Should We Gloat Over Obama’s Childish Behavior?
Bill’s cool and Barack’s an uptight prig.
Cue the laughter. Bring on the guffaws.
But wait — didn’t we already know that?
It’s easy enough for conservatives, libertarians, et al, to gloat about Barack Obama’s recent petulant, child-like performances — at first unable to be even slightly gracious in compromise with Republicans on the tax bill and then, only a few days later, fleeing in panic when Clinton acted the real president, fielding questions with a relaxed authority so surpassing Obama’s it was almost comical.
But there is a bigger reason not to gloat. We are stuck with this odd duck for another two years at minimum and now everyone, the entire world really, knows what he is like. They also know, if they have been paying the slightest attention, the etiology of his behavior: the man never had to face serious adversity until he was elected POTUS. And now he can’t deal with it. He’s the very model of Harry Truman’s famous advice about getting out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat. Obama was out of the White House briefing room the second he realized he was being outclassed by Clinton. And, boy, was he ever!
We need a leader and don’t have one. This is extremely bad news for our country, especially now.
What is to be done? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t close to simple even with a real leader. Merely cutting taxes — assuming we do that — may not be nearly enough. And pseudo-stimulus spending, such as has been shamefully added on to this “compromise bill,” will most likely make matters worse. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on our economy, our way of life really. Interest to China alone will soon be enough to bankrupt us.
So what indeed is to be done? Paul Ryan has a prescription that’s a starting point, but even his ideas may not reduce spending fast enough. There is little reason to be optimistic, even with the Tea Party victories. I have just returned from New York and found the situation there similar to California, strongly resistant to change. (A good analysis can be found in the WSJ’s interview with Richard Ravitch — “Gotham’s Savior, Beaten By Albany.”) It’s tempting for some on the right to dismiss this as just New York and California, but these are our two most populous states and comprise a huge percentage of the U.S. economy. Things will not be easily improved without them. In fact, they probably can’t be improved without them. And Illinois too seems out of control.
And we have Barack Obama to lead us. Wow. The Republican leadership had better be strong. Their recent “compromise,” as Charles Krauthammer has shown us, was not inspiring. Color me nervous.
Being right about someone never hurt so bad.
I’m more terrified than ever of having this idiot as POTUS.
My faith in all things hilarious is the only thing keeping my sanity in tact (barely). With the global warming scams exposed, with the Euro-Socialism falling apart at the seams, TSA grope-a-dope and “food police”, nukes aimed at us from MUSLIMS…I think America sadly needed this harsh wake-up call.
We have got to stop letting the 20% psychotic “Progressives” own the dialog.
Please, America. Wake up. We are in huge trouble.
HUGE.
“dialogue”
*tired*
I agree with all that you posted and the pitiful part is our Congress is sitting on their hands and not doing a thing about the problem. I blame both parties for letting things get so far out of control it’s almost an impossibility to straighten things out. The POTUS is circumventing the Constitution that he swore to protect and the Supreme Court does nothing. You and I see these things and we are both aware of the consequences, are we alone out here?
You are not alone but those of us who actually believe the government should be following the constitution are few and far between. it’s the same mentality that thinks it’s ok to steal a pen from work, or drive 5 miles over the speed limit because “it’s only a pen, I won’t get a ticket, everyone else does it”. The only difference is scale, not morality.
Not enough of us to make a difference anymore, I surmise. Our nation sleepwalked into this mess, and Bill “it depends on what you mean by ‘is’” Clinton behind a podium fielding questions as Barry flees to another lavish party…what is going on here?
What authority does Bill Clinton have, in what branch of government is he employed that empowers him to speak on behalf of the administration regarding national policy?
Anybody remember the trashing of White House property (“W” pulled off computer keyboards, furniture removed) when the Clintons left; why is he even allowed back into the building?
This simply can’t be happening…I’m asleep and dreaming it all.
The “wake up in the night sweating” moment for me was when I realized 12 hours later (yes, I am slow) that I was actually wishing Bill Clinton was POTUS rather than Obama! Clinton was a dishonest rogue and scalliwag but at least Clinton inspired a certain amount of trust–if only trust in Clinton’s endless ambition to remain POTUS.
I have never seen someone as weak and ill-prepared as Obama in an executive position, let alone the most powerful office in the world. And, like Roger, that scares the cr@p out of me.
You have taken the words right out of my mouth.
we pray to have the economy that we associate with clinton
..associate being the key word here…
You hit the nail on the head. For the past few months I’ve been looking at Hilary with some strange nostalgic admiration. She’s someone I never liked before Obama came to power. It’s more a feeling like: wouldn’t it be nice tovhave a US president that actually LIKES the US and wants it to suceed?
One of the few wake up calls we have had that even liberals cannot hide from is the unemployment. Otherwise, America is sleep walking to her grave. I talk to people about what is happening to us ..the most typical answer I get is,”well, I can’t do anything about it”. People in general, even republicans/conservatives , are acting powerless.
If Obama doesn’t have a melt down between now and 2012 I will be surprised He’s a whiny little boy child who does not bear the mantel of responsibility well. His handlers best order xanax by the truck load.
I can’t fathom the audacity of having a press conference with an ex president and bowing out because the wife is waiting..Yesterday was Obama acting like a fool.
He was giddy, smiley,”yahsahaysa”..3 bags full…and a set of balls please..
You don’t really think you’re alone, do you? Have you been to a Tea Party?
I worked with True The Vote, an initiative of King Street Patriots in Houston, during the run-up to the mid-terms. King Street has speakers on Monday nights. Anita MonCrief, the ACORN whistleblower, spoke to 350 people a while back. This, in a room that seats 200. On a Monday night? After work? People coming 45 minutes early hoping to get a good seat? Or any seat? People were standing outside on the sidewalk listening through the open door.
We are not alone. We surround them.
Get in on the ground floor, and change your precinct. If everyone does that, all the precincts will change, won’t they? Become a poll watcher, and stop ACORN and those trained to screw up our wonderful system from doing any more damage. Do not allow these people to take any more ground from those of us who just believed in the system.
When I started working with True The Vote, and learned how elections are stolen, it was like learning that there is no Santa Claus. But I’m over it. This is reality. We need lovers of America to stand up and push back.
I’ve been there doing grunt work during the week, and people come to the office to ask with great urgency whether they are too late to join the latest class on the Constitution. Did you ever think you’d live in a time when adults take their evenings, and some even bring their children, to learn the User Manual of the United States?
You need to get out more. You need to find a group like King Street, where we are kicking butts and taking names. If there isn’t a group like King Street, start one.
The time for wringing your hands is over. The time for getting trained on cleaning up the voter lists in your state is here. You have two years to fix King County in Washington State, by making sure the dead are disenfranchised. You can get rid of the Christine Gregoires and Patty Murrays who can only get elected by zombies rising up, if you get the zombies off the voter rolls. If every person reading Pajamas Media started working in their own counties cleaning up voter rolls, by Election Day 2012 all the King Counties would have to scramble to steal the election. They have done this unopposed for so long, that they are shocked when someone pushes back.
Cleaning voter rolls? It’s all drudgery, looking manually at one record after another, checking addresses, finding names that are duplicated or triplicated or worse. Know your precinct. Walk around, find empty lots, write down the address. Then go online to the voter rolls for your county and see if anyone is registered to vote there. If so, you have a project, don’t you? Get them off the voter rolls. These are public records and you as a citizen have the right to demand this change.
Get off the couch and learn how to clean up the voter rolls. You’ll be doing much more good that way than by staying at your keyboard feeling like there is no way out. I certainly feel better for pushing back.
Check these links to King Street Patriots, and True The Vote. You’ll see that all it takes is the desire to make it happen. Kind of like in Field of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come.”
You are so right! We HAVE to move past wringing our hands. Join the Tea Party and WORK.
Those who are too busy to help are too busy. It’s our only country and if we lose it, goodbye freedom and prosperity that has only happened once in history.
I spent a lot of time working a volunteer resource center — stuffing bags with campaign literature until I almost couldn’t bear to move my thumbs (being 73 is no picnic); mapping precincts for people to walk them, etc.
I was exhausted and my house wasn’t clean but I didn’t feel the terrible anxiety that I had been feeling.
Illinois didn’t turn like we hoped, but I am ready, after Christmas, to start working again to reclaim our country.
Please, please listen to Mathmom and act.
good idea…
However, ever tried to get one of the “tea party” to call you back or answer an email”…you can sign up, read the emails, show up at what they chose to rally for..but don’t try to get a response and actually try to contribute.
1. Be informed with facts. e.g. federal income tax revenue increased by a factor of 5 from 1980 to 1988, while congress increased spending 1.83 for each additional dollar of tax revenue.
2. Talk about the facts with friends and family. e.g. Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, increases the lowest tax rate from 10% to 15%, a 50% increase! The highest rate from 36% to 39.5% (about 10%)
3. Taxing activity tends to decrease the activity (booze, tobacco). Incentive tends to increase activity (solar water heater, more fuel efficient auto). So why does the fed wish to tax at a higher rate: tax payers, job creators, investment makers, and wealth producers? Is it to get less tax revenue? Less investment?, Less wealth production?
