While the current headlines focus on insurgent Tea Party candidates defeating Republican establishment picks in the recent primaries, the real story remains the collapse of the Democrat coalition and the impending Democrat loss of control in Congress.
Much has been written about American voters reacting negatively to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi lurch to the left with the bailouts, the stimulus, the financial "reform" and, most of all, the crazy idea that government can borrow and spend our way to prosperity.
But there is another cause of the Democrats reversal of fortune that is rarely explored by pundits left or right. It is the Obama jihad against Arizona for daring to take action to enforce America's border with Mexico.
Arizona's law, SB 1070, empowered state law enforcement officers in any arrest, traffic stop, or other contact within the scope of their duties to require identification and in the absence of identification to call in federal immigration officials to determine immigration status.
Before this law could even come into affect or be enforced, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denounced the law as "racist" and then had to admit they had never read it.
President Obama likewise denounced the Arizona law and invited Mexican President Calderon to address a joint session of the American Congress and stood by approvingly while the Mexican President chastised Arizona for passing this law.
Even after public opinion polls showed strong majority support for Arizona's stance on border control and even after horror stories of Mexican drug cartel incursions into Arizona, the President ordered the Justice Department to sue Arizona to invalidate SB 1070.
The latest Rasmussen poll still finds American voters favoring passage of an Arizona style law in their own state by a margin of 59%-41%. And 56% oppose the Obama Administration's decision to oppose the law in court.
The very idea of an American President suing a state for trying to enforce a federal law that the President refuses to enforce infuriated a significant majority of American voters already frustrated and angry about other actions taken by the Obama Administration.
For example, in Kentucky voters were asked "How angry are you at the current policies of the federal government?" 74% of the respondents were angry (47% very angry) with only 7% being not angry at all.
It isn't just the debt, the crazy spending, persistent recession and high unemployment; American voters are frustrated by President Obama's apology tours, bowing to foreign leaders, and now suing a state within his own country for trying to enforce a federal law where widespread public support demands a controlled border.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Search for financial gain is driving the push for green technology
Against the backdrop of the Gulf oil spill, President Obama delivered a speech in June, which once more made the case for the reduction of U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.
“I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can,” the president said. The country’s use of fossil fuels, he continued, “will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”
While Obama isn’t the first president to take on fossil fuels (in his 2007 State of the Union address, former President George W. Bush talked about the need to generate electric power through “clean coal technology, solar and wind energy”), the current administration has taken a far more aggressive position on the subject than any previous White House. Last Thursday, for example, the administration released a plan requiring federal agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten years.
But this war against fossil fuels is being waged not just by President Obama and the executive branch of the federal government. In many ways, the president is simply the front man for the social, political and business elite that are driving the campaign for renewable energy to replace things like coal and natural gas.
Although fossil fuels account for upwards of 80 percent of the nation’s energy consumption, lobbyists, executives, environmentalists and politicians have come together to force a reduction in their use, as well as pass mandates for things like solar wind panels and electric cars.
What many of them fail to disclose is their vested financial stake in this new technology — technology that remains fundamentally uncompetitive with traditional sources of energy. In the words of Dan Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research: “At the end of the day, the stuff they want us to buy is just more expensive.”
So who are some of the individuals behind the war against fossil fuels?
John Doerr and Al Gore, for starters. As The Daily Caller has reported, both men are major players in the green industrial complex. Doerr, perhaps the most famous venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley, has donated heavily to Democratic causes, lobbied for green energy initiatives, and then received stimulus dollars through the Department of Energy (DOE) in the form of grants for companies in which he has investments.
Gore has spent the last ten years lobbying for carbon taxes, the use of green technology, and legislation that would require it — all while standing to profit financially if such policies were implemented because he is a partner at Doerr’s venture capitalist firm. Like Doerr, Gore will benefit financially if the start-up companies he invests in do well – which is almost a guarantee if the federal government continues to shower them with tax dollars.
Then there’s General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffery Immelt and Duke Power CEO Jim Rogers. Both were involved in the creation of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobbying organization comprised of businessmen that counts getting Waxman-Markey passed in the House last summer as one of its accomplishments.
Both GE and Duke make products that are essential in any transition from an energy industry based on fossil fuels, to one that uses renewable energy. It’s no wonder Immelt and Rogers are so invested in “energy independence.”
“I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can,” the president said. The country’s use of fossil fuels, he continued, “will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”
While Obama isn’t the first president to take on fossil fuels (in his 2007 State of the Union address, former President George W. Bush talked about the need to generate electric power through “clean coal technology, solar and wind energy”), the current administration has taken a far more aggressive position on the subject than any previous White House. Last Thursday, for example, the administration released a plan requiring federal agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten years.
But this war against fossil fuels is being waged not just by President Obama and the executive branch of the federal government. In many ways, the president is simply the front man for the social, political and business elite that are driving the campaign for renewable energy to replace things like coal and natural gas.
Although fossil fuels account for upwards of 80 percent of the nation’s energy consumption, lobbyists, executives, environmentalists and politicians have come together to force a reduction in their use, as well as pass mandates for things like solar wind panels and electric cars.
What many of them fail to disclose is their vested financial stake in this new technology — technology that remains fundamentally uncompetitive with traditional sources of energy. In the words of Dan Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research: “At the end of the day, the stuff they want us to buy is just more expensive.”
So who are some of the individuals behind the war against fossil fuels?
John Doerr and Al Gore, for starters. As The Daily Caller has reported, both men are major players in the green industrial complex. Doerr, perhaps the most famous venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley, has donated heavily to Democratic causes, lobbied for green energy initiatives, and then received stimulus dollars through the Department of Energy (DOE) in the form of grants for companies in which he has investments.
Gore has spent the last ten years lobbying for carbon taxes, the use of green technology, and legislation that would require it — all while standing to profit financially if such policies were implemented because he is a partner at Doerr’s venture capitalist firm. Like Doerr, Gore will benefit financially if the start-up companies he invests in do well – which is almost a guarantee if the federal government continues to shower them with tax dollars.
Then there’s General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffery Immelt and Duke Power CEO Jim Rogers. Both were involved in the creation of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobbying organization comprised of businessmen that counts getting Waxman-Markey passed in the House last summer as one of its accomplishments.
Both GE and Duke make products that are essential in any transition from an energy industry based on fossil fuels, to one that uses renewable energy. It’s no wonder Immelt and Rogers are so invested in “energy independence.”
Friday, September 10, 2010
Embattled Democrats tout their opposition to Obama's agenda
'They're betting that between now and November, you're going to come down with amnesia," President Obama told a Milwaukee crowd on Monday, vilifying the Republicans who "helped devastate our middle class." But it seems as if the real case of amnesia—or maybe post-traumatic stress disorder—has struck the Democrats, who are now doing everything they can to help voters forget ObamaCare.
This is a remarkable turn of events for Mr. Obama's major domestic achievement that was also supposed to be a political winner. Facing a grim November, Democrats are now running on another quarter-baked stimulus plan and the specter of John Boehner's perpetual tan, instead of the bill they spent more than a year debating and hailed as the liberal triumph of the century. Democrats now barely mention ObamaCare on the trail—unless they're trashing it.
In Milwaukee, the President made a few desultory mentions of "health care that will be there when you get sick." And in Cleveland Wednesday, his list of the iniquities from which he saved the country included "health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will."
But what about all the grandiose ambitions of universal coverage? What about bending the cost curve? The parade of horribles that would occur if Congress failed to act? "Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result," as Mr. Obama put it in a speech to Congress a year ago.
The only politicians who today are finding any redeeming electoral value in ObamaCare are Republicans running on reform alternatives and the Democrats who voted against it. In South Dakota, four-term Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is running ads that tout her vote against "the trillion-dollar health-care plan." Mrs. Herseth Sandlin won in 2008 with 68% of the vote but now is in a dead heat against GOP challenger Kristi Noem.
Idaho freshman Walt Minnick says in one TV spot that "I've had to say no far more than I've said yes. I've said no to more government spending, no to President Obama's big health-care plan," because "standing up to what's wrong in Washington is right for Idaho." Pennsylvania's Jason Altmire, class of 2006, features constituents who say things like, "You saw when he voted against health care" and, "He's not afraid to stand up to the President."
This is a remarkable turn of events for Mr. Obama's major domestic achievement that was also supposed to be a political winner. Facing a grim November, Democrats are now running on another quarter-baked stimulus plan and the specter of John Boehner's perpetual tan, instead of the bill they spent more than a year debating and hailed as the liberal triumph of the century. Democrats now barely mention ObamaCare on the trail—unless they're trashing it.
In Milwaukee, the President made a few desultory mentions of "health care that will be there when you get sick." And in Cleveland Wednesday, his list of the iniquities from which he saved the country included "health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will."
But what about all the grandiose ambitions of universal coverage? What about bending the cost curve? The parade of horribles that would occur if Congress failed to act? "Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result," as Mr. Obama put it in a speech to Congress a year ago.
