The Unreality-Based Presidency
As the 2004 presidential election approached, so-called “progressives” took to calling themselves “the reality-based community.”
Originally adopted as a defiant rebuttal to the Bush administration’s alleged dominance by faith-based, fact-denying zealots, it has morphed over time into a more widely used and arrogant expression intended to communicate the following: “We have the facts on our side and we understand how the world works. Anyone who disagrees with us is in denial, delusional, and dangerous.”
For some time now, I’ve considered compiling a list of some of the most ridiculous and untenable beliefs held by hardened members of the left, now known as “mainstream Democrats.” Thanks to President Barack Obama, I have now crossed out that task on my to-do list. He and his speechwriters worked it up for me, and for posterity, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. As such, I’ll only need to deal with a few of the most blatant examples of truly dangerous and delusional reality denial here.
On the economy, Obama insisted that “the true engine of America’s economic growth” is “a rising, thriving middle class.” No sir. A prosperous middle class is the result of a free-market economy operating in an environment where the rules of the game are clearly understood and evenhandedly enforced. We largely had those conditions in place during the 1980s, when during the first 14 full quarters following a recession which was arguably as serious as the one which officially ended in June 2009, the economy grew by 20 percent.
To a greater extent than commonly understood, we no longer have those conditions. This largely explains why the economy has grown by only 7.5 percent during the past 14 quarters. The fact that it has grown at all is almost a miracle, given the unprecedented level of cronyism; stifling over-regulation; misguided and corrupt attempts by the government to pick winners and losers, invariably leading to the selection of hordes of losers; and powerful deterrents to hiring, which will only became worse as the impact of Obamacare’s definition of a full-time employee as someone who works 30 or more hours per week and therefore must be covered under an employer’s insurance plan spreads. Census Bureau and other data show that these government-driven and government-imposed conditions are in fact gutting the middle class.
Speaking of ObamaCare, Obama claimed that it “is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.” No it’s not, according to an Employee Benefit News report which cites the government’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
[A] separate CMS report projects that even after PPACA is fully implemented, U.S. health spending is expected to reach nearly $4.6 trillion by 2019, growing at an average annual rate over the next decade of 6.3%, as opposed to a 6.1% rate anticipated before reform.
By 2019, health care is predicted to account for nearly one of every five U.S. dollars spent or about 19.6% of the gross domestic product, 0.3 percentage points higher than projected previously, CMS economists concluded.
For those in touch with reality, 6.3% represents faster growth of health care costs, not “slower.”
In discussing the federal government’s precarious financial situation, Obama claimed: “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.”
Unfortunately, Obama’s statement includes over $1 trillion in spending cuts which haven’t happened, and savings of hundreds of billions in interest costs which won’t occur unless those spending “cuts” (really reductions in projected spending increases) really take place.
If you want a vision of Obama’s future America, check out the scandal in Britain’s National Health Service that he loves.
Up to 1200 dead and not a single prosecution. Not surreal but the reality of state run healthcare.
There’s more on this strange story in: “Soul Dead NHS” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
Yep, we told ya so.
You don’t need to go overseas to see it. Go to any American Indian reservation and look at their housing and talk to the people in their medical centers. That is exactly what it looks like when people become totally dependent on the _American_ government.
Tom, you’re a fine writer and, I’m sure, a good man, but I’m sending you a box of matches. Because, you’re going to get cold this winter writing articles that might have sounded cutting edge two or three years ago but by now only restate the crushingly obvious. Tom, there is another angle to the old cry-wolf fable. It’s the one about the annoying guy who cries fire! fire! two hours after the house already started burning. Tom, you’re supposed to be the fire chief around here. We feel the heat as well or better than you do. Now tell us what you think we need TO DO.
I resolve to think for myself, and judge according to my own understanding of the objective reality. I set for myself my own boundaries of personal responsibility, which I will not demean my soul by crossing, no matter what the “lawful” orders of this President dictate. Personally, I cannot afford health insurance (on a $670 a month social security check–I have declined Medicare Part B on that account), and I will not beg the state (through Medicaid) to pay for me, to be in compliance with Obamacare. In short, you figure out what you will not put up with, and don’t cross that line–civil disobedience, if necessary. At Obama’s every “executive order”, the people should flood the airwaves with one resounding “NO!”–and refuse to obey that order, or patronize any business that does obey that order, in any way they know how, individually and in groups. Lawmakers should take Obama to court, hold him in contempt of Congress and the Constitution, and spend the next 4 years working to impeach him and his whole administration, for blindness to reality and inveterate lying to the American people at the very least. Don’t give him anything. “God give me the courage to change the things I can, patience to abide the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
If we had a true free market health care system you would be able to take rather good care of your health without having to pay out so much. Without prescription laws on non-narcotic, non-addictive medical drugs, you would be able to take care of medical issues such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, non-insulin dependent type two diabetes at a cost well within almost anyone’s means. Ditto for anything requiring the need for antibiotics. Our national health care costs under true free market conditions would likely be around 12% or less of GNP instead of the 18% today that it actually is. Unfortunately only Libertarians today support a true free market in medicine and everything else. Both of our major political parties today supports big government and crony capitalism.
