The Narcissistic Vampire Checklist

THE SMARTEST, MOST TALENTED, ALL-AROUND BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD TEST

By Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.

True or false?
Score one point for each true answer.

1. This person has achieved more than most people his age. - Obama

2. This person is firmly convinced that he is better, smarter or more talented than other people. - Obama

3. This person loves competition, but is a poor loser. - Obama

4. This person has fantasies of doing something great or of being famous and often expects to be treated as if these fantasies had already come true. - Obama

5. This person has very little interest in what other people are thinking or feeling unless he wants something from them. - Obama

6. This person is a name dropper. - Obama

7. To this person it is very important to live in the right place and associate with the right people. - Obama

8. This person takes advantage of other people to achieve his own goals. - Obama

9. This person usually manages to be in a category by himself. - Obama

10. This person often feels put upon when asked to take care of his responsibilities to family, friends or work-group. - Obama

11. This person regularly disregards rules or expects them to be changed because he is special. - Obama

12. This person becomes irritated when other people don’t automatically do what he wants them to do, even when they have a good reason for not complying. - Obama

13. This person reviews sports, art and literature by telling you what he would have done instead. - Obama

14. This person thinks most criticisms of him are motivated by jealousy. - Obama

15. This person regards anything short of worship to be rejection. - Obama

16. This person suffers from a congenital inability to recognize his own mistakes. On the rare occasions that he does recognize a mistake, even the slightest error can precipitate a major depression. - Obama

17. This person often explains why people who are better known than he are not really all that great. - Obama

18. This person often complains of being mistreated or misunderstood. - Obama

19. People either love or hate him. - Obama

20. Despite his overly high opinion of himself, he is really quite intelligent and talented. - Obama

Scoring:

Five or more true answers qualify the person as a Narcissistic Emotional Vampire, though not necessarily for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality. If the person scores higher than ten, and is not a member of the royal family, be careful that you aren't mistaken for one of the servants.

A Profile of the President - by G. Kowalski

Dr. Sam Vaknin is an Israeli psychologist who has written extensively about narcissism and has an interesting view of our new president. Vaknin states, "I must confess I was impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident - a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such quasi "religious" impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects."

Vaknin, a world authority on narcissism and the author of “Malignant Self Love” believes Barack Obama to be a narcissist. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person; when he talks about narcissism everyone listens. And he says that Obama's language, posture and demeanor and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People's Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are all examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with blazing speeches elevated their admirers and filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon but, invariably, they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality you don't know it until it is too late.

One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. "Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations," says Vaknin. "Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995".

One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality and his admirers become his co-dependents. Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective: they are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and does not deserve their attention.

If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote; no one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and an advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him a lot larger than expected forum and guess what the book evolved into? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book “Dreams from My Father. “Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about an august being such as himself?

Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. And, as a norm, they lack conscience. This is evident in Obama's lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for his campaign, a thing unprecedented in history, has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.

This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world? I hate to sound alarmist, but one is a fool if one is not alarmed.

Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self-serving and selfish. However, Obama evidences symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, for example. To Obama reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. This is racism, pure and simple. The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among white people.

Black Americans are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and accuse Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites and the white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960's. Obama will set the clock back decades.

America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and a weakened America translates into the triumph of terrorism and the victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Chavez, the brothers Castro, the Hezbollah, Hamas, the lawyers for the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House.

America is on the verge of destruction and there is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.

The conversation continues...

Dina:

"private sector beginning to spend again on big-ticket items like cars and washing machines." Is what I meant- not the government. That is spending our way out of a recession. And please don't paint me with the same brush as the bankers and politicians. I am democratic in that I believe in free choice and good schools. I think that dubya was blinded by an agenda that cost the American public billions of dollars which also contributed to the mess we are in. He and his friends have come away from this war many many times richer than the ceos of the mortgage companies. realistically, I am as "agnostic" about politics as I am about religion.

love you anyway. It will get better.

