Competitiveness Where It Counts
President Barack Obama is starting to look a lot like President Ronald Reagan — what with his pre-Christmas tax cuts, talk of “growth,” appointment of moderate William M. Daley as his new chief of staff, and brilliant speech of healing in Tucson.
Then, like Reagan, he began talking “competitiveness.” He vowed to cut job-killing government red tape and jump-start job creation and named GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as head of his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “Competitiveness, growth, and jobs” will be the watchwords in his State of the Union address.
It’s been a boffo performance. By grabbing the political center, he’s confounding the critics. Even Karl Rove and PJM’s own Roger L. Simon are talking about his re-election in 2012 as ever more likely.
The only thing is, Obama is counting on us getting Alzheimer’s and forgetting all his liberal handiwork and how much he has failed, and continues to fail, to unleash competitive job-creating energies — hopeful talk and good intentions notwithstanding.
Never forget: It’s the jobs, stupid — real jobs and lots of ‘em — that count with voters.
A top destination should be oil and gas exploration, which, along with energy, contains a bonanza of jobs — and, oh by the way, would produce a gusher of tax revenues, thus obviating the need for more insane borrowing from the Chinese.
But this is where Obama has failed most miserably — largely because his liberal base won’t let him succeed — which he’s counting on us forgetting and/or forgiving in exchange for windmills and battery-charged cars.
It’s easy to forget when the press barely noticed that on December 1, Obama rescinded his March 2010 decision to expand offshore oil exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast.
Taken together, these regions have as much oil reserves as Norway (7.5 billion barrels), and as much gas reserves as Canada (58.5 trillion cubic feet of gas).
It’s mind-boggling.
This expansion of offshore drilling, only partially opening those waters, would have provided enough oil to fuel more than 2.4 million cars and heat 8 million households for 60 years, while creating tens of thousands of jobs. The oil and gas industry already employs 2.1 million workers directly and 7.1 million more indirectly.
Gas at $5/gallon and the looming threat of Obamacare. How could anyone not notice?
And as Obama tacks to the center and adopts and expands the Bush/Cheney policies he maligned in 2008, will our candidate point out that an honest man would apologize?
You have got to be kidding me.
The Republicans have nobody who can win. Romney? Are you kidding me? Palin? She is unelectable. Hucksterbee? He’s a fake phony fraud. Pawlenty? Unelectable. Pence? Unelectable. Daniels? No one ever heard of him. Gingrich? Are you serious? Giuliani? He doesn’t sell west of the Hudson River.
The Republicans want Obama to have a 2nd term. That’s the way the game works. 8 years Democrats. Then you have 8 years Republicans. Then you have another 8 years for the Democrats… and when all the Republicans and Democrats are finished fighting amongst themselves… you pick your head up, and there is no country left.
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who wins. They’re all the same. The Republicans and Democrats have “triangulated” the American people, and we have no viable alternatives. On all the important issues, they all agree with each other. (Wall Street, TARP Bailouts, open borders, “free trade”, illegal immigration, China, OPEC, Military-Industrial Complex, Iraq, Afghanistan etc…). They only disagree (or at least they pretend to disagree) on some social issues (abortion, gays etc.).
Why did John the Crybaby Boehner, and Mitch the Gobbler McConnell make that deal with Obama to extend the “Bush tax cuts” right after the election, before the new Republicans were seated? Why not shut down the lame duck session, and wait until the new members were seated? Answer: Because establishment Republicans are scared of the Tea Party people (Rand Paul, Allen West, Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, and others…). They are a threat to the status quo. They are a threat to the establishment. They might put an end to all the business as usual(pork, earmarks, bridges to nowhere, bailouts, “stimulus”, corporate welfare).
If the phony check-pants country-club (Rockefeller) Republicans cave in, and raise the debt ceiling, then they are finished. There will be a 3rd party. And I may lead it. There is only so much #$%& the American people are going to take.