The only politicians who today are finding any redeeming electoral value in ObamaCare are Republicans running on reform alternatives and the Democrats who voted against it. In South Dakota, four-term Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is running ads that tout her vote against "the trillion-dollar health-care plan." Mrs. Herseth Sandlin won in 2008 with 68% of the vote but now is in a dead heat against GOP challenger Kristi Noem.
Idaho freshman Walt Minnick says in one TV spot that "I've had to say no far more than I've said yes. I've said no to more government spending, no to President Obama's big health-care plan," because "standing up to what's wrong in Washington is right for Idaho." Pennsylvania's Jason Altmire, class of 2006, features constituents who say things like, "You saw when he voted against health care" and, "He's not afraid to stand up to the President."
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
White House is trying to make the U.S. subservient to the world's worst man-made disaster - the United Nations
The Obama administration has included the Arizona state immigration law in a report of human rights abuses to the United Nations, that collective negation of humanity and home to the worst human rights abusers in the world.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer struck back Friday, demanding that the reference to Ariozna's immigration law be taken out of the State Department's report to the UN's human rights commissioner. Brewer wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton saying that the inclusion of Arizona in the UN report was "downright offensive." Brewer said -- and she was right -- that "the idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."
First Barack Obama attacked America by suing Arizona for passing a law that merely reflected federal immigration law. And now this.
Decades before the post-American president took office, Ayn Rand saw the UN for what it was, and what every free person should have known it was -- and it has only gotten worse since then: "Psychologically, the U.N. has contributed a great deal to the gray swamp of demoralization -- of cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt -- which is swallowing the Western world." That, of course, is just the kind of guilt Obama and his cronies play upon. This guilt and demoralization was largely due to Communism in those days; now, the "gray swamp" is still there, but it stems from Islam.
Barack Obama is an internationalist, and this has more ominous implications for American sovereignty. As soon as he became president, he took decisive steps to submit American sovereignty to the will of international bodies.
Legal expert M. Edward Whelan III has spelled out the implications of this. He explains that transnationalists, among whom Obama and many of his appointees must clearly be numbered, "aim in particular to use American courts to import international law to override the policies adopted through the processes of representative government."
Whelan is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the former general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. "What transnationalism, at bottom, is all about," he explains, "is depriving American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of Europe's leftist elites."
Whelan wrote this before Obama reported Arizona to the UN, and the Arizona case bears him out fully. Obama's latest attack on America may shock Americans, but readers of my book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America nod their heads in recognition. It's all in the book: the relinquishing of American sovereignty and Obama's internationalism.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer struck back Friday, demanding that the reference to Ariozna's immigration law be taken out of the State Department's report to the UN's human rights commissioner. Brewer wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton saying that the inclusion of Arizona in the UN report was "downright offensive." Brewer said -- and she was right -- that "the idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."
First Barack Obama attacked America by suing Arizona for passing a law that merely reflected federal immigration law. And now this.
Decades before the post-American president took office, Ayn Rand saw the UN for what it was, and what every free person should have known it was -- and it has only gotten worse since then: "Psychologically, the U.N. has contributed a great deal to the gray swamp of demoralization -- of cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt -- which is swallowing the Western world." That, of course, is just the kind of guilt Obama and his cronies play upon. This guilt and demoralization was largely due to Communism in those days; now, the "gray swamp" is still there, but it stems from Islam.
Barack Obama is an internationalist, and this has more ominous implications for American sovereignty. As soon as he became president, he took decisive steps to submit American sovereignty to the will of international bodies.
Legal expert M. Edward Whelan III has spelled out the implications of this. He explains that transnationalists, among whom Obama and many of his appointees must clearly be numbered, "aim in particular to use American courts to import international law to override the policies adopted through the processes of representative government."
Whelan is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the former general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. "What transnationalism, at bottom, is all about," he explains, "is depriving American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of Europe's leftist elites."
Whelan wrote this before Obama reported Arizona to the UN, and the Arizona case bears him out fully. Obama's latest attack on America may shock Americans, but readers of my book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America nod their heads in recognition. It's all in the book: the relinquishing of American sovereignty and Obama's internationalism.
Toxic Obama will be in Milwaukee today; Sen. Feingold won't
Today, President Obama is flying to Milwaukee to mark Labor Day at a union picnic ("Laborfest"), at a far smaller venue than he used when marking the same event in 2008. Don't worry about a rambunctious crowd, protest signs, or any other indignities, though. Admission is by ticket only, with unions in charge of distribution.
Even more curious is the absence of left wing Senator Russ Feingold, facing re-election this year, and not showing a lot of strength in the polls. Patrick McIlheran, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has a witty column on the visit:
It's quite a party: Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such. Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president.
Many presidents fall in public esteem by mid-term, but with Obama, the change is more fundamental. What put him in office certainly wasn't experience, nor was it any explication of the agenda that, now revealed, has frightened off one in four of his voters. Rather, it was that he was the great center hope, a man to unite factions and span fissures. That's gone, say polls. The center no longer hopes in him, and so when he appears in a state where his party's senatorial and gubernatorial candidates are in deep trouble, he can appear only before a crowd heavy on AFSCME and SEIU.
Another way putting it is that Obama has been discovered to be a fraud. Once trust is lost, it is never easily regained. This is the stark reality of Democrat politics; their standard-bearer is toxic. The only thing that can save the Democrats' fortunes is GOP incompetence and untrustworthiness. So, regrettably, all is not gloom for the Democrats.
Even more curious is the absence of left wing Senator Russ Feingold, facing re-election this year, and not showing a lot of strength in the polls. Patrick McIlheran, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has a witty column on the visit:
It's quite a party: Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such. Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president.
Many presidents fall in public esteem by mid-term, but with Obama, the change is more fundamental. What put him in office certainly wasn't experience, nor was it any explication of the agenda that, now revealed, has frightened off one in four of his voters. Rather, it was that he was the great center hope, a man to unite factions and span fissures. That's gone, say polls. The center no longer hopes in him, and so when he appears in a state where his party's senatorial and gubernatorial candidates are in deep trouble, he can appear only before a crowd heavy on AFSCME and SEIU.
Another way putting it is that Obama has been discovered to be a fraud. Once trust is lost, it is never easily regained. This is the stark reality of Democrat politics; their standard-bearer is toxic. The only thing that can save the Democrats' fortunes is GOP incompetence and untrustworthiness. So, regrettably, all is not gloom for the Democrats.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
John Podhoretz on "Obama's hell of a ride"
He is moving into the permanently-out-of-touch territory in which the Elder Bush found himself mired throughout his final year in office. When this president next week begins proposing expensive new measures to save us from a crisis he has just told us we are emerging from, he is going to compound the growing sense that he has no idea what he is doing or where to go to fix the mess. And he is going to convince many more people that the mess in which we are now mired is of a different order from the mess he inherited, and that it belongs to him and his party, and that somebody else is going to have to clean it up.
Why is Obama seeking the approval of the world's worst man-made disaster - the UN? Is he stealthily seeking his next gig?
America was founded as a country where no citizen would ever have to submit to the will of a king, or any other brand of despot. But hey, that's yesterday's news. President Barack Obama's administration is now submitting its own special selection of domestic policies and laws for review by the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose 47 members include such tyrannies as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Cuba and China.
Packaged as a 29-page report aiming to create "a more perfect union" in "a more perfect world," this U.S. self-critique was sent by the State Department on Aug. 20 to the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, in preparation for a formal review on Nov. 5 by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. A glaring feature of this report is its disparaging mention of Arizona's new immigration law. This is the same law that Attorney General Eric Holder condemned in May without reading, and which the Obama administration is challenging in court. State is presenting this situation for review by the U.N., implying that Arizona is violating human rights with a law that has "generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world."
Gov. Jan Brewer registered her protest in an Aug. 27 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking that the section on Arizona's immigration law be removed from the report. Calling it "downright offensive" that Arizona law be offered up by the federal government for a "human rights" review by such U.N. members as Libya and Cuba, Brewer wrote: "The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."
Brewer is dead right about internationalism running amok, and she's probably right that this is unconstitutional. But the problems with this scene go way beyond the federal abuse of Arizona. At the best of times, the U.N. is, in the words of the late Democratic New York Sen. and U.N. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "a dangerous place." The U.N. is not an honest parliament accountable to some higher law. It is a despot-infested collective that reports erratically to itself; a place of double standards, which routinely delivers to dictatorships a legitimacy they do not deserve, and which they in turn use to heap criticism, without penalty, on the U.N.'s chief sugar daddy, the United States. Any attempt at real oversight or enforcement of integrity at the U.N. has been pretty much a voluntary and thankless task, shouldered almost entirely by the U.S.--when it is has been shouldered at all.
