* So Obama had a press conference Friday, and it was pretty pointless — so he’s got a perfect record so far on that. One odd thing he said though was that 80% of people support tax hikes. Really? 80% of people are looking at what we have going on in the economy and saying, “We sure need our taxes raised to fix this!” Obama is always arguing against strawmen — made up opponents who exist only in his imagination — and now I guess he’s using made up statistics to defeat them.

But that wasn’t even the craziest thing he said. He also referred to “job-killing tax cuts”. Really? Tax cuts kill jobs? Well, Obama has never worked in an actual job, so maybe in his ignorance and fear of people who do useful things for a living he thinks tax cuts somehow lead to unemployment. “Yay! More tax cuts for the rich! That means more money for me to bury in the backyard and do nothing with! Why don’t I celebrate by firing people!” Of course, Obama’s own personal experience with rich people is, “Wow, another year of accomplishing absolutely nothing. I should write another memoir about it.”

* Obama says we don’t need a balanced budget amendment, because, you know, he’s doing such a great job of balancing the budget on his own.

AMERICAN PEOPLE: “Hey, Obama, we want you to balance the budget.”

OBAMA: “Okay. Here you go. It’s balanced.”

AMERICAN PEOPLE: “Um… this still raises the deficit.”

OBAMA: “I don’t get your point.”

AMERICAN PEOPLE: “Do you even know what a balanced budget is?”

OBAMA: “I reject the false choice between…”

AMERICAN PEOPLE: “SHUT UP OR I WILL NEVER STOP SLAPPING YOU!”

Doesn’t look like we have much hope of Republicans doing it either because they always get too timid. I think the main difference between the two parties was that if there existed a button that one could press to balance the budget and make all the hard cuts need to reduce the government with no political backlash, one party one press it and the other would seal it in concrete and sink in the sea.

* According to a poll, 73% of Palestinians agree that Jews should be killed wherever they hide. Let’s give those people a state! Seriously, but can’t we make it more of a penal colony… like some isolated island they can’t get off of and only have birds and the occasional sea turtle to blow up? Just coming up with a peaceful solution, people, and when the problem involves people okay with murder, peace means isolating them away from others.

* Shelia Jackson Lee accused that the debt-ceiling debate is all about racism. Isn’t this like a modern day minstrel show these people who come on TV and accuse absolutely everything of being about racism? It’s nothing but laughable to 90% of the population now. So who is it that keeps electing Shelia Jackson Lee so she can publicly make a buffoon of her self? Must be people who really hate black people.

* Here’s some suggesting that that JFK was the worst president of the 20th century. That’s a pretty different perspective since liberals adore because they have all this folklore built up around him and conservatives tolerate him since he accepted the idea of raising revenue by lowering taxes. Plus everyone gives him some leeway for being shot in the head. Still, looking at the rest of his relatives, they’re not only people who shouldn’t have been in power, they shouldn’t have been mixing with the general population at all.

As for worst president of the 21st century, though, Obama looks to already be setting a pretty low bar for someone in the future to have to limbo under to win the title. Best president is pretty wide open, still. You just have to be better than George W. — which was way too high of a mountain to climb for Obama. Anyone want to try for that?

* So our women lost to Japan’s women at soccer, which is all the more depressing because it’s a women’s sport. It was 120 minutes with four goals (which is a lot for soccer), followed by an extremely anti-climactic shootout (not the cool kind with revolvers) that settled the matter in a couple pointless minutes. Still, if we had won the World Cup, I think that only would have extended American interest in the sport by about ten minutes, so I thought I’d give some suggestions to make the sport more interesting to Americans:

– Have the clock tick down instead of up — like it’s a real sport.

– Have Madden be a commentator. “Japan is trying to score a goal on the Americans; they’re going to want to stop that.”

– Since they can’t use their hands to move the ball, go ahead and put weapons in them.

How would you make soccer more interesting? Best answer wins… HIGH PRAISE!

* As for HIGH PRAISE for praising Nuke the News I reward it to Mxymaster who said:

I love Nuke the News so much that I love it even more than ice cream, and I love ice cream so much that I would eat it for every meal if I could, that I would eat ice cream in church if the pastor didn’t get all huffy, that I would eat a piece of newspaper off the subway floor with the words “ice cream” written on them and enjoy it. That’s how much I love Nuke the News. And ice cream.

I also like ice cream!

Myxmaster, you are the representation of all the potential man has.