You’ve seen NOTHING yet what’s coming to this country…
And speaking of jobs: The phony check-pants country-club (Rockefeller) Republicans have all embraced “free trade” (NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and all the rest of those insane suicidal “free trade” agreements), and mass (illegal) immigration from third world countries (who steal jobs from America’s poorest workers, and drive down/suppress wages) in middle of a recession… so the phony Republicans don’t deserve to win in 2012. Anyway, in the long-run, the Republicans are finished, because of changing Demographics. (This didn’t happen by accident. There has been a concerted effort to change America’s Demographics for 40-50 years. Ted Kennedy with his 1965 Immigration Reform Act destroyed the Republican Party… and America.)
It is only a matter of time until Republicans… and Americans of European ancestry, are a permanent minority. The Democrats will be in power for the rest of the century.
Socialist fantasy, Savage. The artificial pumping of the stock market and the propping up of insolvent investment banks with Federal Reserve Note Monopoly can’t be sustained. Inflation and its many consequences will overwhelm all your National Socialist aspirations. Be afraid, be very afraid. Sarah Palin will run. As her campaign venues expand from hockey arenas to convention halls full of loud, enthusiastic mainstream Americans, pundits will suddenly remember her astounding acceptance speech that scared the hell out of the Democrat media complex in ’08. The GOP establishment will be leaping onto the bandwagon. Warrior Princess against Harvard Dweeb. She will mop the floor with the Fraud from Chicago in every debate. And win like Reagan in ’80.
Are you serious? Sarah Palin? Hahaha… She is a good woman. She is right on almost all of the issues. She means well. BUT SHE IS UNELECTABLE. She would lose by 20 points to Obama. She is unqualified to be President. What has she ever done that makes her qualified for the presidency? Be a career politician? You can’t possibly be serious. Sarah Palin? for President? She is unelectable.
The GOP has nobody who can beat Obama. Obama is very beatable, but the GOP has no one. They are all very flawed candidates. We will probably end up with Mitt Romney. Donald Trump and Chris Christie may have what it takes to turn this country around and get America working again, but I don’t know if they can survive the GOP primaries. Allen West is GREAT, but he probably won’t be ready for 2012. But, Sarah Palin? She is clueless. She would be in way over her head (like Obama). If you want Obama for another 4 years, vote for Sarah Palin. Make Obama’s day.
Anyway, the Republicans are clueless on Wall Street, “free trade”, illegal immigration, China, OPEC, Military-Industrial Complex, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other important issues…
“What has she ever done that makes her qualified for the presidency? Be a career politician? ”
Well, she’s done a bit more than a certain community organizer who currently lives on Pennsylvania Avenue.
I have plenty of problems with Mitt Romney, but he is definitely qualified for the job, and he can defeat Obama. Sarah Palin? she is inexperienced and unqualified for the job. That’s just what we need, a cheerleader as President. Obama would crush her by 20 points.
Obama will win a 2nd term, unless the GOP chooses a solid candidate (Romney, Trump, Christie, or a few other possible choices).
“The only thing is, Obama is counting on us getting Alzheimer’s and forgetting all his liberal handiwork and how much he has failed, and continues to fail, to unleash competitive job-creating energies — hopeful talk and good intentions notwithstanding.”
EXACTLY!!! The main stream media and so many pundits are acting as if the first two years of this guy’s administration never happened!!! If the economy is the way it is in 2012 (and it doesn’t seem to be getting much better anytime soon) and if our debt and deficit are still as huge as they are right now without Obama trying to force the Democrats in Congress to make huge cuts in the budget, then he’s gone in 2012. We are in a jobless recovery and in a period of stagnation, much the way Japan was in the 1990s. In fact, it’s a little spooky how similar the two situations are. Nope, events in this country are going to have to change dramatically for people to forget the first two years of Obama’s administration. And always remember, unless Obamacare is repealed or found unconstitutional, it’s here to stay. Just imagine what THAT will do to our budget and to our national deficit.