Convince as many people as possible not to vote Democratic in 2014.
Considering the fact that voting and tabulating machines can be hacked into at will, what difference does it make how many people you can persuade?
It’s all moot. Without valid elections, we don’t have a republic any more.
Doing the same thing didn’t work over and over.
Ya know what the best thing about hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is? It feels so good when you stop!
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting an different outcome. Likewise, one of the key facets of intelligence is the ability to learn from experience.
This suggests that Obama is insane, stupid or insanely stupid.
He is not intelligent and he most definitely is not wise. If he’s continuing to promote policies that he knows will fail, he is evil. That still isn’t mutually exclusive from being insane, stupid or insanely stupid.
Obama is either insane or really does want to turn us into a third-world backwater. And he’s not insane…
It may be said that the environment grows the fruit we all have to eat.
From the festering cesspool of hippie-days, and the gradual increase of immorality over the 20th century, we have arrived at an electorate that is largely as uneducated as most of America was in 1939, while also lacking the simple horse-sense that is necessary for personal preservation and survival.
By that I mean an 18 year old in 1939 would know how to feed and clothe themselves, find work, survive. Today, the average 18 year old can’t understand much more than how to engage in a twitter conversation, turn on the TV and/or operate a microwave.
Granted, much has changed. But much hasn’t. One thing that hasn’t is the number of bullsh*tters in the world. One thing that has is the ability of the “average” person to be able to spot said bullsh*tter. But then, decades ago, there was a plethora of old wives’ tales, urban myths and chemicals you could buy at the drug store that would kill you.
But we have arrived at a time where the fruit that’s growing is sour, angry, foolish and arrogant. In the past, such fruit would be easily plowed under and/or removed. The more a BS’er BS’ed, the more well-known they became until eventually, they were shunned, ignored and left to rot in the world of their own making.
Today, the media praises them as “brilliant” or “well-spoken”. Fact is, the media is also of the same fruit so it’s no great stretch to understand what they find remarkable.
Someday, long after I’m gone, the world will self-correct. Possibly through violence, possibly because the socialist mechanisms will self destruct and implode. Look at North Korea, Cuba, any nation that has a government that controls every aspect of the citizens’ existence. But the path we’re on is one of self-destruction. It may be captain zero’s plan all along or, it may be a combination of his embracing of fascism and utopianism with his barely subdued hatred of this nation. Hate never rests. It festers and is strangely patient.
He is currently taking advantage of the drooling boot-lickers in the media who are 1) of the belief that because he’s black, he has to be the one and the best one at that and 2)they think he actually cares about them and this nation.
I submit that his plan is to do as much damage to the United States as possible and when he’s done or has to leave, he will go someplace where he will consider himself untouchable. You know, the way Saddam Hussein thought he was. As long as the media carries his water, he believes, “So much the better”.
He doesn’t like them, either. He, as narcissists do, simply tolerates them and uses them for his own gain. If he wants to throw billions of dollars down the “green energy” sewer, he will and with the full support and smokescreen of the media. The more money that is spent and lost, the better. The end-goal is to bankrupt the nation, ruin its infrastructure and he’s having great fun finding new and creative ways to do it.
I’m sure even he is amazed that the government itself is buying it. But it has its own agenda and as long as they think his agenda and the government’s is the same, the money will continue to drain. Meanwhile, as side projects, he works on gutting the military, making the government top-heavy and all the while, not caring what it does or doesn’t do in a practical sense, so long as it’s destructive and it doesn’t matter if it’s over the long or short-term. It just has to be destructive.
When you look at everything he’s “accomplished”, it’s all solely designed to unhinge that which works or has worked, that dismantles the conventions of our society and divides people against each other.
He is a usurper. The society that we have arrived at has provided him to us and the society that cannot think or reason is who elected him. It is doubtful that the nation will overcome this type of internal war and it’s actually quite a new twist for this still young nation. But other nations have had it happen and survived. May God help us get back to where we were.
Very well said. Dr. Ben Carson had it right. Where in the world has common sense gone?
