much consideration — despite technically winning Iowa — making him pretty much the only one not to be a frontrunner yet. His problems are charges he’s a big government conservative, he comes off as whiny sometimes, and a couple terms as Senator by itself isn’t much of a qualification to be a president. But he’s stuck around, so he has stick-to-it-tiveness. And he’s not Romney. Maybe that’s enough.

What’s this “brokered convention” thing again?

* So Iran apparently has an army of ninja women. That does seem like the appropriate first step before getting nuclear weapons. I don’t know how we skipped over it.

* So if you were looking to the New York Post for a new column by me, instead there’s one by the puppy blender. Is he moving in on my turf? His column is on Obama and rising tuition costs, and it’s not very funny so I don’t get the point of it.

* Wisdom of the Day from jon:

Madonna was super unsupportive when her dad tried to be a preacher.