One of the strengths of our system is that we are a government of laws, not of men. With Obama et al it is all about him and what they are going to do. Whom they will give money to, to whom they will give waivers (that’s a special exemption for friends, folks), whom they will set up special agencies for, whom they will appoint as czars, and so forth. What he needs to do is get out of the way and let free Americans and the market economy clean up this mess. But there is no way a narcissistic such as Mr. Obama is capable of getting out of the way. It is all about him.
We aren’t likely to forget rising gas prices, double digit unemployment (the states are out of money, what are the odds they are hiring?), and inflation (pardon me for being so crass, I meant to write more nutritionally appropriate smaller portions for the same price.) Ignore those million jobs the illegals have, you wouldn’t want them America.
The stupid party can still mess this up, but my money is on somebody else in the Oval Office.
What’s the incumbent running on, his record? Re-elect me or something bad might happen? At the risk of seeming racist, the president is toast.
The only thing is, Obama is counting on us getting Alzheimer’s and forgetting all his liberal handiwork and how much he has failed, and continues to fail, to unleash competitive job-creating energies — hopeful talk and good intentions notwithstanding.
The above statement covers it to a tee. A true political chamelion like change in an attempt to woo more of the middle roaders for 2012. He’s campaigning pure and simple. Once re-elected he’ll no doubt go back to his extremist ways.
There is not a prayer the economy will improve by Nov. 2012.
Not that our government will acknowledge the truth, Isvestia and Pravada.
As it is the CPI is up slightly with food and gas up 25%? Credit home values down, oddly part of a fungibles measure.
Unemployment flat? Credit new jobs estimates up this month to be revised downward next month and thereafter once the data is forgotten. Tricks like one time Birth or Death adjustments occur repeatedly with BPS.
Manufacturer’s indicies up, credit anticipated effects of lower finished goods export costs or alternatively lower raw materials import costs!
Car sales now include cars delivered to dealers.
Millions of empty ommercial and residential properties are in limbo, neither foreclosed, for sale or their mortgages being paid.
Banks are carefully metered into insolvency and disposed so that the troubled(900-odd) only slowly rises.
All steaming effluent. Panic avoidance justifies any lie.
It’s unlikely that outside of the city where this state held the Olympics(where all has already been forgiven), anything will be forgotten by the folks who live here.
No job’s, higher taxes, gas and food prices up, more houses in foreclosure than for sale…
No, this isn’t the part of the country where that forgetful mental illness has turned it’s citizens into political zombies.
Too bad our neighbors down in Florida have such a high percentage of afflicted citizenry.
Some day in the White House there will be problem solvers and not politicians. Some day the term “politician” will be recognized as an obsenity, like used car salesman. Politician and problem solver are mutually exclusive terms, although the highly delusional will find the nedd to suggest that it requires one to lead to the other. The country elected a big promising, orating, rock star, and is now learning about the mess that he has created.
Competitiveness, especially in manufacturing, is to a substantial extent a function of energy costs. Obama is conducting a broad-front assault on America’s energy industry, encompassing not just oil, but also electricity…this will certainly have a baleful effect on job creation/retention, regardless of how many photo ops the president does with prominent CEOs.
This moratorium on off shore oil and gas exploration and drilling is only a mindless extension of an anti fossil fuel assault begun decades ago with the start of the Environmental movement which has only grown in power and influence over the years since. Obama, with the zeal of a university activist, now strengthens their anti-industrial development grip on an already beleaguered nation. These zealots are motivated by their belief that America has long been guilty of excessive consumption of the world’s resources in their “gluttonous, Capitalistic quest for wealth and profit” and must be stopped regardless of the consequences. The culmination of this idiocy occurred when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the EPA and ruled CO2 a pollutant. Obama will do his very best to continue this disastrous policy using the Environmentalist favorite emotional ploy, the pollution “scare” tactic. Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption; the labels will change to exploit whatever happens with the weather but mounting deficits and debt, economic stagnation, high unemployment, national security, all will be considered too insignificant to distract attention from their vainglorious quest to “save the planet” from their “evil” benefactors. The latter would be the American taxpayer and the businesses and industries that employ a steadily decreasing number of them.
A comeuppance for these zealots is long overdue. Nothing less than the survival of America as the freest, greatest, wealthiest most productive nation ever to grace the planet is at stake.