It’s not that congress is sitting on their hands. They have put forth bills that would help solve the problem (like repealing ObamaCare), but they all have stalled in the Senate thanks to Dirty Harry Reid. Where they ARE failing is in not going public with that problem and informing We, the People of what the Democrats in the Senate are doing to obstruct the legislative process….even while accusing Republicans of being the ‘obstructionits’. A few press conferences (held each and every time a Rep bill is blocked) would clear the air and make it less convenient for Democrat senators to surpress the will of We, the People. And after that latest stunt by Reid of using the nuclear option, I would have gone public big time. Instead, we hear NOTHING from the
Reps in congress. We need a speaker of the house with a set of nads for a refreshing change. And Boehner ain’t it.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Anything that hurts Obama helps the country. Our institutions and traditions can overcome any damage he can cause, including any attempts to involve us in a war, which I expect to happen soon.
Frankly, stuxnet may have saved the planet.
Of course, I view Obama as another form of stuxnet aimed directly at the heart of our country.
There’s always a better joke.
This is just setup for the punch-line.
It’s not so much “gloating” as it is deep seated and justifiable anger.
The mainstream media wanted Obama as President, and employed the most low-brow underhanded tactics to get him there, and continues to prop him up. Now they seem shocked, shocked! that’s he’s unqualified and clearly out of his depth. Can you imagine if the press agreed to go along and float the idea that “the Presidency was too large for one person”, if the sitting President was Republican? Enough.
Mocking and outright derision are all the Left understands, and this Administration deservedly has it coming their way in spades. Without it, they will continue arrogantly on their path to complete destruction of our Constitution and our liberties. Mocking tends to set them back and stop their advancement of the path to complete socialism of our Nation.
I agree with this lady and her final comment at the end of her post: It’s time to hold the LSM accountable for this.
One Term President?
We have got to stop letting the 20% psychotic “Progressives” own the dialogue.
True enough, Delia, but the problem isn’t so much a matter of who owns the dialogue, but with the corruption of the very language we use to frame our debate. Jean-Francios Revel put it rather cuccinctly in his 1991 The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information
That’s been the singular triumph of the practitioners of the destructive Gramscian meme. In its takeover of our cultural life, the generation of the 60s has adhered loyally to the course of action set down for it by two Marxist philosophers, the Italian New Left prophet Antonio Gramsci and the German emigré Herbert Marcuse, whose doctrines acquired a wide popularity among teachers, students and intellectuals. Yes, I know that this is old news to most of us, but it’s useful to re-establish the context.
In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci argued that in order to change society – in this case, to change it to the totalitarian Communist Utopia that Gramsci envisioned – one must first change peoples’ consciousness, which can only be done by seizing control of a nation’s socialand cultural institutions: schools, churches, government agencies, the academic disciplines, entertainment, the arts and, of course, the media. This is precisely what has happened as Gramsci’s hegemonic idea came to be known as the “long march through the institutions.”
The Left has also prioritized Marcuse’s antinomic concept of “discriminatory tolerance” or “repressive tolerance,” formally advanced in his influential 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance, in which he argued that “freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.” Marcuse urged “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left,” which, as should now be evident, serves to justify repression in order to alter the “social structure” in the direction of a socialist, quasi-totalitarian state. Stripped of its pretensions, the argument is for what really amounts to a grinding totalitarian feudalism – a playground for will-to-power driven monsters. So, in the ultimate Orwellian inversion, in the name of freedom of thought, freedom of thinking is progressively curtailed and eventually snuffed out.
So, here are the difficult questions:
When your opponents lack the price of admission to civilized debate: a respect for reason, belief in objective truth, and a willingness to admit they’re wrong when the facts prove it so – what then?
When your opponents’ goals are to destroy the very foundation of your culture and your society – and to offer nothing in return but the howling nightmare of a society ruled by killers without conscience – what then?
When your opponents seize and indoctrinate your children’s’ minds in the politics of victimization and the nobility of human servitude and sacrifice – what then?
When the institutions of higher learning are occupied by Marxist multiculturalists who despise the very philosophical foundation upon which the architecture of liberty and human dignity have been be constructed – what then?
We know the answer – as Samuel P. Huntington said in his Clash of Civilizations, “History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society.”
History has also made it starkly and brutally clear that there is usually only one way to stop these monsters.
Intellectualizing history and philosophy is grand for intellectuals! However, to win wars you have to have a well defined and comprehensive actionable (reality) PLAN of implementation. You have to define where and what the battlefields are and prioritize them. The socialist progressives have a 100 year record of mastering this and evolutionizing along the way.
Forgoing a long dissertation…the GOP, “conservatives” and Tea Party are clueless in directed comprehensive strategies, but for a lot of populist superficial rhetoric.
In war, your first and foremost objective remains taking out the *COMMAND & CONTROL* of your enemy!
Fortunately, our great constitution gives the people more than one alternative to defeating an enemy government, leaving armed insurrection as a last alternative. A single Constitutional amendment would take out the command and control of an enemy government of Traditional America. A socialist progressive command and control that have NO other advance line for their implemented strategies, but through Americas capitalist commerce generated economies.
Study all the “founders” documentations surrounding the *intent* of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause……”regulate (*tariff free*) commerce between the many States. Then consider that ALL of centralized governments authority to create social programs, grow the size of government striping away the States Rights to govern and regulate commerce led to all the social programs, labor controls, financial controls, health care controls, EPA controls, FCC controls, Utiltities controls, FDA/CVM controls, Transportation control…even Roe vs. Wade abortion control, etc., etc. came in full or inpart through abusive interpretation(s) of the Constitutions Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause by the federal goverment, the congress’ the courts and special interest lawyers (all socialist progressives) by the boatloads.
Would not this be the single most strategic battlefield to be addressed by the People and the States? An untested Peoples Constitutional Convention….OR….a States Constitutional Convention to amend Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause?
IF not…we lose the war on behalf of Traditional America!
One of the test cases here was the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1912. The law was challenged in court as having nothing to do with interstate commerce, and as being a violation of the 4th, 9th, and 10th Amendments.
The government’s case was that the Harrison Act was a taxation measure, not a regulatory one. Also, since the items being regulated, er, taxed, crossed state lines at some point prior to delivery to the consumer, the government contended that whole process was open to Federal regulation. Because it involved teh evil dope, SCOTUS bought it.
Crime rates, drug addiction rates, homicide rates, and incarceration rates all were lower before the Harrison Act than they were after it, but, what the heck, you don’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?
Speaking of which: it’s hardly surprising that, now, we’ve arrived at a place where the Feds propose to regulate school bake sales.
Nothing has damaged our Republic more and allowed a custom tailored avenue for enemy’s to attack Traditional America, than has the gross ongoing abuse of the Commerce Clause by the federal government. The masses simply refuse to invest the time and thought into these abuses and do something about it. All they wish to do is follow the populist superficial rhetoric and diversions rather than address the core underlying causations of problems. I don’t know what these newer generations stand for anymore. Certainly not “real” and difficult problem solving needed!
Ideas have consequences. We don’t live in a vacuum.
“Ideas have consequences”….”We don’t live in a vaccum”
Totally irrelevant to the premise of my comments!
All the intellectualizing of history and philosophy seems to have FAILED America today, eh? Now, its time for the warriors who reside in the world of *reality* to come in and clean up the messes caused by all the intellects and philosophers.
“We have got to stop letting the 20% psychotic “Progressives” own the dialog.
Please, America. Wake up. We are in huge trouble.”
Of course that’s the whole problem. Obama is a result of decades of a a progressive worldview. The PJM article by Radosh is excellent. The American Interest article by Walter Russell Mead (cited by Radosh) is profound:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/12/08/the-crisis-of-the-american-intellectual/
Mead offers a glimmer of hope. But he understands that the current worldview so infuses the “elites” that they can’t comprehend what has to be done (of course, I take the more cynical view that it is not in their best interests to let go of power). Mead:
“Figuring out why so many of our intellectuals and experts are so poorly equipped to play a constructive role — and figuring out how to develop the leadership we currently lack — may be the most important single thing Americans need to work on right now.”
So, should we gloat? Sure, why not, we were right…but we can’t afford to have a Pyrrhic victory.
Great replies, everyone. Thank you so much for sharing.
It’s incredibly lonely having not a single person in my family or in-laws as conservatives and my one saving grace is my Jewish neighbor who is a staunch conservative and having PJM to turn to is my other life-line because I get to see other folk’s point of views and the same anger, pain, grief, fear, shock, disgust etc.
It’s hard not to feel impotent in the face of what we are up against but I refuse to give up hope and let the creeping evil ruin it all by our own apathy.
The clarion call is upon us.