President Obama's approach to the U.N. is bringing us the worst possible variation on these themes. Rather than stand apart on principle where warranted, the Obama administration is increasingly stooping to become one of the gang--hoping for favors in return. Last year Obama overturned the Bush policy of bypassing the Human Rights Council as hopelessly corrupt. Under Obama, the U.S. became a member, promising to work from within. We're now seeing what that means in practice. While gaining stature from the U.S. presence, the Council itself remains stubbornly tainted, recently welcoming Libya to its ranks; sidelining atrocities by some of the world's worst tyrannies while focusing obsessively, as ever, on condemning the democratic state of Israel. But Obama has found a new use for this arrangement. He's trying to enlist the Council to further his domestic agenda, with the State Department attempting an end-run that invites into the U.S. system of checks and balances such voices as those of China, Russia, Cuba and Cameroon; or at best, the pronouncements of Switzerland, Norway and France.
Packaged as a 29-page report aiming to create "a more perfect union" in "a more perfect world," this U.S. self-critique was sent by the State Department on Aug. 20 to the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, in preparation for a formal review on Nov. 5 by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. A glaring feature of this report is its disparaging mention of Arizona's new immigration law. This is the same law that Attorney General Eric Holder condemned in May without reading, and which the Obama administration is challenging in court. State is presenting this situation for review by the U.N., implying that Arizona is violating human rights with a law that has "generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world."
Gov. Jan Brewer registered her protest in an Aug. 27 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking that the section on Arizona's immigration law be removed from the report. Calling it "downright offensive" that Arizona law be offered up by the federal government for a "human rights" review by such U.N. members as Libya and Cuba, Brewer wrote: "The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."
Brewer is dead right about internationalism running amok, and she's probably right that this is unconstitutional. But the problems with this scene go way beyond the federal abuse of Arizona. At the best of times, the U.N. is, in the words of the late Democratic New York Sen. and U.N. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "a dangerous place." The U.N. is not an honest parliament accountable to some higher law. It is a despot-infested collective that reports erratically to itself; a place of double standards, which routinely delivers to dictatorships a legitimacy they do not deserve, and which they in turn use to heap criticism, without penalty, on the U.N.'s chief sugar daddy, the United States. Any attempt at real oversight or enforcement of integrity at the U.N. has been pretty much a voluntary and thankless task, shouldered almost entirely by the U.S.--when it is has been shouldered at all.
President Obama's approach to the U.N. is bringing us the worst possible variation on these themes. Rather than stand apart on principle where warranted, the Obama administration is increasingly stooping to become one of the gang--hoping for favors in return. Last year Obama overturned the Bush policy of bypassing the Human Rights Council as hopelessly corrupt. Under Obama, the U.S. became a member, promising to work from within. We're now seeing what that means in practice. While gaining stature from the U.S. presence, the Council itself remains stubbornly tainted, recently welcoming Libya to its ranks; sidelining atrocities by some of the world's worst tyrannies while focusing obsessively, as ever, on condemning the democratic state of Israel. But Obama has found a new use for this arrangement. He's trying to enlist the Council to further his domestic agenda, with the State Department attempting an end-run that invites into the U.S. system of checks and balances such voices as those of China, Russia, Cuba and Cameroon; or at best, the pronouncements of Switzerland, Norway and France.
White House hostility so bad business is moving back to GOP
We are a long way from Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet. "Eight millionaires and a plumber," as one journalist dubbed Ike's team.
The Obama administration has the least corporate executive experience of any White House in decades.
The premiere posts of Treasury and Commerce express the issue. Both are traditionally bridges to business. This is the only first-term administration in about a century, when the Commerce post was created, to have neither a Commerce nor Treasury secretary with significant business experience.
"Obviously, the Obama administration doesn't stack up with previous Republican administrations but they don't even stack up with previous Democratic administrations," said Stephen Hess, a Brookings institution presidential scholar and veteran of four administrations.
"Democratic administrations always have a much shallower corporate personnel," Hess continued. "But if you deconstructed previous Democratic administrations you would have found considerable tokenism, particularly to cool things with Wall Street. You would want a Treasury secretary who had the friendships and the connections to settle people down. You don't want a jumpy Wall Street, even in ordinary times."
Obama has advisors from the private sector. The National Journal calculated that 28 percent of Obama's top officials have experience as business executives. It was 38 percent during George W. Bush's first term.
But locating that experience sheds more light on the story. National Journal had to reach to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's brief sojourn from government into investment banking and second tier cabinet posts (e.g., Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, once managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital for affordable-housing investments, or Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who worked as a partner in his family-run ranch).
It's worth noting that, in these hard times, there would have also been issues with a big business cabinet. Many Americans already believe the Bush and Obama administrations put Wall Street ahead of the public interest (see bailout).
But Obama's circle has the worst of both worlds. He is seen as too close to big business. And big business sees him as too close to the populists.
The anger has built for more than a year, even among Obama supporters. The Obama White House is "without question the most hostile administration to business and to the role of business that we've had in decades," said media mogul Mort Zuckerman this summer on MSNBC, an erstwhile Obama backer.
CNBC's Jim Cramer, another former Obama man, said last March that, "this is the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president." Cramer has not let up since.
Big business has not been this antagonistic toward Washington since Franklin Roosevelt. FDR's populism earned him the label of "traitor to his class."
The feud has already cost Democrats. Wall Street is donating a majority of its contributions to Republicans for the first time in years.
The Obama administration has the least corporate executive experience of any White House in decades.
The premiere posts of Treasury and Commerce express the issue. Both are traditionally bridges to business. This is the only first-term administration in about a century, when the Commerce post was created, to have neither a Commerce nor Treasury secretary with significant business experience.
"Obviously, the Obama administration doesn't stack up with previous Republican administrations but they don't even stack up with previous Democratic administrations," said Stephen Hess, a Brookings institution presidential scholar and veteran of four administrations.
"Democratic administrations always have a much shallower corporate personnel," Hess continued. "But if you deconstructed previous Democratic administrations you would have found considerable tokenism, particularly to cool things with Wall Street. You would want a Treasury secretary who had the friendships and the connections to settle people down. You don't want a jumpy Wall Street, even in ordinary times."
Obama has advisors from the private sector. The National Journal calculated that 28 percent of Obama's top officials have experience as business executives. It was 38 percent during George W. Bush's first term.
But locating that experience sheds more light on the story. National Journal had to reach to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's brief sojourn from government into investment banking and second tier cabinet posts (e.g., Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, once managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital for affordable-housing investments, or Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who worked as a partner in his family-run ranch).
It's worth noting that, in these hard times, there would have also been issues with a big business cabinet. Many Americans already believe the Bush and Obama administrations put Wall Street ahead of the public interest (see bailout).
But Obama's circle has the worst of both worlds. He is seen as too close to big business. And big business sees him as too close to the populists.
The anger has built for more than a year, even among Obama supporters. The Obama White House is "without question the most hostile administration to business and to the role of business that we've had in decades," said media mogul Mort Zuckerman this summer on MSNBC, an erstwhile Obama backer.
CNBC's Jim Cramer, another former Obama man, said last March that, "this is the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president." Cramer has not let up since.
Big business has not been this antagonistic toward Washington since Franklin Roosevelt. FDR's populism earned him the label of "traitor to his class."
The feud has already cost Democrats. Wall Street is donating a majority of its contributions to Republicans for the first time in years.
In Obama's White House, they even get the new rug wrong
A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.
President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.
Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.
For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.
A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he'd ask in a refrain, "How long? Not long." He would finish in a flourish: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
King made no secret of the author of this idea. As a Baptist preacher on the front lines of racial justice, he regarded Parker, a religious leader, as a kindred spirit.
Yet somehow a mistake was made and magnified in our culture to the point that a New England antebellum abolitionist's words have been enshrined in the Oval Office while attributed to a major 20th-century figure. That is a shame, because the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was so eloquent in his own right. Obama, who is known for his rhetorical skills, is likely to feel the slight to King -- and Parker.
President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.
Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.
For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.
A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he'd ask in a refrain, "How long? Not long." He would finish in a flourish: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
King made no secret of the author of this idea. As a Baptist preacher on the front lines of racial justice, he regarded Parker, a religious leader, as a kindred spirit.
Yet somehow a mistake was made and magnified in our culture to the point that a New England antebellum abolitionist's words have been enshrined in the Oval Office while attributed to a major 20th-century figure. That is a shame, because the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was so eloquent in his own right. Obama, who is known for his rhetorical skills, is likely to feel the slight to King -- and Parker.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
In the art of presidential image-making, Obama offers imperialism, like Mussolini, and juvenile petulance
Obama's permanent image as president appears to be shaking down to two possibilities. The first, embodied in his characteristic posture when addressing the public, might be called "American Duce." Head thrown back, chin jutting, a frown cutting his features, Obama presents himself as less a man than an archetype of human power. Obama uses this during speeches, debates, and public events.
It's even evident in the classic Hope and Change posters. It is an imperial expression, designed to overawe and impress, the expression of an Augustus contemplating his empire. Mussolini adapted it as the proper public image of the ruler of Nuova Roma. To my knowledge, no other major leader since has utilized anything similar. (Mussolini's other trick, limited to private audiences, was "the stare," in which he would gaze penetratingly and unblinkingly while advancing on visitors, pausing to examine them for several seconds before moving on. Claudio Spadaro, who portrayed Mussolini in Franco Zefferelli's film Tea with Mussolini, had this down to...well, to a "T." If Obama starts pulling anything like this, we'll really have something to worry about.)