Brilliant piece Mary Claire: sorry we didn’t connect at the Daily Caller party!
Thanks, Nick… next time… maybe at the Pajamas Media party…
Here’s the recipe for a second Obama term:
1. Congress thwarts The Won’s social-fascist agenda for the next two years.
2. Regulation-gone-mad is halted.
3. Taxes remain as they are.
4. The housing market begins to revive.
5. Unemployment figures start to drop.
6. Obama cleans out the majority of his “czars.”
7. The enviro-nazis and warmistas are spanked and sent to bed without any supper.
8. Economic vitality surges.
9. Obama drops Biden as his running mate and selects someone with a pulse.
10. The GOP nominates John McCain for a second try.
Any bets?
Home run numbers 1-9. Number 10, i highly doubt.
Of course Obama is not a shoe-in, but you have to have somebody to beat somebody as Savage points out.
Last night O’Reilly said, “If the election were held right now, Obama would lose.” I yelled at the tv, “Really, WHO would he be losing to?” O’Reilly was spaced out last night. Maybe it is sinking in how much pressure will be on HIM in the upcoming Obama interview. Sometimes being a centrist culture warrior, even if it is definitely right center is harder to do than caterwaul out on the edge like Rush, Hannity, Ingraham, et al.
Romney should be the guy, but he has so much working against him now on the right that it is hard to see how he could get the nomination. You guys are killing yourselves here.
It won’t happen, but if all the Palin supporters held their noses and supported Romney, he would probably be the next President of the United States.
The 2012 GOP Presidential nominee will run on, and win with, with the slogan, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” It does not matter who the Republican and Democratic nominees for President are, because wholly implausible candidates won’t be nominated. The GOP nominee will beat the Democratic nominee. Jim Carville correctly said that, in presidential campaigns, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Prognosticators who do not remember the past will repeat it. There are a lot of us who said in 2008 that “There are two kinds of Americans, those who remember Jimmy Carter and those who will find out about him.”
My employer’s long-time Hartford Insurance 457(b) retirement account adviser retired late last year. Her replacement, who had been born during the Reagan administration, assured me several weeks ago that inflation and economic stagnation were incompatible. He also genuinely believed it possible for “renewable” energy sources to replace the majority of fossil fuel plants now in use.
The MSM and Democrats claimed in 1980 that an extremist Republican like Ronald Reagan could not be elected. Reagan had a 9% popular vote margin over incumbent President Jimmy Carter, and their respective electoral vote totals were 489 and 49.
Those who contend that Sarah Palin can’t defeat Barack Obama next year should do more than merely denounce her, as that reminds those of us who were around in 1980 that the MSM and Democrats did the same then concerning Ronald Reagan.
Excellent article…
America’s rich energy resources should not be locked up, but should be freed up and used to our competitive advantage, so that it might once again be “Morning in America” such as Ronald Reagan ushered in…
As it is, we are mourning for how far we have fallen, or at least how far we are from living up to our potential, under Barack Obama’s leadership… As David Foster so rightly notes, “Competitiveness, especially in manufacturing, is to a substantial extent a function of energy costs. Obama is conducting a broad-front assault on America’s energy industry, encompassing not just oil, but also electricity… this will certainly have a baleful effect on job creation/retention, regardless of how many photo ops the president does with prominent CEOs.”
Well said Mary Claire! This nation is blessed with natural resources
and yet our dependence on foreign oil grows annually.
When oil is no longer priced in dollars and gas is ten dollars a gallon, you will see domestic oil drilling suddenly become very popular.
Thanks, Myra… Did you notice how President Obama set as a goal phasing out the oil industry in the SOTU? Washington Post had article a few days ago about how all the lobbies were hoping for some good words in the SOTU, and American Petroleum Institute was specifically featured… not only were there no good words, they were royally dissed… this was my sense of where Obama was heading… but striving for a million electric cars by 2015 and having a healthy oil industry are not mutually exclusive… they shouldn’t compete with one another but should complement one another…
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