______________________________________________

I replied:

My dear friend,

I would never try to paint you with the same brush as anyone. You have always been an individualist and a power-house intellect. (And hot, but that’s not germane.) What I am trying to do is goad my democrat friends into justifying for me their faith in the extreme leftist agenda PrezBO and Pelosi are moving our country towards. I’m desperately seeking comfort in what my world-view tells me is a terrifying shift away from the foundational concepts of our society. I want a democrat to explain to me in detail why the choices being made in D.C. are correct for the current situation. So far, none have been able to do much more than express a generalized hope and faith in Obama. It feels like having a great-aunt pat my hand and tell me, “Don’t worry, little one. I t will all be fine.” It feels dismissive at best.

Any one of my conservative friends will tell you, truthfully, that they too believe in free choice and good schools. They will also tell you that the democrat party obviously does not, and they can throw a lot of numbers at you to prove their opinion. That is one of the underlying problems in our society now: each party sees the other as being full of sanctimonious hypocrites. The truth has become clouded by slogans and polemics; no one is having a rationalist discussion anymore. It’s as if we are living in a new post-enlightenment era.

How can we arrive at eternal verities if we don’t discuss the issues honestly?

Assign the blame to the people who actually deserve it.
Figure out where they went wrong.
Discover the lesson inherent in their failure and then learn from that lesson.

Don’t spend time (read that as someone’s life) and wealth (read that as the time someone spent actually working) in repeating the same mistakes.

But you have to know what the mistakes were first.

The underlying truth is what I seek, and I ain’t gettin’ much help from my friends at either end of the political spectrum.

There are several things I know for certain that the Republicans are wrong about and they mostly concern trying to legislate morality, which is an abominable attitude for someone who purports to stand for freedom.

Personally, I don’t give a damn who’s ‘what’ you choose to kiss as long as they don’t mind. I believe you should control ‘you.’ You should be the final arbiter of your fate. Your life is the only thing you truly own and every second of it should be spent exactly as you choose, so long as you do not interfere with someone else right to do the same. That’s why I identify myself as a libertarian, and I’m willing to bet quite a lot that you actually are as well, albeit a liberal one.

This quiz takes less than a minute to complete and score. Let me know where you are. I land at the exact top of the diamond.

[Click title above for link]

As concerns Dubya, he was wrong on many things, mostly because he bent over backwards to accommodate the democrat’s. I am not a huge fan of his domestic policies. As far as his war agenda goes I believe you to be misinformed. These wars didn’t start in 2002, they are a continuation of those that began in 643 when the Arab’s started spreading Islam into the remains of the Christian Roman Empire at sword-point. This is just the latest phase, and we didn’t start them.

I encourage you to read the Koran. It is enlightening as to the world view of these people. They are your enemy, Dina. They are ordered by their God to either convert you to their faith or enslave you in dhimitude or to kill you. That’s a helluva difference from Christ’s admonition to spread the ‘Word’. Your agnostism would not be an option, and by Sharia law you, as a woman, would have to belong to a man. I can’t see you ever acquiescing to being the property of anyone; the very thought would be abhorrent to you, and to me as well.

Afghanistan has been a nest of vipers since Alexander rode through on his way to India. It was, in fact, a state sponsor of terrorist acts against the United States. Even your own party leaders think that this is a just war, so let’s pass that and go to Iraq.

Iraq had weapons of mass destruction! We have proof in that Saddam used them against his own people. We have proof via receipts for the terror weapons we gave him during his time as an ally against the Soviets in Afghanistan. We have proof in the 1500 nerve-gas shells we found during the course of the war. We have proof of his intent to create nuclear weapons in the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium the Iraqi government sold to the Canadian government last year. But the argument that ‘Bush lied’ is demonstrably specious. You can look-up the clip on YouTube and see that, standing before Congress, he quoted British MI-5 intelligence on Saddam’s attempts to purchase yellow-cake. He didn’t make up evidence and befuddle the Democrat-controlled Congress into declaring war. He presented the evidence as it was known at that time and asked the Congress to vote. Even the members of your own party, including the former First Lady, agreed that these fact justified regime change in Iraq. They voted for the war in Iraq and they were correct in doing so. Read Joseph Wilson’s book, “The Politics Of Truth.” (Valerie Plame’s husband) I have it here somewhere and in it he admits that Saddam’s nuclear scientist were in fact, in Niger buying uranium, a direct contradiction to his public statements in the media!