The other is what might be called the "schoolmarm" look. It is an expression of simple petulance and impatience, best characterized by the term "fuming." A fixed glare, lips twisted in a near-pout, arms often crossed. One almost expects to hear the tapping of a foot. It's a posture not often seen in presidents, more commonly encountered among stubborn juveniles and novice schoolteachers. We have been seeing this quite often lately since things began to seriously go south for the administration.
At this point, not yet halfway through his presidency, it's impossible to say which image will settle upon Barack Obama. I myself have no particular preference. The Duce look has appeared in quite a few magazine and newspaper illustrations in recent months. I imagine that one has to be taken as better, if only marginally, than the other.
Our image seldom matches what we want, or what we may believe ourselves to be. Character always comes out. Obama is in the process of learning this. FDR was a flippant, engaging figure. Reagan was a man of endless good cheer (recall his joking with the surgeons after he was shot). Bush remains a man of superb calm and detachment. The real Obama will inevitably emerge. I doubt it will be a surprise to anybody.
It's even evident in the classic Hope and Change posters. It is an imperial expression, designed to overawe and impress, the expression of an Augustus contemplating his empire. Mussolini adapted it as the proper public image of the ruler of Nuova Roma. To my knowledge, no other major leader since has utilized anything similar. (Mussolini's other trick, limited to private audiences, was "the stare," in which he would gaze penetratingly and unblinkingly while advancing on visitors, pausing to examine them for several seconds before moving on. Claudio Spadaro, who portrayed Mussolini in Franco Zefferelli's film Tea with Mussolini, had this down to...well, to a "T." If Obama starts pulling anything like this, we'll really have something to worry about.)
The other is what might be called the "schoolmarm" look. It is an expression of simple petulance and impatience, best characterized by the term "fuming." A fixed glare, lips twisted in a near-pout, arms often crossed. One almost expects to hear the tapping of a foot. It's a posture not often seen in presidents, more commonly encountered among stubborn juveniles and novice schoolteachers. We have been seeing this quite often lately since things began to seriously go south for the administration.
At this point, not yet halfway through his presidency, it's impossible to say which image will settle upon Barack Obama. I myself have no particular preference. The Duce look has appeared in quite a few magazine and newspaper illustrations in recent months. I imagine that one has to be taken as better, if only marginally, than the other.
Our image seldom matches what we want, or what we may believe ourselves to be. Character always comes out. Obama is in the process of learning this. FDR was a flippant, engaging figure. Reagan was a man of endless good cheer (recall his joking with the surgeons after he was shot). Bush remains a man of superb calm and detachment. The real Obama will inevitably emerge. I doubt it will be a surprise to anybody.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Obama goes after cars again, but gives freedom-lovers another chance to express their disgust with czarist democracy
Great news.
The Obama administration has come up with a new way for freedom-loving Americans to express their anger, rage and disgust with the Obama administration.
It might even inspire freedom-lovers to buy a new car.
But wait. Perhaps it's a trap. Maybe the administration's hidden purpose is to persuade Americans to buy new cars so as to end the administration's feckless and hopeless efforts to revive the economy. As everyone knows, this is the Economy of NO - the NO standing for Neuter Obama by not buying anything or investing in anything.
In any case, the Obamaites are going to change the fuel economy labels placed on the windows of new cars and trucks so that consumers can "make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car," according to CNS News.com.
The new labels are supposed to give consumers "simple, straightforward energy and environmental comparisons," including information about air pollutants emitted by the vehicle. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation proposed two new label designs for public comment.
One of the labels features a letter grade, ranging from A+ to D, to describe the vehicle's overall fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions performance. It also estimates how many grams of carbon dioxide the vehicle emits per mile.
The second proposed label shows how many miles the vehicle will get for each gallon of gas, and it lists the vehicle's annual fuel costs. This label uses a bar graph to show how the vehicle rates on a scale of carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions. A second bar graph shows how the vehicle's tailpipe emissions contribute to local and regional air pollution.
“We are asking the American people to tell us what they need to make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “New fuel economy labels will keep pace with the new generation of fuel efficient cars and trucks rolling off the line, and provide simple, straightforward updates to inform consumers about their choices in a rapidly changing market. We want to help buyers find vehicles that meet their needs, keep the air clean and save them money at the pump.”
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 specifically directs the EPA and DOT to rate vehicles according to fuel economy, greenhouse gas emissions and smog-forming pollutants.
For electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, energy use would be expressed by translating electricity consumption into a miles-per-gallon equivalent.
The EPA and DOT are proposing that the new label give information only on vehicle tailpipe emissions. Upstream emissions, which are associated with electricity generation or refining fuel, would not be displayed on the label.
The public comment period will run for 60 days. The EPA and DOT say they hope to have the new label finalized in time to appear on many 2012 model-year vehicles.
How timely. As Obama stands for renomination and reelection, his administration will be reminding voters of the president's dedication to controlling their choices and lives as thoroughly as possible.
Here's how to strike back. Buy gas guzzlers whose purchase prices will have been driven down by Obama's incessant campaign against free enterprise and free choice. Tell his czars to go to hell. Then, as the economy recovers on the strength of a national protest movement launched by the sane against elites, sell the gas guzzlers at a profit and buy whatever the hell you want.
The Obama administration has come up with a new way for freedom-loving Americans to express their anger, rage and disgust with the Obama administration.
It might even inspire freedom-lovers to buy a new car.
But wait. Perhaps it's a trap. Maybe the administration's hidden purpose is to persuade Americans to buy new cars so as to end the administration's feckless and hopeless efforts to revive the economy. As everyone knows, this is the Economy of NO - the NO standing for Neuter Obama by not buying anything or investing in anything.
In any case, the Obamaites are going to change the fuel economy labels placed on the windows of new cars and trucks so that consumers can "make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car," according to CNS News.com.
The new labels are supposed to give consumers "simple, straightforward energy and environmental comparisons," including information about air pollutants emitted by the vehicle. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation proposed two new label designs for public comment.
One of the labels features a letter grade, ranging from A+ to D, to describe the vehicle's overall fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions performance. It also estimates how many grams of carbon dioxide the vehicle emits per mile.
The second proposed label shows how many miles the vehicle will get for each gallon of gas, and it lists the vehicle's annual fuel costs. This label uses a bar graph to show how the vehicle rates on a scale of carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions. A second bar graph shows how the vehicle's tailpipe emissions contribute to local and regional air pollution.
“We are asking the American people to tell us what they need to make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “New fuel economy labels will keep pace with the new generation of fuel efficient cars and trucks rolling off the line, and provide simple, straightforward updates to inform consumers about their choices in a rapidly changing market. We want to help buyers find vehicles that meet their needs, keep the air clean and save them money at the pump.”
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 specifically directs the EPA and DOT to rate vehicles according to fuel economy, greenhouse gas emissions and smog-forming pollutants.
For electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, energy use would be expressed by translating electricity consumption into a miles-per-gallon equivalent.
The EPA and DOT are proposing that the new label give information only on vehicle tailpipe emissions. Upstream emissions, which are associated with electricity generation or refining fuel, would not be displayed on the label.
The public comment period will run for 60 days. The EPA and DOT say they hope to have the new label finalized in time to appear on many 2012 model-year vehicles.
How timely. As Obama stands for renomination and reelection, his administration will be reminding voters of the president's dedication to controlling their choices and lives as thoroughly as possible.
Here's how to strike back. Buy gas guzzlers whose purchase prices will have been driven down by Obama's incessant campaign against free enterprise and free choice. Tell his czars to go to hell. Then, as the economy recovers on the strength of a national protest movement launched by the sane against elites, sell the gas guzzlers at a profit and buy whatever the hell you want.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Sowell: Ground Zero mosque would be "a 15-story middle finger"
The proposed mosque near where the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, along with thousands of American lives, would be a 15-story middle finger to America.
It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult.
What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it.
The State Department is subsidizing his travel.
The big talking point is that this is an issue about "religious freedom" and that Muslims have a "right" to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.
If anybody did, it would be a matter for the courts to decide -- and they would undoubtedly say that it is not illegal to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attack.
The intelligentsia and others who are wrapping themselves in the Constitution are fighting a phony war against a straw man. Why create a false issue, except to evade the real issue?
Our betters are telling us that we need to be more "tolerant" and more "sensitive" to the feelings of Muslims. But if we are supposed to be sensitive to Muslims, why are Muslims not supposed to be sensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans, for whom 9/11 was the biggest national trauma since Pearl Harbor?
It would not be illegal for Japanese Americans to build a massive shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. But, in all these years, they have never sought to do it.
When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.
He didn't say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.
There is no question that Muslims have a right to build a mosque where they chose to. The real question is why they chose that particular location, in a country that covers more than 3 million square miles.
If we all did everything that we have a legal right to do, we could not even survive as individuals, much less as a society. So the question is whether those who are planning a Ground Zero mosque want to be part of American society or just to see how much they can get away with in American society?