There is nothing that we can do,
until the flaws and inadequacies of Obama’s policies begin to hurt Americans personally–in their household budgets and their job prospects.
Until it becomes apparent to them without needing to be told about it, anything the GOP says or does about it won’t matter.
So the best thing for the GOP to do right now is to just stop flailing around. Rather, it should get its act together, unifying the party around basic themes rather than all this infighting. It should hone a positive economic message. And then it should just be patient–and wait.
Obama’s approval rating won’t stay above 50% much longer.
Sinz, you usually are spot on, in my humble opinion.
But may I propose a slight variation to your theme.
This government of ours is a gangster, bullying, tyrannical thugfest.
(See Michael Barone’s column at NRO)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340637/obama-s-gangster-government-michael-barone
Tom’s point, if he would allow me to restate it, is that Obama and his mediafia thrives on “virtual” compassion, “virtual” virtue, and “virtual” truth.
With the propaganda arm fully in tow, it not only isn’t fact-checked, it isn’t checked at all for the masses.
Again, I rarely respond to your posts other than to nod my head in agreement. But, we can’t just simply shrug off tyranny. There is not MUCH we can do, since “our” team is so feckless, hapless and thinks “messaging” is throwing a note in the ocean, with or without the bottle.
Waiting for implosion might work if Obama and his underlords were simply misguided fools, imposing liberalism liberally. They aren’t. Tyranny is a different animal. It MUST be opposed.
Scratch a bully and find a coward underneath. Unchecked tyranny and unmitigated propaganda together will destroy us before the useful idiots and lemmings come to their senses. We must stand and be counted.
“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” Thomas Jefferson
Why is it that much of todays generations put so much stock in a presidents (or candidates) political speeches of promises when that president doesn’t enjoy a majority in both houses of congress? It is congress who legislates and provides oversight checks and balances over the exective branch. Ultimately, it is a majority of the nations people represented by whomever they vote in their districts for congress, that have the final say on the direction the country takes through government. Maybe paying more attention to what your elected congressional representatives are saying and doing is far more important than what any president is saying.
What part of executive fiat do you not understand?
For many who have a living point of reference, there is nothing ‘new’ occuring in the Obama administrations that is without many, many decades of precedence by both party’s holding the white house over the executive branch. Just more special interest orange crates littering the 24/7 cable media and the internet today. Had the same public outcries over social security, food stamps, GI bill, medicare and medicaid, ect., throughout our history. Presidents have always pushed the envelope of executive powers and congress has systemically granted more powers of policy for programs, implementation and enforcement throughout our history. Nothing new — just a different generation complaining.
What you speak of is the acceptance of “the new normal”. I hated the education department when I was a kid in school. I hate the concept of having to pay social security, especially since I don’t believe I’ll see a dime of it. Oh, sure, they’ll come up with the “consolation prize” when my generation reaches retirement age, but it won’t even resemble what my mother now receives.
Every generation complained but then, over time, the complaining died down. That is the effect that time has. Each new socialist program and each new overreach was met with protests…but if you look back to how the government ran in 1913 you would notice that it is much different than today. Much of it unconstitutional.
It’s most insidious when the intellectuals and the “peoples’ betters” start yapping about how to take care of the people. But, I submit that the constitution was designed to allow people to take care of themselves, free from government involvement.
The issue now is universal healthcare, which looks and sounds good in theory. But many nations have already proven what a debacle it is when you “DMV” the healthcare system. Bureaucrats have peculiar DNA and their first task is to perpetuate bureaucracy.
I have observed that, when I was a kid, people liked being individuals. Nowadays, it seems people want desperately to be popular, liked, and BELONG to some club, function, cause or group. Individuality that was promoted when I was a child has been replaced with conformity, acceptance and inclusion.
Sheeple.
If the new normal is 10% unemployment, $4-$6/gallon gasoline, fees, tariffs, penalties and taxes out the wazoo, then you can have it. I complain because I have read and observed the evolutionary nature of this nation into a mass of needy victims who want their share of the pie by having it given to them instead of earning it.
I think it sucks.
Check this data chart for wealth despairty. Maybe start from the haydays of the infamous Reagan administration forward. This wealth desparity was last seen in the 1920s leading up to the great wall street collapse and following depression and much of the nations agri economy destryed by the dust bowl, followed by great economic struggles of WWII. Every generation of youngin’s thinks they are impervious to financial struggles and poverty much less ever think they’ll become the senior citizen population one day themselves and every blip is an exclusive challenge created by the government. They never stop to realize that their retirement funds are subject to decades of inflation and that their incomes will one day become static as that inflation gobbles it up. Essentially, younger people don’t think very well in regards to reality, regardless of their educations. Todays generations, regardless of education, live on extended credit and accumlate debt never experienced in previous generations which doesn’t bode well for their future old age, living only in the moment. So, I do understand your commenting and the origin of its logic as I’ve witnessed it time and again in my nearly eight decades as the world turns and America progresses decade by decade. Theres been an anti-government faction since the beginnings of our history, even surrounding the founders of the nations constitution.