I must sadly disagree with you. I think that the Iraq war was, for the most part, brilliantly fought. Twenty-five million people were freed of a tyrant and can now build a better life. Parts of Baghdad, the world’s oldest city, now have electricity and running water for the first time. Business and employment are going thru the roof, and the rest of Iraq is much the same. They are going to be a great trading partner in the future and as far as the ‘War for oil’ rant goes, please note that the Iraqis have signed deals with the Chinese government to purchase the bulk of their crude, not us. The Iraq War was fought for the right reasons and it succeeded brilliantly. Sadly, it cost us 4,253 soldiers, but that is an amazingly low number given the outcome.

And now we have a classic pincer relative to the main bad guy in the Middle East: Iran. We have standing armies to the west and north and we are allied with both India and Pakistan to the east. They can only move south into the sea, and the Seventh Fleet is sitting there watching them.

Even the Arab’s can’t stand the damned Persians! They have been the main destabilizing factor in the Middle East since Napoleon. They believe it is their destiny to rule all their neighbors and control the oil that has become the west’s life-blood. They honestly believe that they must destroy us to bring about the coming of the messiah. According to their tradition he will born into a conflagration that destroys the ‘Great Satan’ and how many times have you heard the Persian leaders call us that?

There is crazy and then there is scary-crazy.

Right now we have them in check, but the checkmate will come when the current crop of Mullah’s drop dead and are torn to shreds by mourners looking for souvenirs at the funeral, just like Ayatollah Khomeini. The demographics show that the youth of Iran are rejecting the ways of the Mullahs and want western-style freedoms and we know that Muslims can blend their faith and the more liberal western standards successfully. The U.A.E. has done it brilliantly!

My, I do go on…

One thing more, about your last sentence, “It will get better.”

I stay well informed. I listen to talk-radio and NPR and I research areas where the two voices contradict each other. I want to know the truth and neither voice does a very good job of delivering it. I do see patterns and trends in my research and if the trend continues and no radical adjustments are made to the policies of Comrade President Obama, I can not see how can get better. He is obligating us to debt that can not be repaid. There will not be enough people in this country to produce that amount of wealth for hundreds of years and these treasury bonds that our investors are buying have a due-date that falls decidedly short of ‘hundreds of years.’

The numbers just do not work.

This will lead to the bankruptcy of the United States (the company) which in turn will bankrupt the entire world (the investors). Our currency will collapse and it is the basis for world trade. If the basis of trade is destroyed we are returned to a barter economy and how do we feed six billion people in a barter economy?

Please, if you don’t want to argue the democrat position, let me know to whom I can address my questions. I can feel my innate optimism being drained from me and I dislike that in the extreme. I need answers and no one is providing them. Surely in your years in academia you have come across someone who shares your views and likes to provide a defense for them. I really need to find them.

Hugs and kisses!

Demosthenes

Can liberals actually defend their position when challenged?

Here is a little exchange fostered by my post of Friday, 27 February 2009.

Dina:

never forget your best girl is a democrat.....
where's our house drawing?


I countered:

For which I have repeatedly forgiven her since Reagan was president.

This does, however, beg the question. How can anyone believe this ‘Indian rope trick’ PrezBO is trying with the economy and social order will work? The sheer intellectual dishonesty coming from the White House is mind numbing. The man sat on O’Reilly’s set and verified that he knew how you make the economy expand: you cut taxes on the people that have the money to invest. It was the first thing Kennedy did, for Christ’s sake! (And it worked!) All of Obama’s policies are a repeat of the disastrous Roosevelt administration. And FDR’s own treasury secretary said, “We tried spending our way out of the depression and it did not work.”