I appreciate the indignation directed here against “the Progressives,” especially since they control alternative and public media, plus the networks. Their primary message is blatantly reactionary: cultural pessimism at the same time that they claim the mantle of enlightened liberal optimism. I wrote about two concrete examples here: http://clarespark.com/2010/12/12/hbo%e2%80%99s-in-treatment-and-boardwalk-empire/.
I’m curious, Delia….Do any of your relatives ever have ANYTHING at all to say about what Obama is doing? You would think even the true believers are getting somewhat alarmed.
rk, you took the words right out of my mouth.
The biggest problem we have is that our republic has been “hi-jacked” and for decades now, they’ve been feeding this propaganda to the “unwashed masses” until it’s literally impossible to have an intelligent dialog with them!
Anything you say sends them into a furor, and they literally fillibuster you, until you (out of a sense of decency and respect), finally stop talking, but they continue to browbeat you! Have you ever had that experience? How is it every liberal knows exactly how to “win” an argument by fillibustering?
It amazes me.
I am currently reading The Ungovernable City: John Lindsey and His Struggle to Save New York, by Vincent J. Cannato and The Streets Were Paved With Gold: The Decline Of New York, An American City by Ken Auletta. The problems of the citizens of California, New York, and Illinois are mostly self inflicted. They have nobody to blame but themselves. These people lie, slime, and steal without an ounce of guilt. They should truly be spit on! One should not feel the slightest bit of pity. It is time for a nonviolent civil war. The red states vs. the blue states. If you really study about the economic problems threatening these three states—you will be tempted to vomit your guts out.
Much of this economic horror began on March 31, 1958 when Mayor Robert Wagner of New York signed an executive order permitting many government employees the right to join a union. Needless to add, this madness spread to most of the rest of the nation. The intellectually corrupt Ivy League Universities added to the grief by pushing the childish naive economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and other Progressive economists. The graduates of these “elite” schools generally have the morals of a con man or an alley cat. They are truly disgusting human beings. It is time for the citizens of the red states to push these narcissistic human beings to the side.
A-to-the-men, David!
Teachers going on strike? Cops? Firemen?
The house-of-cards is tumbling down.
David Your previous posts concerning Obama’s mental stability appears to be coming true. I won’t be surprised if we see more and more bizzare behavior from him in the near future.
Barack Obama had a ridiculously easy time capturing the presidency. He barely put in any effort and his family was moving into the White House. I am unaware of any other man in American history who did so little. John F. Kennedy spent thirteen years in both Houses of Congress before running for president. Many Americans wondered if he had acquired enough experience! Barack Obama was running for the presidency before finishing his first term in the U.S. Senate.
he won because he is black, period. we don’t question the qualifications of black people, it is racists don’t ya know..
You are, of course, correct. That’s why BO’s handlers (Soros, the Saudis et al) chose a black man as their Trojan Horse at the right moment in American politics to grab THE position of power to cut America down to size. A white pres would not be able to accomplish half of what BO has. We would immediately push back on a white pres (assuming the unlikely premise that a white candidate with BO’s resume would even make it to the primary). BO’s handlers knew that being accused of racism is America’s Achilles Heel. We will do ANYTHING to avoid that label – even allow a black man to ruin our country and take away our freedoms while we watch and wring our hands.
I don’t think it is fair to call Keynes’ theories childish or naive. He would be horrified to see the way they have been misused.
If a government builds a surplus in the good years, it can use it to stimulate the economy in bad times; or if need be, it can run into debt in hard times, but recover the position in the good times.
The trouble is that undisciplined, self-serving politicians were more interested in buying votes at all times and forgot about keeping things in balance. As a result, the problem has become one of curing the result of their excesses. Keynesian solutions are no longer viable, because, when overdone, they increase the problem rather than solving it.
“The trouble is that undisciplined, self-serving politicians were more interested in buying votes at all times and forgot about keeping things in balance.”
Oliver, I disagree about your view of Keynesianism. David Thomson is correct – it is “childish” and “naive.” Obviously you are not familiar with Public Choice. Keynes’ ideas could never work, even in theory. One of the core insights the Founders took from the radical Whigs, from which they based their political philosophy, was that Man, given power, will eventually abuse it. And since Government is the institution wielding the most power, it is the most dangerous. Therefore, all politicians and bureaucrats will succumb to the siren song given enough time and opportunity. Government must designed around this truth in order for Liberty to prevail. That is why Madison sought a national government of not only of limited ends, but of limited means to carry those ends out. He argued, like all true Whigs, that although corruption may never be eliminated for it is part of human nature, the opportunities for corruption can be circumscribed both is size and scope. Therefore, why, at your age (I assume you are no longer 19 y.o), are you still amazed to find that politicians are mostly interested in buying votes and are self-serving? Rowley’s Law, as created by my advisor in grad school Charles K. Rowley, states: “All politicians are corrupt.” We the citizens must act accordingly.
Oliver is a red herring. Keynes was a Marxist. To defend Keynes’ theory as having utility in capitalism (ie, in reality) is ridiculous, and displays ignorance of what Keynes meant. I wouldn’t call his ideas “childish” and “naive” only because it gives him too much credit. “Evil”, “malignant” and destructive is more accurate.
The reason Keynesian economics fails is that politicians are not investors. They are incapable of understanding the difference between an investment (and the concept of of mal-investment) and an expense.
I think Oliver has it pretty much right. Keynes recommended that the government run a deficit when the business cycle produced a deficiency of demand, and that the government should run a surplus in good times. If we had been running surpluses when times were good, we’d be a lot better off now. As for the first part, the current economic decline is not due to deficient demand but to a mess in the financial system, so that deficit spending is medication for the *wrong* disease, if it even worked when it was applied correctly.
I really like this quote from Keynes: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
(No, he was NOT recommending governments do this!)
While I will never be a Keynesian, I agree that his theories have been taken to a ridiculous degree by modern progressivism. If he has the capacity for it, I’m sure Keynes is most unhappy about many of the policies to which his name has become attached.
["If a government builds a surplus in the good years, it can use it to stimulate the economy in bad times;....."]
Whooooa! It is this very thinking and theory that railroaded Traditional America sending us down the road for decades to arrive at this point of circumstance!
Read the Constitution!!!!
It is the congress (House of Representatives)Constitutional mandate to LEGISLATE a budget and APPROPRIATE the funds for said budget. EVERY dollar budgeted and appropriated for, MUST be spent for the items legislated and appropriated for. Therefore, the can be NO surplus of funds!!!!!! IF there is a circumstance that the legislated budget item cancels its budgeting or does not use all the monies, that monies is to BE returned to the treasury!!!!! ALL federal budgets should incur a net zero balance!!!!
Keynesian economics is exactly what brought us government economic corruption and where we are today in government and the mindset of the general citizenry.
Be what it may today, there is NEVER such thing as “surplus” when there remains a national debt….plain and simple!
We are headed for another “Ford to City: Drop Dead” moment…. only it will be NY State, Illinois, CA etc being told to drop dead. There will be armed insurrection in “flyover country” if we end up bailing these guys out. Thank goodness BAB was left out of the tax compromise SO FAR….Let’s keep an eye on that little bonbon, folks.
I recently moved to San Diego, and I will say that the people here believe in high taxes and getting a good bang for their buck.
There is very little wrong with California that can’t be resolved by two actions: 1) passage of a right-to-work law, so that the unions will be accountable to their members, and 2) reframing the budget to reduce the volatility of the state income flow. It’s the volatility that’s the problem, not the amount.
Indeed, Valerie. California tax policies illustrate perfectly the complete fallacy of “taxing the wealthy” as the way to economic prosperity and stability. But, even more important than establishing the “right to work” is un-establishing the right of public employees to unionize. And I fear that’s not going to happen any time soon especially considering the man who established that right in the first place is back in charge.
I certainly agree about the unions, but one other thing should be included. The excessive power of the environmental movement needs to be crushed, that’s right crushed. California has tremendous natural recources which are not beng utilized, agriculture, timber, natural gas, oil, etc., etc. California’s economy is operating at about half throttle.
“The problems of the citizens of California, New York, and Illinois are mostly self inflicted. They have nobody to blame but themselves. These people lie, slime, and steal without an ounce of guilt. They should truly be spit on! One should not feel the slightest bit of pity. It is time for a nonviolent civil war. The red states vs. the blue states. If you really study about the economic problems threatening these three states—you will be tempted to vomit your guts out.”
As a reader of BOTH books and as someone who grew up in and lived in New York City through the Lindsay years, I second David Thompson’s motion!
I actually confronted Ken Auletta on his three hour “In Depth” appearance on Booktv about his union comment which he first made in the New York Magazine article which was the basis of “The Streets Were Paved With Gold.” The title of the article was “The 50 Decisions Which Caused the New York City Fiscal Crisis.” He would not directly answer the question which was about the Democ-rat candidates that year advocating compulsory unionization of the Federal work force in light of what happened in New York City. His answer spoke mostly to “power relationships.” What garbage. If a purported “truth seeker” among liberal journalists is in denial, what hope is for the open outright propagandizers?