Also, just for the heck of it, I’m going to award more HIGH PRAISE to Bantha_Fodder:

You’re the most awesomeness, Bantha_Fodder!

* Behold the 3D printer:

Good to know we’re making steady progress towards having Star Trek type replicators.

* So the U.S. defaulting is supposed to be super bad. Well, there is the possibility of a temporary deal out there that will prevent default… though that means this whole debate will come up again in 2012 when it will be super inconvenient to point out once more how Obama can’t control his spending. Anyway, Obama has said absolutely no to a deal that doesn’t get him past the election. So Jake Tapper called WH Press Secretary Jay Carney on this, asking whether default is really preferable to a deal that only goes to 2012. Carney said he couldn’t say which was worse… though couldn’t explain how a temporary deal was so horrible.

This is a lie of course. The truth from Carney would be, “Of course we would rather have a default than a temporary deal that doesn’t go to 2013, because a temporary deal would hurt Obama’s election chances, and hurting Obama politically is way worse than default. It’s way worse that the country getting nuked. Obama would rather a 9/11 style catastrophe every single day until November rather than lose power. I want to look the American people in the eye and make this clear: We would rather see you all dead and dying than give up power.” To which I hope Jake Tapper’s response would be, “Thank you for you candor.”

* A generic Republican is now 8 points ahead of Obama in the latest Gallup poll. Like I’ve said before, we need to get a guy in a Mexican wrestler’s mask (might help appeal to Latinos) and run him as “The Unnamed Republican”. Is there anywhere in the Constitution that the president has to be identified? Probably, but whatever — that can just be interpreted away.

* Pelosi compared Obama to Job. People seemed to assume she meant Job from the Bible, but maybe it was Gob Bluth from Arrested Development because that actually really fits. I mean he was inept at everything yet was very arrogant and extremely entitled. And he rode around on a dorky scooter. Actually, I don’t think I’ll be able to see Gob Bluth again without thinking Obama. “Really, Cantor, you’re going to tell the guy in a $5000 suit what to do about the debt? Come on!”

Actually, it would be pretty awesome if instead of playing “Hail to the Chief” when Obama entered the room, they instead put on “The Final Countdown.”

* San Diego is thinking about getting a cat tax. Basically, you’ll have to register your cat and pay money to the government. Needless to say, an idea like this could bankrupt crazy cat ladies everywhere.

So how does someone come up with something like this? Are they just sitting around brainstorming “What haven’t we taxed yet?” Or maybe it was more of an emotional thing. One guy was just tired of having to scold his cat for scratching the furniture for the umpteenth time and finally yelled, “That’s it! I’m taxing you! You’re taxed!”

* I saw Google News has added a new thing: Badges. You read enough news in a subject, you level up your badge. So, by reading enough news you could have like a bronze badge in the Middle East, a silver in the Economy, and a gold in politics and such. Actually, all they’ve given me is a video game badge so far. I’m not really sure what the point is and how that will affect the news when I increase my rank, but I better go level it up just in case.

* Here’s an image of the Spider-man costume from the new Spider-man movie:

Since this is going to be a reboot and thus start with an origin story again, does that mean we’re going to get a long scene of Peter Parker dying and sewing together a bunch of basketballs to make his costume? I mean, it looks like his costume was made to solve the problem of bad guys not being able to get a good grip on him.

* Think Progress had a funny tweet: “Today’s GOP makes George W. Bush look positively moderate”. What would be like the equivalent from us? “Today’s Democrats makes Joe Lieberman look positively moderate.” Anyway, just more evidence that liberals don’t understand conservatism enough to rage against it accurately. I think they just define conservatism as “whatever I currently hate”. The current is important; that’s how George W. Bush can be Satan one day and then the “good one” when he’s no longer a political threat. On the other hand, conservatives actually have a coherent philosophy that isn’t just about mindless partisanship — which is exactly why liberals have a lot of trouble understanding it.

* So what do you guys think of this feature so far? It takes me a while and leaves no time for any other posts, but I kind of like it. So how are you guys liking it? Whoever tell me they like it the most wins… HIGH PRAISE!

* Obama stormed out of debt negotiations. Apparently, in a dispute with Republicans, he pounded his fists, kicked his feet in the air, and screamed, “I want tax increases! I don’t want to cut spending! I’m the president; I get what I want!” And then he ran away crying.