Can anyone in his right mind believe that this was intended to show solidarity with Americans, rather than solidarity with those who attacked America? Does anyone imagine that the Middle East nations, including Iran, from whom financial contributions will be solicited, want to promote reconciliation between Americans and Muslims?
That the President of the United States has joined the chorus of those calling the Ground Zero mosque a religious freedom issue tells us a lot about the moral dry rot that is undermining this country from within.
In this, as in other things, Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it. He had many predecessors and many contemporaries who represent the same mindset and the same malaise.
There are people for whom moral preening has become a way of life. They are out in force denouncing critics of the Ground Zero mosque.
There are others for whom a citizen of the world affectation puts them one-up on those of us who are grateful to be Americans, and to enjoy a freedom that is all too rare in other countries around the world, even at this late date in human history. They think the United States is somehow on trial, and needs to prove itself to others by bending over backwards. But bending over backwards does not win friends. It loses respect, including self-respect.
It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult.
What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it.
The State Department is subsidizing his travel.
The big talking point is that this is an issue about "religious freedom" and that Muslims have a "right" to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.
If anybody did, it would be a matter for the courts to decide -- and they would undoubtedly say that it is not illegal to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attack.
The intelligentsia and others who are wrapping themselves in the Constitution are fighting a phony war against a straw man. Why create a false issue, except to evade the real issue?
Our betters are telling us that we need to be more "tolerant" and more "sensitive" to the feelings of Muslims. But if we are supposed to be sensitive to Muslims, why are Muslims not supposed to be sensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans, for whom 9/11 was the biggest national trauma since Pearl Harbor?
It would not be illegal for Japanese Americans to build a massive shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. But, in all these years, they have never sought to do it.
When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.
He didn't say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.
There is no question that Muslims have a right to build a mosque where they chose to. The real question is why they chose that particular location, in a country that covers more than 3 million square miles.
If we all did everything that we have a legal right to do, we could not even survive as individuals, much less as a society. So the question is whether those who are planning a Ground Zero mosque want to be part of American society or just to see how much they can get away with in American society?
Can anyone in his right mind believe that this was intended to show solidarity with Americans, rather than solidarity with those who attacked America? Does anyone imagine that the Middle East nations, including Iran, from whom financial contributions will be solicited, want to promote reconciliation between Americans and Muslims?
That the President of the United States has joined the chorus of those calling the Ground Zero mosque a religious freedom issue tells us a lot about the moral dry rot that is undermining this country from within.
In this, as in other things, Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it. He had many predecessors and many contemporaries who represent the same mindset and the same malaise.
There are people for whom moral preening has become a way of life. They are out in force denouncing critics of the Ground Zero mosque.
There are others for whom a citizen of the world affectation puts them one-up on those of us who are grateful to be Americans, and to enjoy a freedom that is all too rare in other countries around the world, even at this late date in human history. They think the United States is somehow on trial, and needs to prove itself to others by bending over backwards. But bending over backwards does not win friends. It loses respect, including self-respect.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Weekly Standard's report supports TheRightFieldLine's argument that Americans are on strike against the Obama crew
The economy, it turns out, grew at an annual rate of only 1.6 percent in the second quarter, rather than 2.4 percent as originally estimated. That means that the growth rate in the most recent three quarters has dropped steadily, from 5.0 percent at the end of 2009 to 3.7 percent and 1.6 percent in the first two quarters of this year.
Both consumers and businessmen are sitting on the sidelines. The July drop in sales of new (-32 percent year-on-year) and existing homes (-26 percent) to record-low levels exceeded even the gloomiest expectations, and can no longer be blamed on the expiration of the Homebuyer Tax Credit. Low mortgage rates seem to be offset by tighter credit standards, job insecurity is being fuelled by rising initial claims for unemployment insurance, and buyers feel it pays to wait because prices will be lower tomorrow.
Potential homebuyers are not the only squeamish economic actors. Capital goods orders, excluding defense spending and the 76 percent increase in the volatile aircraft segment, fell 8 percent, the biggest drop since January 2009. This “highlight[s] the risk of a significant slowdown of investment spending,” concludes Bernd Weidensteiner of Commerzbank. American corporations seem to be using some of their $2 trillion in idle cash to return to the acquisitions market, bad news for job seekers since successful acquisitions usually mean lay-offs in the acquired companies -- “efficiencies” and “cost savings” are the preferred description.
Add to this bad news an even more powerful drag on the economy: uncertainty. Bernanke says the Fed is loading its monetary policy gun by keeping its balance sheet from shrinking, but no one knows whether or when he will pull the trigger. Besides, even if he does, recent history suggests that the Fed can’t lure enough money from the wallets of debt-burdened consumers or from corporate treasuries to put the economy on a solid growth path. Mike Dude, CEO of vaunted retailer Wal-Mart, says, “The slow economic recovery will continue to affect our customers, and we expect they will remain cautious about spending.” Students are being made to do with their old PCs, and affluent fashionistas are eyeing lower-priced editions of their favorite designers’ lines.
My take: This supports my blog post of Aug. 23, under the headline: "Why the economy refuses to recover: Americans are on strike against Obama's anti-American, big-government policies," in which I wrote this:
Hoist by his own petard.
That's President Barack Obama.
Having assumed office with an illusory mandate to "transform America," he tossed aside public opinion, ignored voters' traditional preference for moderate, not radical, change, and set out to impose his vision of dominant government and a citizenry willing to say, okay, when a designated bureaucrat tells them their time has come to die. In doing so, Obama's minions bribed lawmakers to vote for measures opposed by a majority of voters and made a mockery of the legislative process.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be an unduring symbol with her call for Congress to pass a bill cobbled by insiders so that rank and file members could find out what's in it.
As the nation's debt grew by trillions of dollars, voters recoiled in horror while Obama remained unfazed, and perhaps unwitting. There is, after all, little evidence that Obama has any understanding of economics aside from the obvious fact that many of America's corporate elite will throw money at radical politicians so long as those politicians protect and nurture their corporate interests.
As a leftist nurtured in marxist truisms, he is, of course, dedicated to Keynesian economics, a dressed up ideology that encourages politicians to pay off voting blocs and interest groups that share their aspirations in the guise of "stimulus."
Now, 19 months into his presidency, Obama expresses puzzlement at the stubborn refusal of the American economy to recover despite more than a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending. Speculation is rife that the economy will turn down again, producing a dreaded double-dip recession.
What's going on?
Sane America has gone on strike against the Obama administration's obsessive effort to impose rule by a leftist elite, including "czars," that has seized control of government and uses it to impose policies that most Americans oppose.
To counter this bizarre assault on American values, individuals, families, small businesses and large corporations are reasserting their individuality and desire for freedom by hoarding cash, withholding spending to thwart a government that some regard as wayward, and many view as their enemy.
Both consumers and businessmen are sitting on the sidelines. The July drop in sales of new (-32 percent year-on-year) and existing homes (-26 percent) to record-low levels exceeded even the gloomiest expectations, and can no longer be blamed on the expiration of the Homebuyer Tax Credit. Low mortgage rates seem to be offset by tighter credit standards, job insecurity is being fuelled by rising initial claims for unemployment insurance, and buyers feel it pays to wait because prices will be lower tomorrow.
Potential homebuyers are not the only squeamish economic actors. Capital goods orders, excluding defense spending and the 76 percent increase in the volatile aircraft segment, fell 8 percent, the biggest drop since January 2009. This “highlight[s] the risk of a significant slowdown of investment spending,” concludes Bernd Weidensteiner of Commerzbank. American corporations seem to be using some of their $2 trillion in idle cash to return to the acquisitions market, bad news for job seekers since successful acquisitions usually mean lay-offs in the acquired companies -- “efficiencies” and “cost savings” are the preferred description.
Add to this bad news an even more powerful drag on the economy: uncertainty. Bernanke says the Fed is loading its monetary policy gun by keeping its balance sheet from shrinking, but no one knows whether or when he will pull the trigger. Besides, even if he does, recent history suggests that the Fed can’t lure enough money from the wallets of debt-burdened consumers or from corporate treasuries to put the economy on a solid growth path. Mike Dude, CEO of vaunted retailer Wal-Mart, says, “The slow economic recovery will continue to affect our customers, and we expect they will remain cautious about spending.” Students are being made to do with their old PCs, and affluent fashionistas are eyeing lower-priced editions of their favorite designers’ lines.
My take: This supports my blog post of Aug. 23, under the headline: "Why the economy refuses to recover: Americans are on strike against Obama's anti-American, big-government policies," in which I wrote this:
Hoist by his own petard.
That's President Barack Obama.
Having assumed office with an illusory mandate to "transform America," he tossed aside public opinion, ignored voters' traditional preference for moderate, not radical, change, and set out to impose his vision of dominant government and a citizenry willing to say, okay, when a designated bureaucrat tells them their time has come to die. In doing so, Obama's minions bribed lawmakers to vote for measures opposed by a majority of voters and made a mockery of the legislative process.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be an unduring symbol with her call for Congress to pass a bill cobbled by insiders so that rank and file members could find out what's in it.