John Lindsay, elected as a Republican, simply gave it all away after he was defeated by Mike Quill in January, 1966′s transit worker strike. There’s a story about the City’s negotiations with John DeLury of the Sanitation workers which goes as follows:
John DeLury was sitting at a restaurant with some of his cronies. He said to them, “I was across the table from these Ivy league suits and I began, ‘I want a four man truck,’ and they answered, ‘You got it.’ Then I said ‘I want a 5% raise over 2 years’ and they said, ‘You got it.’ Now I have a problem–What do I ask for next time?” Sounds funny, but this is the whole problem in a nutshell!
The two books Thompson cited were right on and those, along with Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” tell you all you need to know about New York City’s predicament today!
Speaking of Caro’s book on Robert Moses, his comment delivered in the aftermath of the disastrous cave-in to the TWU by Lindsey in the transit strike could just as easily apply to Obama:
“If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you get a musical comedy administration.”
“The intellectually corrupt Ivy League Universities added to the grief by pushing the childish naive economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and other Progressive economists. The graduates of these “elite” schools generally have the morals of a con man or an alley cat.”
Here is what amazes me, David. Fine, universities are cesspool breeding mills of sludge for progressivism, but where are these students’ parents??? Well, I mean, where WERE they?? Nowadays, I know they’re just as progressive as their children, but HOW did it get this out of control? Where were we for 60 years while this happened? How did we not see that the universitiers were turning our children into hate-filled liberals who HATED all that is right and good about our country?
I know I’m of this generation, but I was too busy raising a family, and making a living to to become a liberal progressive….
I think I now know the reason why Obama keeps his school records under wraps.
Clown College doesn’t post transcripts.
I’ve always suspected that there was something embarrassing in them about how his education was funded (perhaps a scholarship from Saudi Arabia for being a Muslim attending college in America?) or the diversity quota under which he qualified for admission (perhaps as a foreign national from Kenya or Indonesia?) It’s hard to imagine that plain bad grades are enough to explain all this stonewalling.
Just a guess on my part but I think his S.A.T scores were rather low which would dispel the notion of Obama as a wunderkind.
…while simultaneously dispelling the notion that drug use “expands the mind.”
As Adam Smith observed, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. There’s much less ruin in a Presidency. Given that the hapless Obama has brought his office to such a pass barely halfway through his tenure, I think the next two years will merely serve to heighten his grotesque inadequacy. He’s already achieved a quite remarkable feat: that of dethroning Jimmy Carter as the worst US President of all time. Give the boy his head, and he stands a good chance of inoculating the electorate against the idiocies of liberalism for a generation, thereby gifting us a Reagan, in much the same way that the Peanut Farmer did.
Of course, the above is predicated on the idea that he won’t do something completely bone-headed and precipitate World War III or whathaveyou. That’s in the lap of the gods.
I set my desktop to a pic of Carter with the phrase “Finally I won’t be the worst president in History” one month before the 2008 election when Oh BLAH BLAH was elected. Then I lost half my income as a small biz owner. What a disaster this guy is for the future of this country, Liberals are idiots and they hurt their children and grand kids with their insane devotion to “progressive thought” and never take responsibility for their actions. Message to the worst generation – grow up and stop hurting my kids. STUPID. Judge a man on the content of his character not the color of his skin. Please/
Carter is Obama’s ceiling; Buchanan’s the floor, and let’s pray we don’t go there!
“e pluribus unum?
“In God we trust” no more from the Marxist narcissist himelf.
Everyone who believes in God or a higher power of some sort, please, please pray for us. It’s a miracle that we haven’t been nuked yet…I fear the worst is yet to come.
Just before the 08 election, I recall thinking that Obama would be the last Democratic president for 20 years.
Roger we might as well enjoy the guffaw, we have no leader whether we laugh at Obama or not. Perhaps next week he will surrender the podium to the gecko. Would that make matters any worse?
Someone needs to do a parody fast, the gecko, or some cartoon character takes the podium for Obama. That is “Onion” territory, lets see if this finally gives them the go ahead to make fun of “the One “,which they have “politely’ done in the past.
Nope. Not gonna hold the guffaws. That moment was too classic.
Obama turned it over to Clinton. “Here, handle my light work.” (New lightworker?)
Then, Clinton shows how it is done, further revealing Barry as a total amateur.
That juxtaposition demonstrated the meaning of the word gravitas. Clinton’s got it, and Barry don’t.
I already knew we have no leader. The rest of the world also knew it before this. No reason to withhold the laughter. Gotta laugh or cry. I choose to laugh. Maniacally. Mwahahahaha.
Even my daughter is laughing at this mess. At some oxymoronic point you laugh or cry and yes, I prefer the maniacal laughter route too. I’ll leave the crying to Glenn Beck. lol
“Oxymoronic point?” Pardon me?
In addition, “E pluribus unum” does not mean “In God we trust,” as you seem to think.
I think the point is that BHO said the motto of the USA is “e pluribus unum,” whereas we know it is really “in God we trust.”
Yes, I distinctly remember that. It was on cinco de quattro, wasn’t it?
Noted.
Oxymoronic as in crying tears of laughter (or dark humor from a very tired person)…
And, yes, BHO said the United States Motto is “E pluribus unum”
*facepalm*
America may be saddled with an incompetent petulant leader, BUT it has several intelligent and energetic governors among the various states. Obama’s foolishness may be a blessing in disguise: the States may be forced to step up to their long lost responsibilities and show some real leadership on their home turves.
As to California and New York, they are extremely important to the US Economy. But really, from what I gather, there is little that the rest of the country can do to mitigate their coming disasters. You can give thanks for your Federal system, which will mitigate the effects of those disasters.
Excellent and frightening points, Heather.
I’m from a blue state (WA) and the Libturds have turned this otherwise perfect bastion of beauty into a loony-bin.
America 2.0: Press 2 for el inglés
Wait for it.
The Federal System to mitigate the disaster in California etc is called bail- out and as with the banks bail-out is a clear message: Do your damndest and we’ll force other people who obey the law, do not spend money they either don’t have or can’t pay back for things they want but can’t afford like “benefits”. The quid pro quo the votes, legal or illegal, that keep the “givers” in politial power.
Object lesson for financial which then becomes fiscal irresponsibilitiy from individuals to government and finally the destruction of the economy and all the work from generations of working people.
Government then to the rescue by incurring even more debt to be either never paid — and what do you suppose would be the effects of that — or to be paid by and unto the nth generation. While those who designed and implemented these “federal government mitigations” are laughing at the success of their designs in their protected enclaves.
Or did I miss the irony in your comment ?
All I wish to add is that the helm doesn’t make the captain. Leadership will emerge in a crisis, and America does have good leaders right now. Americans will know whom to follow.
Arhooley- Thanks for the reminder that when things seem to going to heck in a handbasket, someone comes along to save it. But it can very scary until they arrive.
Last week in Calgary, Victor Davis Hanson opined to an interviewer that Americans have become too enchanted with what he calls a therapeutic culture: staying young, enjoying life, living well, treating themselves. It’s why the whole place is up to its eyeballs in debt.
VDH cited Obama as a prime exponent of this culture.
This enchantment is still working its magic on many Americans and I would guess that things will have to get worse before the magic finally wears off.
Like Mr Simon this makes me nervous because America is leaderless in a dangerous time.
Roger – possible solution.
As what happened with Nixon -
Obumbler resigns, vp Biden is prez.
Republican House.
If Biden can’t handle job, resigns.
Prez Boehner.
Dems go coocoo – nation is saved – close scenario!
Eeewww. I thought Biden was picked to make sure no one did anything stupid like trying to do in the prez… Actually I don’t think either one has the ability to admit they don’t have what it takes to run the country. As for Boehner, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather see Christine O’Donnell as president.
Eeewww is right. President Biden, an even bigger joke than Obama. President Boehner, the resurrection of Jerry Ford. God help us. And yes, I agree that O’Donnell is preferable to any of the three. So is someone from middle America chosen at random from the phone book.
The ONLY positive about Biden taking over the pres from Big Ears is this: he, unlike Big Ears, does appear to love America, even as he doesn’t know how to preserve it; and he, unlike Big Ears, is not a Muslim communist. Two advantages Biden would have over Big Ears as pres.
Biden would be required to pick a VEEP – who would become POTUS if Biden did resign which isn’t likely. In the example you cited with Nixon – Ford was appointed to VEEP when Agnew had to step down – when Nixon resigned Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller for VEEP. The only was Speaker would be appointed POTUS is if both POTUS and VPOTUS were offed at the same time.
The nation is not made stronger by Obama concealing his ruin, but exposing it. The parts of the world that count already know. China knows, Russia knows, even the European Nancy boys know.
Don’t forget who is Secretary of State, presumably the person setting foreign policy for the President. No Kissinger she! Her weak showing does little to recommend her as a potential Leader of the Free World. Who would the Dems run against Obama in 2012, realistically?