It’s seems pretty unlikely that Republicans are going to get any useful deal from Obama, so I think they should just go for broke. Make a deal for $10 trillion with no tax increases — in fact have it with tax cuts that required even more spending cuts to compensate. It will have one new source of revenue, though: Obama will have to spend most of his day in a dunk tank. $20 dollars a ball. Estimated earnings: One trillion dollars.

* Moody’s is now considering downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating. That’s probably the best thing that could happen to America. Maybe if our credit gets low enough, no one will lend us money anymore. Then we’ll finally have to buckle down balance our budget. Though, more likely, we’ll just declare bankruptcy. Oh, selling off our assets is going to be painful; I always liked Hawaii.

* Sarah Palin says she’ll have a decision on whether to run for president by late summer. That’s boring and expected. I hope she has some other unexpected announcement entirely. “I am here today to announce that Alaska is splitting off to become it’s own country called Freedonia — and there’s nothing you can do about it because it’s way up there!” Obama will get all mad and be like, “I will do something about it! I’ll show you!” But then he’ll look at a map and be like, “Wow; it is out of the way. I don’t want to go all the way over there to get Alaska back. Maybe if I’m in Canada one day, I’ll wander over and yell at them. I sure like Canada.”

* The US’s favorable rating in the Arab world is now even lower than during the Bush era. This is not supposed to be. We were told that if we elected Obama, everyone would be like, “Hey, their president’s name is a lot like Osama — and we love Osama! Maybe America isn’t so bad.” And look how Obama is destroying America; people in the Middle East love the destruction of America. I guess unless you’re a slavish follower of Obama, he just become off-putting after a while. He’s “kind of a duck” as one TV commentator put it.

Still, hard to get worried over us being unpopular in the Arab world. It’s if we’re suddenly really popular there, then we should get worried. “Hmm… we have 90% popularity in the Arab world… OH NO! DID WE ACCIDENTALLY DO A HOLOCAUST?!!!”

* US women have beat France at soccer 3-1. I don’t know if our women beat their men or what — I don’t really understand soccer. But we won; so yay. Blow into your vuvuzela — though I guess you do that no matter what.

In the World Cup Final, we’ll be facing Japan. Japan could really use a pick me up after all that’s happened to them, so I hope we crush them. Other countries need to learn not to get their self-worth from soccer. Just don’t.

* The Journal of the American Medical Association has suggested taking fat kids away from their parents. If we go through with this plan, we’ll have a foster system full of fat kids, all waddling around parent-less with Michelle Obama pointing and laughing at them and forcing them to eat peas. I’m not saying that’s bad; I’m just pointing out what it entails.

* An atheist in Austria won the right to get his picture taken with a pasta strainer on his head as religious headgear to make a point about… how headgear… um… I don’t know. I thought the whole point of atheism is that their being all logical and reasonable, yet the ones we see in the news always seem to be operating under the compulsion of unexamined mental tics. “I’ll work at it for years so I can get my picture taken with a pasta strainer on my head; that’ll show these religious nutjobs who’s irrational!”

* Wisdom of the Day: “It just wouldn’t be right to have the United States collapse without Glenn Beck on the air.” –Dave Weigel

* Obama gave a speech yesterday about we need to eat band aids and rip off peas. I don’t really know as I don’t usually listen to speeches he gives since it involves a lot of him talking and it’s pretty hard imagining him having anything useful to say. I think by now we’ve all learned that he just talks and talks while saying nothing and the only thing memorable are the cliches he uses. “Let me be clear.” “This is a false choice.” “Slurpee!” The guy was elected because supposedly he done speak good, but that part has ended up just as useless as the rest of him.

So anyway, I guess he was blaming everyone else for the mess and not his own failure to lead… especially while he had huge majorities and could have gotten anything he wanted done. Of course, being responsible with America’s money is nothing he ever wanted. He even said in his speech “I’d rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes, like new programs…” So he wants to get through this debt talk… so he can spend more. So the whole point of this problem just went “whoosh” right over his little pinhead. He just sees himself as Santa, showering us all with gifts. Gifts we don’t want… bought with our own money. Money we don’t have. If Santa were really like that, people would spend every Christmas Eve carefully watching the fireplace while cradling a shotgun… instead of just the ones where they got a new shotgun as a Christmas Eve gift.

* The House is considering a bill that will stop the ban on incandescent light bulbs. It’s a good thing we have the people in Washington figuring out what light bulbs we should be allowed to use, because they’re such geniuses at everything else. It’s not like I have anything against CFLs — they’re efficient and save you on your electric bill in the long run — they just slowly whither your soul with their unnatural light. Also, I just don’t want to be told which light bulb to buy by people too stupid and useless to even know how to change one. We don’t need term limits for Congress; we just need to hand them a box of light bulbs and say, “We need you to change this one light bulb in this room.” Come back an hour later, and they’ll all be dead with a bunch of broken glass on the ground.