Would you care to comment my dear Dina? You are the only bleeding heart I know that will stand her ground and defend it. Bring it on girl!

D

Ps. For the last 16 months I’ve been scrambling to keep my house. I’m afraid gratis work will have to wait for a real conservative administration to fix the screw-ups of the last 16 years. I’ll be glad to do it, I just haven’t the time now. - See ya!


Her response:

Oh honey I am sorry about the house. If you are facing foreclosure and you mortgage has been sold since you signed the papers, tell the foreclosing body to “produce the note”. It will buy you time.
Obama has been in office a month. The fubar of the economy was not his fault. Give it a chance. And we do spend our way out of a recession. Save out of a depression.


Well, I couldn't resist:

Dearest Dina,

Not to worry! We are not in foreclosure, but we had to restructure just about everything when my income fell to half of what it was. I thought the GASP at Six Flags could take my breath! It was, and remains, scary!

Just a few thoughts on what has happened the industry I’ve been in for 25 years. And yes, I am venting, why do you ask?

I know PrezBO’s share in this fucked-up economy is small, but he had a hand in creating this fiasco.

Barack Obama, and many other community organizers, noticed that the banks were refusing to lend to people who lived in certain areas (read poor and black) and dubbed the practice ‘Red-lining.’ (You may remember the headlines from the very early 1990’s) They assumed, incorrectly, that they were seeing evidence of racial prejudice and went to Capitol Hill to wail and moan at the injustice of it all. Barney Frank (D) and Chris Dodd (D), the heads of the banking committees in the House and Senate respectively, bullied the banks into making loans that they all knew were to people that had no record of ever successfully paying money back. The banks told them it was stupid to lend money when you had no expectation of repayment, but the legislature literally gave Acorn and other community organizations the power to veto bank expansions and branch-building projects.

In order to continue to grow and stay in business the banks had to agree to make bad loans.

In short order the loans began to fail and the banks went back to Capitol Hill and told the politicians that they were being driven out of business from the levels of bad debt they were being forced to take on. So, the legislature repealed the Glass-Seagal Act and allowed the banks, for the first time since the Depression, to create securities based on mortgages. And to top that off, they ordered Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy these securities, thus creating a market. They would bundle three types together: excellent, good and bad. This way they created a package that had some risk, but on the whole seamed a good investment. Many millions were made until the housing market became saturated.

A bank’s sole job is to make money for its investors, and here was a market for worthless paper that they were being forced to write. And write they did. And for twelve years all was well within the construction industry with two exceptions:

1. Too many houses were built too quickly to serve the newly created customer base among the lower classes. Waitresses were buying $750k McMansions using stated income mortgages. In short, they lied. They committed fraud. And the mortgage brokers helped them to do it. And the banking committees had changed the rules to allow them to do it with impunity.

2. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were literally drowning in bad debt while they were telling Congress what Congress wanted to hear. Trillions of dollars in bad debt was covered up by a simpering bunch of lickspittles that you have the honor to call members of your party. Barney and Chris were the leaders, but Maxine Waters had a hand in it too. Barney was covering the ass (literally) of his boyfriend, who was the guy that came up with the whole idea for sub-prime mortgages in the first place and was a noted high-roller at Fannie Mae. Obama’s principal financial advisor during his campaign was Franklin Raines who headed Fannie Mae for six years and walked away with $90 megabucks in compensation! And they have the gall to talk about compensation caps. And to me personally, the most disgusting thing about the entire affair is that they have successfully foisted all of this blame onto the backs of the republicans and business.

Like it or not, here is what has happened:
The democrats made the demands.
The democrats then created a false-market to make their demands work.
The democrats refuse to acknowledge their fuck-ups even when McCain (2005) and Bush (2002) were both pointing at the obvious mess they had created.
The democrats got away with it until the market became saturated and home sales collapsed.
The democrats jumped on their high-horses, pointed to the republicans, and shouted, “Look at what you did!”