As the nation's debt grew by trillions of dollars, voters recoiled in horror while Obama remained unfazed, and perhaps unwitting. There is, after all, little evidence that Obama has any understanding of economics aside from the obvious fact that many of America's corporate elite will throw money at radical politicians so long as those politicians protect and nurture their corporate interests.
As a leftist nurtured in marxist truisms, he is, of course, dedicated to Keynesian economics, a dressed up ideology that encourages politicians to pay off voting blocs and interest groups that share their aspirations in the guise of "stimulus."
Now, 19 months into his presidency, Obama expresses puzzlement at the stubborn refusal of the American economy to recover despite more than a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending. Speculation is rife that the economy will turn down again, producing a dreaded double-dip recession.
What's going on?
Sane America has gone on strike against the Obama administration's obsessive effort to impose rule by a leftist elite, including "czars," that has seized control of government and uses it to impose policies that most Americans oppose.
To counter this bizarre assault on American values, individuals, families, small businesses and large corporations are reasserting their individuality and desire for freedom by hoarding cash, withholding spending to thwart a government that some regard as wayward, and many view as their enemy.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Obama gets broadest support from American muslims
American Muslims -- in the news recently with the controversy over proposed plans to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero in New York City -- have given Obama his highest ratings in all three time periods: 86% in the first half of 2009, 83% in the second half of 2009, and 78% so far this year. Mormons have given Obama his lowest ratings across time, dropping from 43% in the first half of 2009 to 24% this year.
In addition to Muslims, Obama receives above-average ratings among Jews, those who identify with other non-Christian religious groups, and those with no formal religious identity. Obama gets lower-than-average ratings among Protestants. Catholics have given Obama slightly higher-than-average ratings last year and so far this year.
Obama has lost slightly more ground than average so far among Mormons, and has lost the least among Muslims.
These findings are based on interviews with more than 275,000 adult Americans conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 21, 2009, through July 31, 2010. Protestants and other non-Catholic/unaffiliated Christians are by far the largest religious group in America, representing about 55% of the adult population, followed by Catholics, at roughly 22%. About 13% of Americans do not have a formal religious identity or are explicitly atheists or agnostics. Jews, Mormons, and Muslims each represent no more than 2% of U.S. adults interviewed in Gallup's tracking.
President Obama's job approval ratings have fallen significantly between his first six months in office and this year so far, and his ratings among major religious groups have fallen in rough lock step. The pattern that pertained when Obama first took office -- high ratings among Muslims, those with no religious identity, those identifying with non-Christian religions, and Jews; and lower ratings among Protestants and Mormons -- continues today. Although his standing has dropped among Americans in each of these groups, Obama has retained a little more strength among Muslims, the group giving him the highest ratings, and has lost a little more among Mormons, the group giving him the lowest ratings.
In addition to Muslims, Obama receives above-average ratings among Jews, those who identify with other non-Christian religious groups, and those with no formal religious identity. Obama gets lower-than-average ratings among Protestants. Catholics have given Obama slightly higher-than-average ratings last year and so far this year.
Obama has lost slightly more ground than average so far among Mormons, and has lost the least among Muslims.
These findings are based on interviews with more than 275,000 adult Americans conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 21, 2009, through July 31, 2010. Protestants and other non-Catholic/unaffiliated Christians are by far the largest religious group in America, representing about 55% of the adult population, followed by Catholics, at roughly 22%. About 13% of Americans do not have a formal religious identity or are explicitly atheists or agnostics. Jews, Mormons, and Muslims each represent no more than 2% of U.S. adults interviewed in Gallup's tracking.
President Obama's job approval ratings have fallen significantly between his first six months in office and this year so far, and his ratings among major religious groups have fallen in rough lock step. The pattern that pertained when Obama first took office -- high ratings among Muslims, those with no religious identity, those identifying with non-Christian religions, and Jews; and lower ratings among Protestants and Mormons -- continues today. Although his standing has dropped among Americans in each of these groups, Obama has retained a little more strength among Muslims, the group giving him the highest ratings, and has lost a little more among Mormons, the group giving him the lowest ratings.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
In the wake of his mosque gaffes and the BP oil spill, "voters are gearing up to retaliate against the president's incompetence"
Conflicting messages on the “ground zero mosque” are just the latest signal that a clear presidential strategy is missing—and voters are gearing up to retaliate against the president’s incompetence, says Douglas E. Schoen.
Not only has President Obama systematically put forward unpopular policies and programs that are not producing real, long-lasting results that reflect the wishes of the American people, he has not generated a sense of competence in the electorate.
Indeed, Obama’s judgment and instincts have been called into question by a series of bad decisions since he has become president. Put simply, rather than emphasizing results and outcomes, he has opted for rhetorical parsing and political gamesmanship every time. Voters have grown disillusioned with the administration’s reactive and seemingly hypocritical governing style, in which the notion of unity of command and a cohesive strategy have proved alien.
Obama’s flip-flopping on the “ground zero mosque” issue was no different from his handling of the Gulf oil spill, when he sought both to blame BP and assert federal responsibility.
“The problem,” wrote Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei this summer, “is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics or communications—in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built.”
Whenever the American people are looking for leadership from the president, Obama and his administration have systematically put forth conflicting and ambiguous messages. As Maureen Dowd recently noted in a recent column for The New York Times: “He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.”
Obama’s flip-flopping on the “ground zero mosque” issue was no different from his handling of the Gulf oil spill, when he sought both to blame BP and assert federal responsibility, all the while seeking to distance his presidency from the crisis. There, as with the administration’s publicized internal debate over Afghanistan, no clear policy has been articulated. The president supported a surge in troops while simultaneously pledging to withdraw by 2011. In internal documents published in September 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, warned of “mission failure” if U.S. forces did not increase their presence significantly in the country, while U.S Ambassador Karl Eikenberry warned that McChrystal’s request for new troops might be counterproductive. Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus has said that notwithstanding the set transition date of July 2011, we are “in this to win” and “it takes the accumulation of a lot of progress ultimately, needless to say, to win overall, and that’s going to be a long-term proposition, without question… I think that we will have an enduring commitment here in some fashion.”
By sending such distinctive and frequently incoherent messages, the administration appears adrift and divided. All the while, the public has no clear idea of the administration’s specific goals and intentions, our level of commitment, and the approach we will take on Afghanistan and on other issues.
These dual messages also ultimately reduce and minimize our country’s standing in the international community, delegitimizes our power, and reduces our influence in the eyes of our adversaries.
Looking at the president’s performance in recently published polling, there is a clear sense that voters' doubts whether Obama can solve our country’s problems are increasing.
Poll evidence shows that “the candidate who said he would ‘fundamentally change the way Washington works’ has seen public distrust of government grow to pre-French Revolutionary levels,” Michael Gerson noted this week in The Washington Post.
A Gallup poll last week found that more Americans disapprove than approve of Obama’s recent comments on the “ground zero mosque,” and twice as many strongly disapprove than strongly approve.
A July Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that disapproval of Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill continued to rise in the months following the spill, with disapproval outpacing approval by nearly 3 to 1 in the most affected counties on the Gulf Coast. And an early August USA Today/Gallup survey found that support for Obama’s management of the war in Afghanistan has fallen to 36 percent, down from 48 percent in a February poll.
If Obama isn’t able to project competence, his hopes of winning reelection, as well as the success for the Democratic Party in this fall’s midterm elections, will continue to deteriorate.
Not only has President Obama systematically put forward unpopular policies and programs that are not producing real, long-lasting results that reflect the wishes of the American people, he has not generated a sense of competence in the electorate.
Indeed, Obama’s judgment and instincts have been called into question by a series of bad decisions since he has become president. Put simply, rather than emphasizing results and outcomes, he has opted for rhetorical parsing and political gamesmanship every time. Voters have grown disillusioned with the administration’s reactive and seemingly hypocritical governing style, in which the notion of unity of command and a cohesive strategy have proved alien.
Obama’s flip-flopping on the “ground zero mosque” issue was no different from his handling of the Gulf oil spill, when he sought both to blame BP and assert federal responsibility.
“The problem,” wrote Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei this summer, “is that he and his West Wing turn out to be not especially good at politics or communications—in other words, largely ineffective at the very things on which their campaign reputation was built.”
Whenever the American people are looking for leadership from the president, Obama and his administration have systematically put forth conflicting and ambiguous messages. As Maureen Dowd recently noted in a recent column for The New York Times: “He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.”
Obama’s flip-flopping on the “ground zero mosque” issue was no different from his handling of the Gulf oil spill, when he sought both to blame BP and assert federal responsibility, all the while seeking to distance his presidency from the crisis. There, as with the administration’s publicized internal debate over Afghanistan, no clear policy has been articulated. The president supported a surge in troops while simultaneously pledging to withdraw by 2011. In internal documents published in September 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, warned of “mission failure” if U.S. forces did not increase their presence significantly in the country, while U.S Ambassador Karl Eikenberry warned that McChrystal’s request for new troops might be counterproductive. Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus has said that notwithstanding the set transition date of July 2011, we are “in this to win” and “it takes the accumulation of a lot of progress ultimately, needless to say, to win overall, and that’s going to be a long-term proposition, without question… I think that we will have an enduring commitment here in some fashion.”