Yea,well we’re gonna be stuck with him for 2 more years anyway whether we gloat or not…so I’m gonna go ahead and gloat…I might hate myself later if I don’t
I agree, make the most of it. In another year, with proper publicity, the nation could be reeducated about the damage the One Worlders have done and would have continuing doing if the Tea Party hadn’t been strong. Everything wrong that has happened needs to be the topic of letters to the editor until it finally sinks in. That’s the only way we can get innoculated against it happening again soon by some other glib liar with anti-American backing home and abroad.
There is no inoculation for stupidity.
A shame really.
Guffaw? Hardly. We’re on the brink of disaster, financially and internationally. It’s no time to be amused. But it’s not because we lack a “leader.” I’m so tired of that old formula that “mine eyes glazeth over” and I start to snore when I encounter it.
Americans don’t need or want to be “led.” We need and want to be represented. That requires elected officials who embody the best aspects of the American character, and who are fearless about portraying them publicly. That we don’t have such representatives speaks mainly to the deterioration of our political elite, and to the hammerlock they’ve put on the electoral machinery of the nation.
It’s a big subject, far too extensive to cover in a single screed, but for our mental nutrition, we might browse over:
– The dwindling number of federal officials who’ve served in the armed forces;
– The “two-party system,” in no way a part of our law but nevertheless a barrier to the alternatives we would otherwise see and ponder seriously;
– The pernicious influence of “universal suffrage,” unconditioned by any other qualification;
– The role of the schools and universities in denigrating the traditional American virtues of independence, self-reliance, and productivity;
– The role of the media in assuring us that this is the way it must be.
Quite a lot of that would have to change dramatically, to improve the quality of our elected officials — and to disabuse them of the notion that they’re there to “lead” us.
It’s a funny quirk of your fine nation. You violently unshackled yourselves from the motherland and implement a citizens republic, but still there are many who seem to have a need to be “led”. Or who envision you as a mass of meek ants, in desperate need of their powerful “leader” to tell them what to think.
The strangest thing is that much of this over zealous deference to your “leader” comes from conservatives. It smacks of the attitude a subject has towards his king, not the attitude a citizen has towards a fellow citizen who happens to be elected to the run the public service and lead the army.
Then again perhaps such attitude has served you all well, surely the nations of the empire’s finest hours were when our forebearers held the same deference to their leader, King or Queen. And now that we are without a leader and merely think whoever is our Prime Minister is nothing but a rat-bag politician we mire and stumble along…
Thanks for the overseas comment, but you are 180 degrees off. It is not the conservatives (among whom the networked – but not ‘led’ Tea Party arose) but the Progressives that seek, self-destructively for the “Great Leader”. Perhaps you missed Obama’s descriptions as “The Messiah” http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=77539 or as above the world http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/12/11/should-we-gloat-over-obamas-childish-behavior/2/?replytocom=320929#respond.
There is much of import in your remark. Leaders become important, perhaps even indispensable, when the whole nation must rally to a single common task, such as a war. God knows, I’d hate for the United States to have to head out to war again with Barack Hussein Obama at the helm; he’s just not up to the job.
But the action in Afghanistan and Iraq is winding down; God willing, we might have a few years of military quietude. And so I’d prefer not to be “led,” but merely to be left alone to sit under my own vine and fig tree, where none shall make me afraid…or poor…or harass me for the height of my fence…or tell me what I can and cannot eat…or how much money I can make…and so forth.
In the military I learned . . .”Mine is not to question why . . . mine is but to do or die!” . . . Sad but we have a POTUS that tells “Why we can NOT!” Everything he has done has had such severe limits that there is nothing left that we can “die for”! Yet . . . I stand ready to die to save my country!
What would be a shock to all is to stop the government entitlements. That alone would wake up the population to provide for themselves. There would be riots like there are in Europe but something needs to wake up America.
This nation is crying for a Consrvative who has the strength to say “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way” and to adopt the mindset of “Take No Prisoners”
Just to think that right after his election that members of the Democrat party in congress were talking about changing the constitution so Barry could run more than two terms. There are also all the schools that named themselves after him even though he had yet to do anything.
Now that they know much more about him I wonder if they are considering changing their minds especially changing the constitution so he can run 12 or 16 or even 20 years? I do not think so.
Also are chcildren singing his praises like they were over a year ago mmmm mmmm mmmm?
“Barack Hussein Obama! Oy! Oy! Oy!”
OBAMA IS THE RIGHT LEADER
In Barack Obama-the Michael Jackson of American politics- Providence has given America the right leader at the right time in history for leading this nation into peril and waking it up.
Click my name for my latest blog: President Clinton: Mentor In Chief
problem– michael jackson was talented, earned his money, and left an imprint on our culture
obama— ????
I’m with ApolloSpeaks. He sees that only someone with this fellow’s unique characteristics could galvanize the right and the near left to return to basic principles. Anybody even passably competent would have been given enough rope to hang the nation.
And what do we do with this guy in the White House if we suddenly find out that Iran has successfully tested a nuclear weapon? And now we even get news that Iran wants to place missiles and technicians in Venezuela. What is Barry O going to do about this? How will he react to this once it happens? Unfortunately, when you become president of the United States, you can’t vote “present” anymore. You actually have to DO something and you actually have to MAKE tough decisions, decisions that sometimes mean the difference between life and death. But what we have is a guy who was more interested in becoming president rather than being president. And THAT is the difference. I worry about the next two years. I really, really, do.
LS46, I think the evidence is clear that Iran has military folks in Venezuela now and all the signs point to putting missles there. It’s the Cuban Missle crisis all over again.
I can invision us at war in South America fighting Iran… after they’ve killed a lot of Americans. I don’t see Barry O doing anything until a lof of people have been killed and he’ll do so against his instincts.
Of course by all rights there should be no fighting in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on America- fighting implies two sides. What there should be is wholesale nuclear slaughter of the enemy.
The saddest thing about Obama is that he still can’t see where the real threats lie. An entire planet of rogues, thugs, gangsters, and despots are sharpening their knives for him, and yet he still thinks that the worst dangers out there are the Republicans.
The real storms haven’t even hit yet. Weak presidents invite disaster.
All we are saaaaaaaaying, is give peace a chaaaaaaaaaaance.
LOL!
Hillary is in bad odour temporarily since Wikileaks. So bring on that other member of the team “Democratic” party stars, to soothe the fans of Team Obama. For those who are fans of the US Constitution it is better to be VERY CAUTIOUS about this public display of “solidarity”. Think Bing Crosby’s lyrics in “Teamwork” :
“… Although we hold each other in low esteem, we’re loaded with teamwork …”
AND from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — a CHILDRENS’ story/film :
…Teamwork can make a DREAM work — can make the greatest DREAMS come true…”
Why would Bill Clinton help Obama get his irons out of the fire? Does anybody except fans really believe, given the evidence of the past 30 years ANYTHING coming from this group of “liberal” politicians.
They KNOW their audience as very gullible. They know all the moves. Isn’t it time for the rational others of the oppposing teams to look clearly at their moves : all those illegal curve balls, and keep their eyes on the ball ? Not be distractdd by the signals of these “Democrats” pitcher and catcher ? Dismiss on principle everything they say.
Watch instead what they do. AND STOP THEM from doing it to the Constitutional Republic of the USA.
Francis W. Porretto is right on the mark in all respects. And just because s.b. Bill made Obama look like a fool, the reality is we are still faced with economic uncertainty, a disastrous socialization of health care, the rules of which have still not been completely written, an amnesty bill is far from dead. For the past two years, each week hundreds of pieces of more nefarious legislation are proposed (fortunately most never go any place, but it does not take that much to ruin the country. B. Clinton’s words, pretty as they might sound to the ears of the gullible, do not ensure that the tax cuts will be extended to anyone. Why people look up to people like BOTH Clintons and Obama who would take and have stolen as much freedom as they could from the people is beyond me. Going into the 112th Congress, it is well to keep in mind that the side of freedom does not have the Senate or the veto, and there are still has fake conservatives in the GOP that cannot be trusted. One guffaw…maybe two, but then back to the grindstone.
Mr. Simon, you ask if we should gloat or guffaw over the incredible shrinking president then pose the question what should be done, then list a number of economic solutions to our present crisis – which misunderstands the root of our problem.
No, sir. The problem is Barack Obama. The solution is removing Barack Obama from office. The sooner the better.
The weakness that he projects invites aggression from our enemies. That weakness was manifest on Friday when he “abdicated the throne” to Bill Clinton. Symbolism. A picture worth a thousand words.
If we find ourselves in a national crisis, I have zero confidence that Mr. Obama has the character to lead our nation. Zero.
I would rather a President Biden to serve out the term. We can debate all day long his strengths and weaknesses but at day’s end this much we can be certain of – he loves his country.
Good try Joe. We know you love the country but frankly the public doesn’t think you are any more competent then the Big Guy.
Unfortunately,the American people voted for a picture void of solid meaning,an empty slogan,a fraud….
Now,you must undergo the consequences !
I may understand you wanted something fresh after 8 long years under Mr George W Bush.