* Is your major complaint that politicians aren’t dumb and loud enough? Good news! Alan Grayson is going to run for office again! Liberals describe him as having guts, and if a liberal describes you as having guts, that’s pretty much a diagnosis of mental illness you can take to the bank. Know who they also thought had guts? Anthony Weiner. I just hope Alan Grayson doesn’t bite anyone.

* A woman in Michigan is facing 93 days in jail for planting a vegetable garden. Yes, this is the home of the brave and the land of the free, but there are common sense restrictions to this concept of “freedom”. It’s not like you can own a nuclear weapon. Or shout “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. Or grow your own vegetables. These seem like small things, but if people are so nonchalant about using government force in small things, really fear them with the big things.

* A diver photographed a fish using tools. People thought fish were too dumb to use tools because they have this sort of blank look to their faces where you just really assume their dumb (like people in Congress), but I guess some can use tools (fish, not Congress). You have this one fish using a rock to smash open a clam and later it fashioned a crude cudgel to use against Aquaman when he got too bossy.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Say what you want, but on President Obama’s watch bin Laden was killed and the Black Eyed Peas went on hiatus.” –TV’s Andy Levy

* They’re still arguing about the debt ceiling in D.C. One side wants to destroy the economy in every way possible (they want to raise taxes to suppress jobs — it’s obviously not to raise revenue, because as previous spending proved, the Democrats don’t care about revenue — and also spend, spend with no limit until we collapse under debt) and the other side would rather not destroy everything. Maybe there can be a compromise and we’ll come up with a plan that just knocks us down to a second world nation instead of completely destroying us.

It’s hard not to get a little depressed as the politicians — the dumbest, most useless people in this nation — claim more and more of all the nation’s wealth to fritter away on nothing, so here’s a picture of puppies to cheer us up:

They will starve to death in this economy.

* White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe said, “The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates, or even monthly jobs numbers.” Yeah, they really have to be hoping that voters aren’t into objective measures when determining whether someone should be reelected. Hopefully everyone is like, “I bet Obama smells nice — like freshly cut grass on a golf course. Let’s reelect him.” But if people care about stuff happening to the country, not so good for him.

* Paul Ryan paid $350 for a bottle of wine at a dinner. This is really hypocritical because he paid for expensive wine with his own money while he’s trying to keep all Americans from being forced to pay for crappy entitlements. See… hypocritical.

Some have compared this to John Edwards’s infamous $400 haircut, but there are two main differences:

1. John Edwards used campaign funds to pay for it.
2. It was a haircut — a man paying $400 dollars FOR A HAIRCUT!

* There’s now a new country in Africa: South Sudan. There hasn’t been a great record for countries in Africa so far, but maybe South Sudan will be the first country there that isn’t… you know… awful. I know one way to make sure they get off on the right foot: Ban vuvuzelas.

* Atlantis took off Friday for the final shuttle flight ever. For the first time in decades, America is now incapable of getting people into space. If there is an asteroid headed to earth and we need to blow it up in an Armageddon type scenario, hopefully Russia is on top of that. Of course, Obama has set our path for the future: high-speed trains. Yep, going from space flight to trains. Along with our economy, our society is in complete retrograde. Next we’ll be living in huts and working on high-speed horse and buggy.

* Neat find from James Taranto (last item): Basically, social scientists found that conservatives do they same processing as liberals when thinking on an issue, but then do some additional processing to get to the conservative conclusion. They proved this by showing that if you strained a conservative so he wasn’t able to think, he’d come to the same conclusion as liberals. So basically, if a conservative can’t think, he ends up like a liberal… while I guess liberals just don’t think all the time. This doesn’t give us a solution, though, because we can’t force liberals to think, but since we’ve now made this an issue of science, we can lock liberals up in cages and inject them with stuff for further study… like a study on how the debt and economy will be effected if all liberals were locked up in cages and injected with stuff. Science!

* Wisdom of the Day: “‘Zookeeper belongs right up there with Zoolander!’ -someone alphabetizing DVDs at Blockbuster in a few months, and no one else” –Sean Thomason

* Thanks again to everyone who donated a dollar for IMAO’s 9th blogiversary. I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart: You are not thieves.