By sending such distinctive and frequently incoherent messages, the administration appears adrift and divided. All the while, the public has no clear idea of the administration’s specific goals and intentions, our level of commitment, and the approach we will take on Afghanistan and on other issues.
These dual messages also ultimately reduce and minimize our country’s standing in the international community, delegitimizes our power, and reduces our influence in the eyes of our adversaries.
Looking at the president’s performance in recently published polling, there is a clear sense that voters' doubts whether Obama can solve our country’s problems are increasing.
Poll evidence shows that “the candidate who said he would ‘fundamentally change the way Washington works’ has seen public distrust of government grow to pre-French Revolutionary levels,” Michael Gerson noted this week in The Washington Post.
A Gallup poll last week found that more Americans disapprove than approve of Obama’s recent comments on the “ground zero mosque,” and twice as many strongly disapprove than strongly approve.
A July Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that disapproval of Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill continued to rise in the months following the spill, with disapproval outpacing approval by nearly 3 to 1 in the most affected counties on the Gulf Coast. And an early August USA Today/Gallup survey found that support for Obama’s management of the war in Afghanistan has fallen to 36 percent, down from 48 percent in a February poll.
If Obama isn’t able to project competence, his hopes of winning reelection, as well as the success for the Democratic Party in this fall’s midterm elections, will continue to deteriorate.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Obama's plan - destroy the economy, weaken defenses, support our enemies, force us to bow to government - is working well
If you are Barack Obama, your plans are working perfectly. You are driving the economy into the ground, fueling turmoil in the Middle East, weakening our nuclear defenses and supporting the enemies of civilization, while lining the pockets of your constituency and pushing us towards such great crises that a society already addicted to government may be forced to its knees wrongfully begging for an even greater paternal one. If you doubt my argument that the American people are still not awake enough to cause any meaningful change, consider that for all the talk of a backlash against this government, if you look at the Republicans that will take over Congress, almost none of them them would truly be willing to do the things necessary to make our government solvent, break the chains off of our private sector and defend us against our enemies and their abettors, starting with calling them by name, not a tactic like terrorism.
This brings us to Barack Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque. Months ago I argued that Islam is not a religion in the traditional sense. I argued that as Islam is a theo-political system, it should not deserve the same Constitutional protections as other religions with a strictly spiritual component. In effect, to support Islam in this country would be to support a political system incompatible with ours, and intolerant of our pluralistic Judeo-Christian society. To promote Islamic institutions would be to weaken America’s freedom, not strengthen it. For Islam and America cannot coexist because America is a threat to the Ummah; us infidels would have to be converted by the sword or forced to live as second-class citizens under Islamic law, like Spaniards once did in Cordoba. Hence the Cordoba Initiative.
Yet Barack Obama consistently sides with Muslims; makes it a point to bow down to Muslims at every turn and has since the start of his Presidency and throughout his public life. He also studied in the madras as a child, has had the backing of major players in the Muslim community during his academic and political career and attended Reverend Wright’s church which parrots the same narrative as Imams worldwide. His true colors showed when he made the Ground Zero mosque a national issue by supporting it. Even Howard Dean has gone on record as questioning what Barack Obama could have been thinking politically. Of course he found it to be a political disaster, lest he should care about its destructiveness on principle.
But though Barack Obama knew the firestorm he would create, he did not care. He could not help himself when it came to something he truly believed in, jumping to say something unpopular to the American people but instinctive for him. Just like he did not care about creating fertile soil for economic growth, just like he does not care in my opinion about defending American lives as reflected by his policies. And when he says inflammatory things about white cops and business executives and mosques that make political pundits shake their heads in wonder, it is because he is showing who he is, and where his passions lie.
This President is a principled politician, but he supports principles that are crushing the American people. This is the most destructive President since FDR, and that it is intentionally so makes it all the more demoralizing. Until more people realize this, we won’t even have a fighting chance. We are going to be poorer, weaker and less likely to ever rekindle the flame of freedom in this nation, and I fear that our differences with our political opposition will prove irreconcilable
This brings us to Barack Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque. Months ago I argued that Islam is not a religion in the traditional sense. I argued that as Islam is a theo-political system, it should not deserve the same Constitutional protections as other religions with a strictly spiritual component. In effect, to support Islam in this country would be to support a political system incompatible with ours, and intolerant of our pluralistic Judeo-Christian society. To promote Islamic institutions would be to weaken America’s freedom, not strengthen it. For Islam and America cannot coexist because America is a threat to the Ummah; us infidels would have to be converted by the sword or forced to live as second-class citizens under Islamic law, like Spaniards once did in Cordoba. Hence the Cordoba Initiative.
Yet Barack Obama consistently sides with Muslims; makes it a point to bow down to Muslims at every turn and has since the start of his Presidency and throughout his public life. He also studied in the madras as a child, has had the backing of major players in the Muslim community during his academic and political career and attended Reverend Wright’s church which parrots the same narrative as Imams worldwide. His true colors showed when he made the Ground Zero mosque a national issue by supporting it. Even Howard Dean has gone on record as questioning what Barack Obama could have been thinking politically. Of course he found it to be a political disaster, lest he should care about its destructiveness on principle.
But though Barack Obama knew the firestorm he would create, he did not care. He could not help himself when it came to something he truly believed in, jumping to say something unpopular to the American people but instinctive for him. Just like he did not care about creating fertile soil for economic growth, just like he does not care in my opinion about defending American lives as reflected by his policies. And when he says inflammatory things about white cops and business executives and mosques that make political pundits shake their heads in wonder, it is because he is showing who he is, and where his passions lie.
This President is a principled politician, but he supports principles that are crushing the American people. This is the most destructive President since FDR, and that it is intentionally so makes it all the more demoralizing. Until more people realize this, we won’t even have a fighting chance. We are going to be poorer, weaker and less likely to ever rekindle the flame of freedom in this nation, and I fear that our differences with our political opposition will prove irreconcilable
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
48% view Obama's views as extreme, whatever that means
Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now regard President Obama’s political views as extreme. Forty-two percent (42%) place his views in the mainstream, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
By comparison, 51% see the views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as mainstream. Thirty-five percent (35%) think Clinton’s views are extreme. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.
Among five top contenders for the White House in 2012, only former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is viewed as more extreme than the president. Just 38% say Palin’s views are mainstream, while 55% regard them as extreme.
Mitt Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is considered mainstream by 45% and extreme by 33%. Twenty-two percent (22%), however, are not sure about his views.
Forty-four percent (44%) say the views of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another unsuccessful 2008 GOP hopeful, are in the mainstream. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think Huckabee is extreme, and another 18% are not sure.
It’s important to note that the questions did not define “mainstream” or “extreme.”
By comparison, 51% see the views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as mainstream. Thirty-five percent (35%) think Clinton’s views are extreme. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.
Among five top contenders for the White House in 2012, only former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is viewed as more extreme than the president. Just 38% say Palin’s views are mainstream, while 55% regard them as extreme.
Mitt Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is considered mainstream by 45% and extreme by 33%. Twenty-two percent (22%), however, are not sure about his views.
Forty-four percent (44%) say the views of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another unsuccessful 2008 GOP hopeful, are in the mainstream. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think Huckabee is extreme, and another 18% are not sure.
It’s important to note that the questions did not define “mainstream” or “extreme.”
Monday, August 23, 2010
Why the economy refuses to recover: Americans are on strike against Obama's anti-American, big government policies
Hoist by his own petard.
That's President Barack Obama.
Having assumed office with an illusory mandate to "transform America," he tossed aside public opinion, ignored voters' traditional preference for moderate, not radical, change, and set out to impose his vision of dominant government and a citizenry willing to say, okay, when a designated bureaucrat tells them their time has come to die. In doing so, Obama's minions bribed lawmakers to vote for measures opposed by a majority of voters and made a mockery of the legislative process.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be an unduring symbol with her call for Congress to pass a bill cobbled by insiders so that rank and file members could find out what's in it.
As the nation's debt grew by trillions of dollars, voters recoiled in horror while Obama remained unfazed, and perhaps unwitting. There is, after all, little evidence that Obama has any understanding of economics aside from the obvious fact that many of America's corporate elite will throw money at radical politicians so long as those politicians protect and nurture their corporate interests.
As a leftist nurtured in marxist truisms, he is, of course, dedicated to Keynesian economics, a dressed up ideology that encourages politicians to pay off voting blocs and interest groups that share their aspirations in the guise of "stimulus."
Now, 19 months into his presidency, Obama expresses puzzlement at the stubborn refusal of the American economy to recover despite more than a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending. Speculation is rife that the economy will turn down again, producing a dreaded double-dip recession.
What's going on?