Should You have elected the ticket Mac Cain -Palin, Iran would be far less arrogant along China,Russia and North Corea
I even dare imagine that the economy would not be in such dire straits
2 more years to go , and a stern warning :6 more years to go if you want the society you know to disappear quickly ….
Given a choice, I’ll laugh. It helps.
President Narcissus stands on a diminishing island, the ground giving way as history rushes past on all sides. Even his chief enablers have turned against him. He can only count on black Americans, 11% of the total, to stand by his side. The left is in revolt, the independents have abandoned him, the conservatives are stronger than ever, and Michelle is in the White House family quarters with questions about his manhood. No wonder the man is graying so fast. Who would have ever thought the presidency would be so much work?
Lately I have noticed an increasing number of black pundits distancing themselves from Obama. One could come up with a list of cynical explanations for why this is so. But at the same time, black people support/condemn policies that benefit/hurt themselves, just like anyone else. Knee-jerk agreement with the Dems’ agenda may be a thing of the past. Would love responses from black fellow-bloggers on this.
For the record, I am not black.
But since about the time Obama got elected, I have been saying that you will know he is well and truly done when blacks start distancing themselves from him –”He’s not really one of us.”
And, funny thing is, that is literally true.
He is a half White distant African cousin, who shares neither the typical cultural experience of growing up as an American black (whatever one may presume that to be — his is liberal white w/ a 3rd world streak), and he has no slave ancestors, does not share in the heritage of real struggle.
The Rev. Wright and Michele gave him some camouflage.
Other funny thing about it is, it is is quite understandable to see blacks excited, en masse, to vote for ‘one of us’, but when ‘one of us’ is redefined (thanks MSM) to apparently just mean ‘has some darker skin’ and nothing more, the loyalty is pitiful. Who then is the racist?
Back when the 2008 campaign first began, Jesse Jackson, and possibly Al Sharpton IIRC, leveled the ‘not really one of us’ charge for a while but it didn’t stick — the juggernaut was too big. I sure as hell don’t care for either one of them — and it was amusing to see the infighting over what it meant to be ‘authentically’ black — but again, they were actually correct.
I fully expect the charge to return.
P.S. i have a funny story to relate from about 10 years ago. At the company I worjked back then, they hired a black female engineer who I actually knew from high school. We had a pakistani engineer who was pretty incompetent and one day he was trying to get her to commiserate with him, using a 3rd world inspired ‘we people of color have to stick together against these Americans’. Her comment? “F*ck him, I’m an American!”
David Thomson’s prediction of =:obama’s mental breakdown may come true. If he stays, we’re toast. If he goes, we’re still toast.
“We need a leader and don’t have one.” ???
You need an educated electorate and don’t have one!
Oh, we have a leader, all right. But she needs to be inaugurated first.
Roger, I agree with you. But I think the American people need to take some of the responsibility too…not only for electing this guy but for wanting more benefits and lower taxes…as if such a thing were possible. It is easy to blame the politicians, after all no one really likes these guys, but the truth is the American people helped create this situation.
And the media too. What a phenomenon THAT was! Remember Chris Matthews getting tingles up and down his leg? If you voted for Obama, yes, you bear some blame, but don’t forget who sold you the snake oil. And vow to do better “due diligence” on candidates for the rest of your life. Because, folks, it matters.
Tracht gut, zain gut. Think good, it will be good. Let’s try to remain somewhat optimistic here. Let’s have faith in our ability to persist and surmount the setbacks we now face as a nation and as individuals.
I’m not gloating. I fear Obama’s childish behavior.
I’m for impeaching him. Seriously. The grounds? Whatever. That his ears stick out works for me.
And yes, I know Biden is the VP. This merely illustrates the depth of my fear.
Sadly many of the brains of our country are on a treadmill themselves trying to keep their own little island floating . They have little energy left to focus and get into the mode of fighting this regime. Many are in a state of denial so they can just keep their boats floating while it has a hole in it slowly sinking their way of life.
The people who will get to the voting booths eagerly are the ones who want the pork and monthly checks. This political system of expecting Government to meet your needs is death to the spirit of all the takers. Can those who think and want too freedom of choice outnumber?
At the present we have maniacs who want to sink us with weapons coming over to South America?
Obama may take himself out. He cannot handle it. Who knows what his body will pull off to get him out of this hot kitchen
“Should we gloat over Obama’s childish behavior?” Sure, why not? I have never gotten the impression that Obama cares about anything other than himself. And Friday we learned he does not like to keep Michelle waiting, so now there are two things he cares about. Given the way that President Clinton was smeared in 2008 by the current POTUS it was sweet revenge for the two to appear together and for there to be no doubt who was presidential material. The MSM will pretend otherwise and spin and spin, to an ever decreasing audience.
The gloating and laughing should take about a minute or less as we then ask ourselves what we are going to do to move this country forward. Having a different President in 2013 is a start. States that are having a hard time seeing the need for change are met with the feelings of many of us in other states who are unsupportive of a bailout to allow them to duck the consequences of past bad decisions and a continued funding of their utopia.
What concerns me about the Friday presser by President Clinton is how many will continue to tell Emperor Barack his clothes are lovely and support him for another term. Just as I never saw what was special about the ‘prompter candidate I suspect many will not view the contrast between Bill and Barry as a reason for change.
If this fool gets re-elected then America has truly given up on itself. Completely. Wholly. Self-damned by idiocy.
Obama never purported to be a leader. He called himself “ruler”.
Gloat and retract I will. I said that if the economy improved slightly or stayed the same then Obama would be re-elected by the independents, who would vote for the devil they knew vice putting all the eggs in a Republican basket. I retract that assertion because what happened on Friday demonstrates that it is unlikely that Obama will even run and if he does then he will be primaried out. The shine is off the Obama apple and his chickens are coming home to roost. America needs adult leadership and as of Friday the “adult” President is in the House.
The Republicans still have a long way to go to convince independents that they should be in charge again, but there is an opening for a solid and proven leader to win in 2012. It won’t be Palin, Huckabee, or Romney, but rather someone with a recent solid resume like maybe the Gov. of Indiana. Two years is a long way off and a lot of bad stuff can happen between now and then, so America needs to get down on its knees and ask God to forgive us for our greedy silly selves and bless us once more with true leadership.
We should never “trust” the Republicans—or anybody else. The myth that Americans merely need to elect another Jimmy Stewart and everything will be fine has caused enormous damage. There is no such as “cruise control” in politics. Voters must continue to watch their elected officials AFTER the election.
I am adamantly against third parties as a general rule. There is simply no substitute for a vigilant electorate. Indifference will almost always result in bad results.
Trust in anyone who wears the title, “Politician” is indeed foolhardy.
Have faith and trust in GOD.
Have suspicion in all would position themselves to lead and rule.
Apparently, the professional political class (at least the part of it most responsible for the deficits) believes that, if worse comes to worse, it will just walk away unscathed from the mess it has created. Have these people convinced themselves that they are insulated and inoculated from the kind of consequences meted out to people in the private sector for wrongdoing and malfeasance? If the economy collapses the anger against them will be many magnitudes greater than the aftermath of a Bernie Madoff type scandal. It could be of a kind and degree we have never seen before in this country. It could be so great that what is left of the US government will have to expend its remaining resources protecting them. And to think all of this was done to trigger a VAT so these same politicians could spend us into a more controlled and proper kind of oblivion.
I believe most posters respect the office, myriad of responsibilities of POTUS possesses. Unfortunately, we’ve a ‘leader’ who didn’t respect said job, duties.
Gloat? No. Hold the CiC to a higher standard? Absolutely! Sadly Obama’s chaotic decision making, comments was inevitable.
The man was HARDLY vetted, experienced to hold any type of Government elected position.
If anything, it puts on full display the utter FAILURE of our education system and the poor parenting staring us in the face to allow such despicable, bad theater to occur..
Don’t like living this “Waiting for Godot” existence, eh, Roger?
Nothing is to be done. It’s safer.
Is that what you are saying my friend?
In my article today, “It’s a Wonderful Leftist Life”, I try to show a vision of what it’s like to live in Pelosiville. We are in the middle of a tragicomedy. It’s ok to laugh at the absurdity of it, I believe. As long as we don’t lose perspective at how outrageous it has become.
Nero fiddles, Rome burns, gallows humor. “WE are the Godot we have been waiting for.” Nothing is to be done.
Maybe CNN and the NYTimes will give us the answer, Roger. If we just sit around and wait a little longer.
No, no gloating. Too much at stake.
Although Billy already pointing to his next questioner before Barry had even exited the room was pretty funny.
Both Obamas insulted the American people during the campaign. Michelle called us lazy and complacent while Barack belittled with his observations about all the folks clinging to guns and religion.
The American people elected him anyway. Even Pennsylvania went democrat, where Obama’s bitter clingers reside.
