Before dealing with the non-existent Julia, let me just say, after conservatives, those mischievous lil devils, took over the #WhyImIn hashtag in March, then a couple days later took over the #ILikeObamacare hashtag, then in April zipped right in and took over the #WhatsRomneyHiding hashtag, one would think that Team Obama would have learned.
As you will see below.... they didn't.
So, let us start with the headline that introduced me to Obama's non-existent Julia.
Human Event's writer David Harsanyi caught someone's eye on Twitter (apologies, I forget which one of the hundreds found with the hashtag #Julia first directed me to the whole fiasco), when he headlined "Who the hell is "Julia," and why am I paying for her whole life?"
In the new Barack Obama campaign piece The Life of Julia, voters can "Take a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime -- and how Mitt Romney would change her story." It is one of the most brazenly statist pieces of campaign literature I can ever remember seeing.
Let's, for the purposes of this post, set aside the misleading generalizations regarding policy in the ad (no one is innocent on that account, obviously). What we are left with is a celebration of a how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people's money rather than her own initiative or hard work. It is, I'd say, implicitly un-American, in the sense that it celebrates a mindset we have -- outwardly, at least -- shunned.
It is also a mindset that women should find offensively patronizing. When they're old enough, I hope my two daughters will find the notion that their success hinges on the president's views on college-loan interest rates preposterous. Yet, according to the "Life of Julia," women are helpless without the guiding hand of Barack Obama.
ABC News aptly describes what happened next in their headline, "Obama Campaign’s ‘Julia’ Draws Partisan Debate."
As users click through “The Life of Julia,” cartoon-style scenes of incremental life stages illustrate how Obama has sought to improve college access, help women sue for pay discrimination and receive free preventive health care services, including contraception.
Each scene includes a note about Romney, claiming that his budget plan would sharply reduce spending for popular programs and repeal provisions aimed at women included in Democrats’ health care overhaul.
“Using this new online tool, moms can see what President Obama and Mitt Romney’s contrasting policies will mean for their daughters,” the campaign says. “Working women and seniors can use this online tool to see what this election will mean for their ability to earn a living, support their families and retire comfortably.”
The tool – pushed out through social media networks and on the campaign’s website – is significant as part of a concerted effort by Team Obama to keep alive the theme of a “Republican war on women.”
Mitt Romney wants to “close doors of opportunity we thought we’d kicked open a long time ago,” Obama said Friday in a speech to hundreds of Democratic women gathered in Washington, D.C.
Vice President Joe Biden will likely touch on similar themes when he addresses 400 women at the annual YWCA USA Conference in Washington on Friday.
In response to “Julia,” Republicans struck back at Obama with a hefty dose of snark and a bevy of economic statistics via email and Twitter.
“The Obama campaign forgot to talk about the real economic conditions she will have to deal with under Obama policies and the mountain of debt they have left her,” said Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer.
In a successive chain of tweets, the RNC circulated data points highlighting the fact that “Julia’s” share of the national debt ($34,419) grew sharply under Obama, along with tuition rates, health insurance premiums and gas prices.
The “new Obama graphic concedes that they see government’s role as taking care of people from cradle to grave. YAY Government!” said deputy RNC communications director Tim Miller on Twitter.
Speaking of cradle to grave, Hot Air takes over with "a more realistic view of Julia’s life."
• 3 years old – Julia gets a new-and-improved Head Start, which a new HHS study shows won’t do anything for her anyway.
• 17 years old – Race to the Top improves Julia’s SAT scores. Is there any evidence at all to support that argument? Even so, she’s down the list from all of the home-schooled children and the charter- and private-school students who actually got an education rather than an NEA indoctrination. However, thanks to the NEA indoctrination, Julia is now better prepared for a life on the government dole.
• 18 years old – Julia’s family qualifies for a $10,000 tuition tax credit spread out over four years, while Obama’s student-loan subsidies drive tuition costs up even faster.
• 22 years old – Julia undergoes surgery, which has to be funded by her parents’ employers despite Julia being an adult, and which will be most likely delayed as providers decline in number thanks to the economics of ObamaCare.