Sane America has gone on strike against the Obama administration's obsessive effort to impose rule by a leftist elite, including "czars," that has seized control of government and uses it to impose policies that most Americans oppose.
To counter this bizarre assault on American values, individuals, families, small businesses and large corporations are reasserting their individuality and desire for freedom by hoarding cash, withholding spending to thwart a government that some regard as wayward, and many view as their enemy.
If the economy were to recover strongly and quickly, the Democrat-controlled Congress could ramrod the rest of Obama's statist agenda and complete the government takeover of matters traditionally reserved for individual discretion. That is, for many of us, a frightening vision.
By hoarding cash, American individuals and businesses are slowing or stopping the recovery and thwarting the onset of death panels, carbon taxes, social engineering by the Environmental Protection Agency and other nightmarish aspects of the Obama scheme.
So far, the citizenry is defeating Obama and his thug army - the left wing of the Democrat Party.
In 71 days the voters can derail the Obama agenda and begin the process of repealing the parts that have been enacted by reducing the Democrat Party to minority status in the House and Senate.
That's the stimulus that unhappy and frightened voters are looking for, and it would begin to revive the economy.
Once Obama has lost his congressional accomplices, the leftist assault on individual liberty will lose its thrust and American consumers will again be willing to spend and businesses to invest in future growth.
A full blown recovery is unlikely to happen, however, until Obama has an epiphany or is clearly headed for the ranks of easily ignored ex-presidents. At that point, celebratory spending will begin, to be followed by the normal pursuit of things we didn't know we needed until we started believing that we still have a future.
That moment is not yet at hand. If Democrats want to speed its arrival, they could initiate a repeal of Obamcare, begin the abolition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and start neutering the EPA.
Watching the death throes of costly, redundant, wayward and sometimes corrupt government institutions would be the best stimulus of all.
That's President Barack Obama.
Having assumed office with an illusory mandate to "transform America," he tossed aside public opinion, ignored voters' traditional preference for moderate, not radical, change, and set out to impose his vision of dominant government and a citizenry willing to say, okay, when a designated bureaucrat tells them their time has come to die. In doing so, Obama's minions bribed lawmakers to vote for measures opposed by a majority of voters and made a mockery of the legislative process.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be an unduring symbol with her call for Congress to pass a bill cobbled by insiders so that rank and file members could find out what's in it.
As the nation's debt grew by trillions of dollars, voters recoiled in horror while Obama remained unfazed, and perhaps unwitting. There is, after all, little evidence that Obama has any understanding of economics aside from the obvious fact that many of America's corporate elite will throw money at radical politicians so long as those politicians protect and nurture their corporate interests.
As a leftist nurtured in marxist truisms, he is, of course, dedicated to Keynesian economics, a dressed up ideology that encourages politicians to pay off voting blocs and interest groups that share their aspirations in the guise of "stimulus."
Now, 19 months into his presidency, Obama expresses puzzlement at the stubborn refusal of the American economy to recover despite more than a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending. Speculation is rife that the economy will turn down again, producing a dreaded double-dip recession.
What's going on?
Sane America has gone on strike against the Obama administration's obsessive effort to impose rule by a leftist elite, including "czars," that has seized control of government and uses it to impose policies that most Americans oppose.
To counter this bizarre assault on American values, individuals, families, small businesses and large corporations are reasserting their individuality and desire for freedom by hoarding cash, withholding spending to thwart a government that some regard as wayward, and many view as their enemy.
If the economy were to recover strongly and quickly, the Democrat-controlled Congress could ramrod the rest of Obama's statist agenda and complete the government takeover of matters traditionally reserved for individual discretion. That is, for many of us, a frightening vision.
By hoarding cash, American individuals and businesses are slowing or stopping the recovery and thwarting the onset of death panels, carbon taxes, social engineering by the Environmental Protection Agency and other nightmarish aspects of the Obama scheme.
So far, the citizenry is defeating Obama and his thug army - the left wing of the Democrat Party.
In 71 days the voters can derail the Obama agenda and begin the process of repealing the parts that have been enacted by reducing the Democrat Party to minority status in the House and Senate.
That's the stimulus that unhappy and frightened voters are looking for, and it would begin to revive the economy.
Once Obama has lost his congressional accomplices, the leftist assault on individual liberty will lose its thrust and American consumers will again be willing to spend and businesses to invest in future growth.
A full blown recovery is unlikely to happen, however, until Obama has an epiphany or is clearly headed for the ranks of easily ignored ex-presidents. At that point, celebratory spending will begin, to be followed by the normal pursuit of things we didn't know we needed until we started believing that we still have a future.
That moment is not yet at hand. If Democrats want to speed its arrival, they could initiate a repeal of Obamcare, begin the abolition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and start neutering the EPA.
Watching the death throes of costly, redundant, wayward and sometimes corrupt government institutions would be the best stimulus of all.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The new lingo means Democrats open to revising Obamacare
Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit the ordinary person.
In his campaign in 2008 and as president in 2009 and 2010, he has hoped that those he characterized to a rich San Francisco Bay area audience as bitterly clinging to guns and God would be won over by programs to stimulate the economy and provide guaranteed health insurance.
At least so far, it hasn’t worked, as witnessed by recent statements by some of the Democrats’ smartest thinkers.
The 2009 stimulus package is so unpopular that Democrats have banned the word from their campaign vocabulary. “I’m not supposed to call it stimulus,” Rep. Barney Frank told the “Daily Show”’s Jon Stewart. “The message experts in Washington have told us that we’re supposed to call it the recovery plan.
“I’m puzzled by that,” Frank went on. “Most people would rather be stimulated than recover.” The problem is, the economy has neither been stimulated nor has it recovered.
As for the health care bill, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has been pondering Democrats’ standing with working class voters since his perceptive 1980s studies of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Mich., has pretty much thrown in the towel.
In a leaked report for Democratic insiders Greenberg and fellow pollster Celinda Lake concede that “straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to be moving voters’ opinions about the law” and “many don’t believe health reform will help the economy.”
“Women in particular,” they add, “are concerned that [the] health law will mean less provider availability — scarcity an issue.” In other words, people have figured out that government rationing may mean less supply for a product for which there is great demand.
Greenberg and Lake recommend using personal stories to highlight the law’s benefits. But “don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers” and don’t “say the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
Do say, “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work to improve it.” [emphasis theirs]
This amounts to an abandonment of the claims that the Obama Democrats have been making about the health care bill they jammed through five months ago. It’s an admission that they messed up when they had supermajorities and will do better when they have fewer votes. It’s a retreat from framing the issue as support versus oppose to revise versus repeal.
So much for the economic issues that were going to provide the underpinnings of what Greenberg’s associate James Carville predicted would be 40 years of Democratic party dominance.
In his campaign in 2008 and as president in 2009 and 2010, he has hoped that those he characterized to a rich San Francisco Bay area audience as bitterly clinging to guns and God would be won over by programs to stimulate the economy and provide guaranteed health insurance.
At least so far, it hasn’t worked, as witnessed by recent statements by some of the Democrats’ smartest thinkers.
The 2009 stimulus package is so unpopular that Democrats have banned the word from their campaign vocabulary. “I’m not supposed to call it stimulus,” Rep. Barney Frank told the “Daily Show”’s Jon Stewart. “The message experts in Washington have told us that we’re supposed to call it the recovery plan.
“I’m puzzled by that,” Frank went on. “Most people would rather be stimulated than recover.” The problem is, the economy has neither been stimulated nor has it recovered.
As for the health care bill, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has been pondering Democrats’ standing with working class voters since his perceptive 1980s studies of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Mich., has pretty much thrown in the towel.
In a leaked report for Democratic insiders Greenberg and fellow pollster Celinda Lake concede that “straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to be moving voters’ opinions about the law” and “many don’t believe health reform will help the economy.”
“Women in particular,” they add, “are concerned that [the] health law will mean less provider availability — scarcity an issue.” In other words, people have figured out that government rationing may mean less supply for a product for which there is great demand.
Greenberg and Lake recommend using personal stories to highlight the law’s benefits. But “don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers” and don’t “say the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
Do say, “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work to improve it.” [emphasis theirs]
This amounts to an abandonment of the claims that the Obama Democrats have been making about the health care bill they jammed through five months ago. It’s an admission that they messed up when they had supermajorities and will do better when they have fewer votes. It’s a retreat from framing the issue as support versus oppose to revise versus repeal.
So much for the economic issues that were going to provide the underpinnings of what Greenberg’s associate James Carville predicted would be 40 years of Democratic party dominance.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Obama as muslim meme has legs; Jews turning to GOP
Is President Obama good for the Jews? For more and more Jewish-Americans, the answer is no.
In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim” (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it’s less than two to one.
This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking “special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world,” as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.
(It should be noted that the Pew poll was taken before Obama’s bold support for the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a few blocks north of ground zero.)
In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim” (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it’s less than two to one.
This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking “special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world,” as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.
(It should be noted that the Pew poll was taken before Obama’s bold support for the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a few blocks north of ground zero.)
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