And finally, the democrat’s followers, even smart ones like you, have fallen for their bullshit.

*the ball has now been lobbed back into your court.
____________________________________

I try to be open minded and I like proof of everything. Please cite for me one example of any American government spending its way out of recession. I can’t find a recession or a depression or a panic that wasn’t cured by the private sector beginning to spend again on big-ticket items like cars and washing machines.

Hope you and the mister and the puppy are well!

Luv ya anyway!

Demosthenes

Ps. The ‘Produce the note’ thing only works if the judge allows it. The constructionists on the bench tend to laugh at the dodge. Their logic being, “Well, the bank may or may not own this house, but you certainly don’t! Now, get out!” - d

A comment on the current Presidency

The United Nations Geological Survey maintains an exhaustively detailed database of arable land throughout the world.

According to its latest data, it is not possible to grow enough marijuana for this to make even the slightest bit of sense.

There simply isn’t room.

A metaphor for change...

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House.

One is from Chicago, another from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.

All three go with a White House official to examine the fence.

The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700."

The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"

The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."

"Done," replies the government official!
___

And that my friends is how the new stimulus plan will work.

Fact-Checking The Speech: Some Claims Aren't Completely True

The Associated Press
Published: February 24, 2009
Updated: 12:24 am

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that his mortgage-relief plan will only benefit deserving homeowners appears to be a stretch.
Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who should have known better than to buy that huge house.
The president glossed over a number of complex realities in delivering his speech to Congress and a nation hungry for economic salvation.

A look at some of his assertions:

OBAMA: "We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values."
THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money does not go to home buyers who used bad judgment, it hasn't announced it.
Defending the program Tuesday at a Senate hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it's important to save some of those people for the greater good. He likened it to calling the fire department to put out a blaze caused by someone smoking in bed.
"I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed."
Similarly, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggested this month it's not likely aid will be denied to all homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn't afford.
"I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," Sheila Bair told National Public Radio.

OBAMA: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."
THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don't mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House.
Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won't be 10 years from now.

OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.

OBAMA: "In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas."
THE FACTS: First, his budget does not accomplish any of that. It only proposes those steps. That's all a president can do, because control over spending rests with Congress. Obama's proposals here are a wish list and some items, including corporate tax increases and cuts in agricultural aid, will be a tough sale in Congress.
Second, waste, fraud and abuse are routinely targeted by presidents who later find that the savings realized seldom amount to significant sums. Programs that a president might consider wasteful have staunch defenders in Congress who have fought off similar efforts in the past.

OBAMA: "In the last eight years, (health insurance) premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, 1 million more Americans have lost their health insurance"
THE FACTS: The number of uninsured grew by 7 million from 2000 to 2007, the latest year for which Census figures are available, meaning Obama's claim would be true if had been talking about averages. But it's not true that the number of uninsured rose each year by 1 million. In 2007, the ranks of the uninsured dropped by 1.3 million from the year before, to 45.7 million.

OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aids for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.
In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.
If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.

OBAMA: "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."
THE FACTS: This is a recurrent Obama formulation. But job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers.
The president's own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, "It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error."
Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation. The estimates are based on economic assumptions of how many jobs would be lost without the stimulus.

OBAMA: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
THE FACTS: According to the Library of Congress, the inventor of the first true automobile was probably Germany's Karl Benz, who created the first auto powered by an internal combustion gasoline, in 1885 or 1886. Nobody disputes that Henry Ford created the first assembly line that made cars affordable.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, giving the Republican response to Obama's speech, ran off the tracks with one claim about the stimulus plan.
JINDAL: The plan is "larded with wasteful spending," including "$8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland."
THE FACTS: Jindal was echoing an often-used Republican complaint that is an oversimplification. GOP budget hawks have dubbed the train "the Sin Express," and say it will soak up much of the rail money.
But that's not a done deal. Competition for the mass transit money is just starting, and backers of other projects across the nation — including one through Obama's home state of Illinois — think they have at least an equally good chance.