The founders of the constitution gave broad powers to the congress to legislate and enact laws and never once did they mentioned free enterprise or the term ‘capitalism’ as the form of the nations economy, only free trade among the many states. The constitution protects and gives to the people, by a majority representation, district-by-district across all the states through their elected representatives, to shape and form the government and the nations destiny. Sometimes, some of us like what the majority representation seeks and sometimes we don’t. Thats life under our constitution! Many of todays wealthy are surrendering their citizenship, choosing to take their U.S. gained wealth to foreign shores to prevent supporting the nation and government that allowed for all their wealth. A kind of american citizen never before experienced in our long history. Pretty much sums of the kinds of some people today — all anti-government running away with their accumulated wealth and healthy retirements.
Sorry, I forgot to give you the charts to look at!
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4#look-at-the-wealth-gap-grow-4
Speaking about doing the same thing over and over again even though it doesn’t work, the Financial Times reported today “Europe’s brittle economies shrank at their fastest rate since the collapse of Lehman Brothers four years ago, official data for the fourth quarter of 2012 showed on Thursday, with both strong and weak countries falling short of expectations….” What hasn’t worked is austerity.
The United States has done markedly better than Europe in this depression because we didn’t go in for austerity, at least on the national level. In fact, granted that the Republican party has worked relentlessly to thwart all his efforts to improve the situation, Obama has done remarkably well.
Unfortunately, the one step that would do the most to improve America’s prospects is not possible. We can’t actually disband the Republican party or make Conservatives patriotic.
Incoherent twaddle based on a timeframe conceived by a zealot with a political axe to grind. .
Thanks for proving Tom’s point. Your post could have been entitled “We have the facts on our side and we understand how the world works. Anyone who disagrees with us is in denial, delusional, and dangerous.”
Here’s one thing that progressives don’t understand about “austerity”: merely talking about thinking about tryin it sometime isn’t going to solve anything – it’s just kicking the can down the road . . . . . . . . .again!! And the sun doesn’t immediately come out because the progressive says “I’ve seen the light!” It will take some time, and some pain, for the Eurosocialist entitlement economies to recover from decades of destructive economic policies. Any progressive who pretends otherwise probably should remain anonymous.
Oh, yes. I remember reading this idiocy by Paul Krugman. Here’s why he is wrong (as always):
“The reason European austerity has failed is not because of the reductions in government spending, but because those spending cuts have been paired with tax increases. … The result is a toxic brew which shrinks both government and the private sector, producing recession, rising unemployment, and massive budget shortfalls.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/05/07/why-european-austerity-fails/)
Better yet, disband the fed, they’re now counterfeiters dragging down the currency.
I know you lib/progressives believe in sprinkling money liberley over every percieved problem you can conjour up, but the wheels are coming off your wagon, aka, you’re running out of other peoples REAL money.
Nope, getting rid of you big spending takers will be the key to righting this ship you want to sink.
A creator and a destroyer have different realities. This is how the whole scheme of things works.
It’s just looting. Obama is here to empower government because government empowers democrats.
You don’t go to Georgetown school of government to become a libertarian. Central planning is cool right now. Leaving people alone is not cool.
This is so tiresome. Obama is an awful socialist, marxist, fascist, trotskyite, maoist, illegitimately born in Kenya, muslim, christian, whatever. He sucks, ok? What, what, what do you propose we do? Cut taxes, eliminate spending with precisely zero specifics, deregulate something/anything? That isn’t policy, it is blathering. Come up with something better that Americans can get behind. Or just keep whining about the current situation. That makes you as vacuous as the liberals.
sinz and cfbleachers – You’re so absolutely right! And we MUST all stand together for the principles upon which we can all agree. If we don’t we’re lost . . . This is not the time for bickering, it makes us look as small as they are and we know that’s not the case. I’m not suggesting that we abandon sharing ideas, only that we respect one another for sharing the same ideals.
Sinz54
Cfb
Something must be done, mustn’t it?
In all seriousness, I suggested we all fire off a 21 gun salute to celebrate Independence day, July 4th, at 5PM eastern standard time.