More recently, we were belittled again, since our failure to appreciate having the largest social program in history (one that nobody read or understood) shoved down our throats through inappropriate legislative process simply means, per Barack, that we’re not able to appreciate his brilliance, the “science” and the “reason”. Or, they claim, there was a problem with the administration’s “messaging” to we the dumb peeps, even though this President (who also didn’t read the bill he signed) spoke to us over and over (and over!) with sob stories and tales of surgeons lopping off limbs and told a woman why her aged mother shouldn’t get a pacemaker and should just take pain pills for her arrhythmia (!)and even though Obama assembled all those people in the Rose Garden wearing the white coats to lend credibility to his legislative boondoggle.
This guy in the mirrored suit (his admirers see what they want) really is all hat and no cattle, which apparently worked for the first 48 years of his life but isn’t sufficient for the current gig.
It may be very slowly dawning on Obama that “rhetoric isn’t leadership”. (phrase borrowed from J. Goldberg article at nat’l review)
Not that the rhetoric is that hot, either.
I liked how as Barry was turning to leave, the next reported correctly addressed Bill ” Mister President”.. and asked his question and Presdient Clinton never batted an eye and answered.. It HAD to be odd in Barrys’ ears as he’s walking out to hear that.. What a joke of a President B.O. is.
The statistic that scares me is the number of people who think he is doing a good job. 45% approve (at least somewhat)- 24% approve strongly.
To put it in practical terms – One in four of the folks sharing the road with you are delusional enough to approve of this feckless rookie.
Not to be too blunt, but around half of that 24 percent is virtually unanimous support among the black community.
Ironically is not the Republicans where Obama’s threats are the biggest, but from his own Party – namely those with Presidential ambitions. Robbing America has put the finger on the sore with foresight when it asks in its latest piece, “Does Bill Clinton see an opportunity?”
The two images that go with it speak for themselves. Clever news-commentary-analysis that you don’t see in the media. See for yourselves at http://www.robbingamerica.com
They end with the question: “Would Bill pick Hillary for his Vice-President?”
ATTENTION!! President Obama has EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL; SOME ONES CONTROL! He has appointed SOME ONE to take charge. And what’s not under control can be photoshopped. No need to worry.
Now, let’s all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’.
You guys are apparently blind to the fact (albeit you seem to be getting some entertainment out of it, which is, I suppose, a good thing) that Obama had a good week, which is not to say we came any closer to solving the financial issues of California, NY, and all of us.
A leader does not have to be center stage all the time. If he walks off and lets one of his agents handle the briefing, so what? The insecure one needs to have center stage all the time. Remember Alexander Haig, the antithesis of what I am talking about here?
The problem is that you are focusing on goofy, Obama-bashing stuff, which gets us no closer to actually solving our problems than worshipping him would. He made a move to cement the center and made a pragmatic deal before the Repubs took over the House. Clinton likes the deal. Imagine what you would be saying had Clinton come out and criticized the deal and Obama said, “Get off my stage.”? Now that would be drama. This was merely entertainment for all of us, left, right, and center. Carry on.
Dwight, I think you have missed something. We here have been predicting exactly this kind of thing. We have been laying odds about Obama getting through 4 years. There have been comments about Clinton riding to his rescue. Comments about how Clinton would dos o to better his wife’s chances.
Another thing you miss is not just how we perceive it, but rather, how the world perceives. He could not have looked any weaker, unless he literally wet himself. If there was even a shred of doubt amongst those who would oppose us, that shred is gone. The floodgates are open. The flood comes. That moment will live forever. It will be a thing of history. A moment of inglory.
Thus, this article. Yet, you shrug it off, because he’s a Dem like you. You should be more appalled than us. You seem a decent type, so where are your standards? Party before country?
Please to excuse the old analogy but: The many insightful responses to this article make us all passengers on the “Obama Titanic”. We see the iceberg- California, New York, and Chicago-ahead but the boy captain steams full speed ahead while requesting tunes and rearranging deck chairs and taxes with the help of Bill Clinton. Those who will be saved are those who can afford to purchase life boats – the elete. Obama will be first to save himself as he is “special” and women and children be damned.
If we can’t stop the boat then we should throw the captain overboard via impeachment. Many of Obama’s crew have already gone overboard to save themselves – Summers, Emanuel et al..
Only the fools will be left on board to sleep through the approaching disaster. Wake up, or drown. Time for mutiny.
No need for mutiny when the captain is AWOL. Steady, relentless pressure to resign will do the trick, particularly if accompanied by solicitous comments about the golf game, the busted lip and so on.
We have seen all of this before. Then it was the Carter Administration. Carter had no Bubba-Wan to rescue him, so he had to at least try to muddle through. Two more years of the “Empty Suit” hand puppet. Anyone who thinks that Slick-Willy coming to the rescue is going to help Billary in 2012 forget about it! She has the the Middle East Non-Peace talks clanking around her neck. The administration without adult supervision, includes her.
I found the press conference quite amusing. I’m also terrified for the country…
The temperature in the pot has been rising for decades. Now we lobsters can finally tell that it’s getting pretty hot in here.
I wish the Moron would stip at his next news conference and wag his thing at the country….if he has one.
Everything he does fills in the picture that has been so scrupulously hidden from us by his fellow travelers in the msm. Every day, a few thousand more citizens begin to pay attention and say to themselves “this guy is dangerous and is probably a nut”.
We can hold out for two more years.
Steel yourself for the 20+ years it will take to undo the damage.
I object to talk of “leaders”. The whole point of the American experiment is that there are no leaders. The politicians are to be followers, servants of their electorate, sent to do as they are bloody well told.
Leaders. Pfah.
My first reaction was that this would make perfect fodder for an SNL sketch (yes, even when SNL tilts way left). My second reaction was that they would scarcely have to modify the actual dialogue. Darn near wrote itself. So, yeah, we have to laugh a little.
But the best we can do is shine a big spotlight on it. The media, as usual, generally ignored what happened here, except to fawn over Clinton. This incident encapsulated just about everything most of us on the right found lacking in Obama.
BHO obviously knows nothing, has accomplished nothing, and will milk this job for all of the benefits. His so-called academic career was founded on affirmative action and his fellow dullards in the MSM drowned out any attempts to vet him in the campaign.
My favorite observation about BHO came from Mark Steyn, if I recall correctly. It was something like this: if BHO remains in office for four years, it will be the longest time that he has ever held a job.
We are so screwed.
Not gloating; deeply concerned. Our adversaries around the world are going to positively hammer us until we get rid of this guy. Money Market confidence is collapsing; cost of treasury borrowing has gone up 28% in the last month.
It will be a miracle if we get to 2012 and get rid of this turkey without a major terrorist incident or a complete financial meltdown.
I have been worried for my country for some few years… the Presidency less so.
Now to see two Presidents, current and former, act the way they acted?
I have problems with the personality and policies of both men, but this is not about politics.
The President’s Office is not some bauble, nor to be treated lightly, but respected. I have now witnessed something that I had never, ever, once dreamed would happen with the lack of respect these two men have applied to the office in such a short time… mere minutes.
If GWB had treated Obama the way he was by Clinton, the Left would have frothed blood and epithets. It is the lack of any reaction, any rebuke, indeed much of anything that now shows the divide amongst those in this Nation. Those who treat power with dignity and wish it kept under leash and close scrutiny, and those who treat it as a good thing and as mere plaything to be used by their leaders.
A house divided this way will not stand with one part wishing to be free and the other wishing to use the lash of obedience on others…. remember ‘Please go’. Not something you say to an equal without fanfare or honor to the office. No honor. No respect. No dignity. Just the adoration of power and its trappings.
I now worry, strangely, about Barack Obama, the man… not the President, not the office holder, not as a party member… the man with no trappings adorning him. No man deserves to be treated like that by an equal. And never in such circumstances, globally public for all to see. I cannot gloat or laugh about this…cry, yes…
May Providence shine upon Barack Obama and show him the way out of this mess as a man. Because, as Bismarck said, ‘God looks after fools, drunkards and the United States’.
No problem. Obama can appoint Bill Clinton to a newly created position of…Presidential Czar!
LMAO! Maybe he can appoint himself a “Genie czar” and wish it so!
Uh… yes!
According to Dick Morris, the Republicans do indeed have a really effective sounding plan to get the country back on its feet. Better than just back on its feet…
Very interesting speech.
http://bigpeace.com/dreaboi/2010/12/11/dick-morris-this-administration-is-pathetic/
Excellent speech. Thanks be to you for posting it, as it does inspire some hope & confidence that this whole mess can be turned around.
Thanks BBC for the link! Dick Morris is wonderfully patriotic. He gives a huge warning that virtually every major bank in the world has created a sharia compliant fund. Placing radical imams in charge of deciding investments of trillion(s) of dollars. What a massive victory for global jihad. Global jihad is succeeding rapaidly not because of Islamics, but because of rabidly pro-Islam, Western enabler leaders.
In America this is of course, a massive violation of church (mosque) and state.
