{"id":4185,"date":"2009-02-10T07:37:24","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T12:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4185"},"modified":"2009-02-10T07:37:24","modified_gmt":"2009-02-10T12:37:24","slug":"legerdemain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4185","title":{"rendered":"Legerdemain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, whilst appearing as a guest on Marty Owings’ internet talkradio show “Radio Free Nation<\/a>“,\u00a0 a liberal caller said that Obama’s stimulus package wasn’t pork, because the Merriam-Webster definition of “pork” was something that a lawmaker put into a bill to benefit his constituency,and the President wasn’t a lawmaker, so it couldn’t <\/em>be pork.<\/p>\n

I sat back and let that sink in for a bit.<\/p>\n

And I made a mental note; being a longtime observer of liberals in action, I knew among lefties, memes are like whack-a-mole.\u00a0 If they pop up in one place, they’ll soon pop up everywhere else.<\/p>\n

And sure enough, it did.<\/a><\/p>\n

A look at some of Obama’s claims in Elkhart, Ind., and the news conference called to make his case to the largest possible audience:OBAMA: “Not a single pet project,” he told the news conference. “Not a single earmark.”<\/p>\n

THE FACTS: There are no “earmarks,” as they are usually defined, inserted by lawmakers in the bill. Still, some of the projects bear the prime characteristics of pork \u2014 tailored to benefit specific interests or to have thinly disguised links to local projects.<\/p>\n

For example, the latest version contains $2 billion for a clean-coal power plant with specifications matching one in Mattoon, Ill., $10 million for urban canals, $2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars, and $255 million for a polar icebreaker and other “priority procurements” by the Coast Guard.<\/p>\n

Obama told his Elkhart audience that Indiana will benefit from work on “roads like U.S. 31 here in Indiana that Hoosiers count on.” He added, “And I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it’s not pork.\u00a0 It’s pancetta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, whilst appearing as a guest on Marty Owings’ internet talkradio show “Radio Free Nation“,\u00a0 a liberal caller said that Obama’s stimulus package wasn’t pork, because the Merriam-Webster definition of “pork” was something that a lawmaker put into a bill to benefit his constituency,and the President wasn’t a lawmaker, so it couldn’t be pork. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}