City, country, senior housing; I don’t care where you live. Take a shot at rattling the small c communists who are in the process of solidifying tyranny on our shores. Or is that going to extremes. Heavens to Betsey, we can’t let that happen.
Interestingly, I sense the small c communist Obamunists have inbred with totalitarian ho’s, and produced a truly more virulent form of evil. A kind of Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man.
This phenomenon has pushed me into some serious concern for the liberty and freedoms that were the cornerstone of our country. Is it time for the Bill of Rights to be euthanized?
Where is my political mindset? How far have the Obamunists pushed it?
Let me take a shot at it.
To the point where the words I write are so self edited as to significantly misrepresent the unease I feel now that the opportunist Obamunists have done everything from looting the nation, trashing the best health care system in the world, while turning the rule of law into rule by the whim of Obama.
Formal murder changes must be drawn up for Obama killing our economy, our trust in government, our belief in our fellow man.
The alternative is to take the law into our own hands.
Has that option come into focus for roughly half the nation? I haven’t heard anyone verbalizing it, except maybe for Mark Levin who is so mad at the turn the Obamunists have taken this nation as to talk turkey with the American people.
Still, is that not what Tom Paine argued for? Is that not what Patrick Henry dished about in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775?
Where does that leave us?
On the shores of the Delaware River around dinner time, listening to Christmas Carols? Guarding the west wall of the Alamo on March 6, 1836? In Pearl Harbor approximately five minutes after the attack began, 7:48 Hawaiian time?
Obama talked about the war on women.
I believe Obama’s declared war on the United States.
When you look at it that way, the alternative doesn’t sound quite so extreme.
What do you think?
Peepers,
You are so right!
I am with you 100%!
I will mark my calendar
for July 4th at 5PM!
If WE ALL don’t stand
together for our country,
we are LOST! I truly believe
Obama is out to destroy us!
Obama is a communist. A Marxist Leninist who hates absolutely everything about the USA. His goal is to destroy the USA and he is succeeding.
His actual policies follow logically from his communist, hate America first ideology.
He is totally aware of what he is doing.
I am simply amazed that some folk think Obama is clueless or confused or ignorant. He is not.
All his actions and policies are meant to destroy the USA and they are working.
Reading the comments here, it sounds to me as if a large number of people who oppose gun control and understand why the Founding Fathers insisted on the the right to bear arms and on that right not being infringed are struggling to connect the dots.
I await the shot to be heard around the world. Sic semper tyrranis.
What a useless, non-sequiter, ambiguous statement.
You offer no substantive reference to support your claim about “connecting the dots”.
Or are you just drunk?
To qualify as a USURPER supporting ‘low information voting’ Left Wing moonbat your brain has to be capable of holding such diametrically opposing thoughts as:-
‘Water Boarding TERRORISTS is Evil and Illegal and BAD , but blowing people up with missiles from 30,000 feet – even American CITIZENS and innocent civilians without due process of Law – GOOD’
and
“President BUSH was evil and totally responsible for all the deficit, and the unemployment even NOW and the USURPER who has been in power for the the last 5 YEARS is NOT responsible for ANYTHING’
at the SAME time.
To qualify as a Left Wing moonbat your brain has to be capable of holding such diametrically opposing thoughts as:-
‘Water Boarding TERRORISTS is Evil and Illegal and BAD , but blowing people up with missiles from 30,000 feet – even American CITIZENS and innocent civilians without due process of Law – GOOD’
and
“President BUSH was evil and totally responsible for all the deficit and unemployment even NOW and the USURPER who has been in power for the the last 5 YEARS is NOT responsible for ANYTHING’
at the SAME time.
Our Coming Environmental Catastrophe: Geoengineering and Weather Warfare
The environmental movement has developed a single-minded obsession with the supposed effects of carbon dioxide on the global climate. Rather than CO2 gas, however, the technologies that are now being proposed to mitigate this supposed problem might be the real cause of our coming environmental calamity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUZ_5xR8j8s&feature=player_embedded#at=48
After viewing you should realize this is all about control!
Capitalisteric: The 30,000 foot view of what’s coming…
http://capitalisteric.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/the-30000-foot-view-of-whats-coming/
All true, Tom. All true. Except that it’s not a miracle that the economy still grew by 7.5 percent. Spend some time on the ShadowStats.com website and you’ll be convinced that what looks like growth is probably just understatement of inflation.
Our country is a multicultural cesspool where the takers, panderers, enablers, and useful idiots now dictate elections.
It’s now time for organized civil disobedience, nullification, and secession. First step: form a parallel government.
Military Brass Required to Fire on American Citizens? Dr. Jim Garrow Answers Your Questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynwj33XY664