A penny saved is still a penny

Mr. Obama revealed his plan today to slash the budget deficit in half -- he's requested that his Cabinet members cut $100 million from their budgets. Spend $12 trillion, cut $100 million.... I don't know, is it just me, or does it seem that $100 million is not a significant reduction? It's more like .003%.

I'm on the mailing list for the Libertarian Party. In a release dated April 20, they say:

Obama’s budget calls for around $11,755.00 in spending for every man, woman and child in America. But his “cuts” -- which aren't even new reductions -- come out to only around 32.7 cents per person.

I'm trying to think of what you can buy for 32 cents. About half the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes? You can't park at a meter in Chicago or ride a city bus for that anymore. Poor Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, got to try to explain today why $100 million is a lot of money. How would you like his job?

In other news...

Obama gave a speech to the CIA today, apparently to try to make them feel better about his selling them out by detailing the "torture" the US perpetrated upon the terrorists who were trying to blow us all up. He told them that we all have to protect American values, even when it's difficult.

Ya know, Mr. President, I think that's just exactly what they were trying to do. Maybe the CIA was doing that when you were only three months old, Mr. Obama. I'll even bet they have dossiers on some of your close friends.

Not to mention, it's OK for Mr. Obama and select members of his handpicked entourage (I don't know: Cabinet? Czars? Overseers and drivers?) to circumvent the US Constitution whenever they feel so moved to push their socialist agenda, but God forbid the CIA takes any authorized actions in the name of national security.

We certainly don't want the rest of the world to feel uncomfortable about hi-jacking passenger airplanes and flying them into our high-rise towers. That just wouldn't be very nice. They might not like us anymore. They might not ever come back. Obama might lose some potential fans.

Charles Krauthammer says Obama needs applause. That he'll do just about anything for applause. On the surface, this might seem like just a glib, even a bit snide, remark. But you know, Charles Krauthammer is a highly-respected psychiatrist. He was a psychiatrist before he became a journalist. So, based on his background as well as my own observations -- I tend to agree.

So look at it this way: On the one hand we have the president of the US, fresh from a trip to South America where he grinned up into the monkey-like face of a vile dictator who whole-heartedly hates the US and has never been shy about saying so, and this trip comes soon after "holding out an olive branch" to another vile dictator who's occupied Cuba for about 50 years, slaughtering the population willy-nilly and running Cuba's economy into the dirt. Then on the other hand, we have the CIA, whose heroes are represented by anonymous gold stars, having died horribly in some foreign hornet's nest in defense of the nation.

The irony is pretty thick here, isn't it? I mean, which of these entities is more committed to preserving American values? Talk is cheap.

Doesn't he have any shame at all?