• 23 years old — Thanks to the Lily Ledbetter Act, trial attorneys get rich by filing lawsuits against employers that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought, leaving fewer resources to hire Julia. No college job for our intrepid Julia!
• 25 years old – Julia finally gets her 4-year degree in seven years, thanks to the inability to handle the tuition bubble and the lack of work. However, the good news is that the $200,000 in student loans will only hang over her head for 20 years, while taxpayers like Julia end up paying for the costs of default.
27 years old – Julia wants to have sex for the first time in her life, apparently, and is looking for contraception. Her employer would provide it for free thanks to the ObamaCare HHS mandate … if she could only find a job.
• 31 years old – Julia gets pregnant, which tells you all you need to know about free contraception. Oddly, Julia hasn’t gotten married first, probably because the economy is so poor by this time with the huge entitlement debt crisis breaking that no one can conceive of putting a home together. Fortunately, ObamaCare makes pregnancy possible, because until Obama took office, no one ever got pregnant, since government support and approval for it didn’t exist.
• 37 years old – Julia’s son Zachary, named after his sperm donor, starts school. Head Start has long since disappeared, apparently, but Race to the Top still exists. Must be a marathon.
• 42 years old – Julia starts a business with an SBA loan, which also apparently never existed before Obama took office. Her student loans are just three years away from defaulting onto the backs to taxpayers, so that’s good news.
• 65 years old – My, how time flies! (Do women do nothing of value between 42 and 65?) Julia enrolls in Medicare, which ceased to exist decades earlier, thanks to the fact that Obama and Tim Geithner didn’t have a plan to address the debt crisis — all they knew was they didn’t like anyone else’s plan. You can get the cards at Spencer’s as a gag gift.
• 67 years old – Julia retires, since the entitlement collapse wiped out her business and the rest of the American economy. The timeline stops here, which suggests that the IPAB probably denied her care, as she was nothing but a drain on society by this time, and the few resources they have left had to be used to pay for face lifts for members of Congress.
You simply have to go read the rest of the snark and analysis.
The RNC wasted no time providing their take of what Julia's life would be like under the Obama pretend life of the non-existent Julia. All set up with #Julia hashtag so they can be directly copied and pasted into Twitter.
Kevin D. Williamson, over at NRO's The Corner, describes a few milestones that Team Obama omitted in their life of the non-existent Julia:#Julia is bummed. Her share of the national debt went up $16,345 under Obama. http://1.usa.gov/9lDQhC
#Julia, the college student, is paying record high tuition to attend college http://on.msnbc.com/wDFBH6
#Julia, about to graduate, can’t find a job in the Obama economyhttp://yhoo.it/IhdnTU
#Julia, recent college grad, has $25K in student loan debt, highest in history and has kept going up under Obama http://bit.ly/IW5vax
#Julia the 23 year old is living with her parents in the Obama economy http://bit.ly/yfXvgN
#Julia the commuter has to pay double for gas from what she paid 4 years ago. http://bit.ly/cC3vPp
#Julia the mom has to pay more for health insurance despite #ObamaCare’s promise to reduce premiums by $2500 http://bloom.bg/q50Peg
#Julia in the future won’t have Social Security thanks to Obama http://bit.ly/JuXuv3
#Julia in the future won’t have Medicare as we know it thanks to Obama http://apne.ws/jHySpS
4 months: Julia’s mother decides that giving birth will be hard on her figure. She kills Julia. Under Barack Obama, her right to do so is absolutely nonnegotiable.There is more milestones over at NRO to read, but ummmmmmmm, after that one, Julia is dead, right????
Suitably Flip has their own fun reworking Obama's interactive life of the non-existent Julia to give another interactive life of the non-existent Julia. One where Julia is not dependent on government from cradle to grave like in Obama's economy, but is instead a healthy, productive, employed woman, under Mitt Romney's economy.
I still want to know who Obama is going to send over to potty train Julia.
Okay, seriously....
#Julia gives conservatives and Independents that favor a smaller government the perfect argument of why Americans should not vote for Barack Obama in November 2012.
The best part? It was Team Obama that introduced us to Julia!!!!!