Imam Rauf, slumlord and leader of the victory mosque at Ground Zero wants to implement excessively cruel Islamic sharia law in America. Rauf has also on more than one occasion refused repeatedly to say that Hamas is a terrorist organization. The US government sent Rauf on an all expenses paid trip to Middle Eastern countries to represent America. Revealing US leaders’ full approval of Rauf’s sharia desire for America and pro-Hamas beliefs. Hamas charter calls for Jewish annihilation.
Hamas Charter of Religious Hate and Religious Mass Murder:
‘Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
Yes Roger, we most certainly should.
This all makes sense if Obama’s true goal is the destruction of this nation so it can be rebuilt as something else…”fundamental transformation.”
The statement by a black activist in my freshman History/Sociology class at the old downtown LA Pepperdine in 1970 was, “You have to tear it down before you can rebuild it.” The idea was already deeply set in the minds of eighteen year-olds.
It played out later that year in a general strike as blacks chained doors and took over school buildings to “air their grievances.” The school bent over backwards to meet with them. I was on the quad listening to a gathering when one said, “I don’t care what the administration does, we are going to strike!” as if he was following procedure from some “Manual of Civil Disobedience.” I suspect Rules For Radicals or something like it was already in play.
Now, forty years later, we have an extremist black activist as none other than president of the United States.
I can see this goal from fringe extremists. We have always had our enemies that wanted us to fall.
What really troubles me is that Obama could not do this alone: how come so many democrats want the same end of America?
What explains this death wish?
“What really troubles me is that Obama could not do this alone: how come so many democrats want the same end of America?
What explains this death wish?”
Yes, I agree. I wonder how we did not see this attitude from these members of Congress all these years if they truly felt this way about our beloved America? These are not new members! They’ve been in “power” all this time, and yet they seem MORE bent on destroying our Constitution now like never before.
They’ve become like a pack of wild dogs…feeding on the weak, or injured without provocation without delay. Before, it seems like they were willing to work together. Now? NO SUCH THING WILL DO!
It will be OUR WAY or we’ll destroy you!
Reality is with the collapse of the European welfare state and the coming collapse of California I’m not sure it makes any difference who we elect.
Yes the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. But anyone that bothered looking already knew that.
What I am baffled by, though, your seeming agreement with Charles Krauthammer.
While I am usually a fan his opinion that piece made no sense.
Is he advocating tax increases? Are you? Is he saying people keeping their own money is the same as government stimulus?
What is his solution? Letting the tax cuts expire? On whom?
Sorry but he’s playing a semantics game. Government stimulus is derived from taking peoples money and redistributing it, not letting them keep it.
The only problem with the deal is that it front loads the goodies (keeping taxes lower) without an absolute commitment to the difficult stuff (lowering spending and raising the currently nonexistent tax burden on the middle class).
OF COURSE we should gloat, and make it funny. Remember your Hoffman & Alinsky: humor can drive the point home faster and more accurately than any serious discussion, mainly because the outlines of the major points are readily accessible to us all.
If you don’t gloat, and make a big deal about this telling incident, it will vanish because the MSM remains far to supportive of this red diaper baby. They will protect him by their silence. This is not the kind of incident that invites a classy response. Let him have it.
Just so you know, this is your friendly neighborhood Liberal speaking. If I had thought Obama could deliver on his beautiful rhetoric, I would have voted for him. My party failed me by screwing up their internal selection process, and I knew it by the time of the election. It is time for the Repubs and Tea Partiers to drive the point home: the Democrats selected a dud for the nations highest office, and the party deserves to have that choice shoved down their collective throats.
Agree completely. Well said.
Excellent post. Couldn’t agree more. Thank heavens for youtube and other video internet venues to reference for eternal posterity. haha
Obama is, as so many of us have pointed out, intellectually barren, ignorant and a clinical narcissist. He is uninterested in policy development, unable to analyze its function, and requires constant adulation. He cannot handle criticism or accountability.
He exists as a facade, an artificial ‘thing’ which he has himself manufactured since his childhood by misinformation and manipulation of others. Others are expected to see Obama as he has manufactured himself – and look no further. No exploration of his past, no expectation of experience. Nothing. What you get is what HE manufactures.
The public bought this manufactured artifact in the 2008 election; it didn’t buy its content because there is no content to Obama. All there is, is a constant, daily manufactured ‘thing’ – which requires daily adulatory nurturance or it disappears.
Move someone as pathological as this into a situation where he is required to have content, i.e., think about policies and come to conclusions, be accountable, take criticism and actually focus on America rather than only on himself as Himself – and he can collapse as some have suggested. OR, retreat to situations of adulation. Obama is choosing the latter; he’s not interested in policies or in dealing with reporters or questions. He handed it over to Clinton who can actually talk about policies. And Obama went to a party. Where he can be adored.
Notice that Obama maintained his ‘I won’ superiority status. He told the audience ‘ The First Lady is waiting for me’. That’s a reminder that HE is the First Man. That He won. And that Clinton is merely his underling doing the dreary talking.
Obama went with the GOP tax cuts because he has only one interest. Power to be The First Man. He’s not interested in policies. He is basically, again from childhood, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-wealth, anti-white. But above these biases, is his narcissism that requires him to control YOU and be in power.
IF Obama had gone with his Democratic base and refused to extend the tax cuts for the ‘wealthy’ (and since when is a family income of 250,000 defined as ‘millionaire’?)..then, he would be put in the situation where, on January 1st, the GOP would, via their control of the House, pass a full tax cut policy anyway. And Obama would be left isolate in the White House. Isolate. Seen as out-controlled by the GOP in the House.
Obama can’t handle this. He MUST be seen, even to himself, as controlling Others. That means, controlling the House. So, Obama chose to side with Power. Not because he believes in the policy; he’s anti-wealth. But because to reject it would mean that the GOP would be seen as The Power in America. Rather than Obama.
That’s why he went with the GOP. To keep himself, er..Himself, feeling In Power. Obama is NOT a Centrist. He is ideologically totally empty. He is a Hollow Man. His only focus is on Himself and his feeling of control over others.
What’s going to happen now? He’ll side with whatever force is in power…and leave the running of the country more and more to these people, whom he’ll remind are his ‘underlings’ (as he reminded Clinton)…and party, play golf, and take vacations.
The Democrats may choose to keep him…if the GOP manage to turn the economy around (and Obama will take ALL credit for any growth in the economy)..or farm him out to the UN. Obama himself has no interest in the work of the presidency. And he’s anti-American. He likes the perks and parties.
It is far too generous or misplaced to call Obama “intellectually barren” and ignorant, and worse than misplaced to repeat the oft-repeated remark that he’s a narcissist. None of this is accurate. Obama is intellectually steeped in Marxism, well aware of the benefits of capitalism, which he despises and seeks to destroy, and he is a megalomaniac, not a narcissist. The latter refers to “excessive self-love”, which is merely neurotic, and often used as a pejorative slam against anyone pursuing their own self-interest. We all pursue our own self-interest, because it’s the only way you live, thrive and be happy in this world.
“Megalomania”, however, is a borderline psychotic condition “characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.” *This* is Obama. Aside from the obvious contradiction that as President his role is to destroy the fountainhead of all wealth — consciously, and deliberately.
Others often call Obama ignorant or a fool. To fail to recognize his real goals and ambitions, to be reluctant to identify or name the real nature of the man, is to show who is really ignorant or the fool.
I think ETAB’s analysis is spot on, making the most sense of anything I have read lately. I don’t understand how anyone can come away thinking Obama is anything but a poorly-read, poorly-educated man (despite his alleged educational credentials). I have no doubt, however, that he is a Marxist & may even be a closet Muslim.
Well, I don’t think we should quibble over terms; the conclusion is that Obama is seriously psychologically damaged.
I do not, as a point of fact, consider Obama a ‘narcissist’ but a clinical or malignant narcissist – that is a far different psyche than the mere self-love of the average narcissist. It’s a state of mind akin to your megalomania (which is not, to my knowledge, a condition defined by the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Personality Disorders)while the clinical narcissist is defined as such.
I maintain that Obama is ignorant; ignorant of history, economics, societal structure, political systems – and both unwilling and unable to explore these areas. He has gotten through life by misinformation and manipulation; by ‘charm’, by using race as a basic strategy of removing barriers and potential criticism.
As for his Marxism – I claim that he is NOT, intellectually a Marxist. He is not, intellectually, anything. He is only a psychological set of personal agendas: to control other people so that he feels empowered. He has no interest in the theories of societal ‘best society’ agendas of Marxism.
Most certainly, he is, politically, embedded within socialism. There are two reasons; first – that’s how he was raised, by his mother, grandmother..and his wife. Obama operates with a dominant woman, always, behind him.
And, his childhood – abandoned by parents, moved around from caregiver to caregiver – early moved him into that pathological state where he requires a feeling that HE, not others, are in control.
Socialism/marxism is a controlling ideology. It sets up an elite set of rulers who control the masses. If you are psychologically so damaged that you must control…then, if you move into politics..you’ll move into socialism. But Obama is not an intellectual socialist/marxist. He’s a psychological one. He MUST feel that he controls others.
Most certainly, as noted, he’s anti-American, anti-wealth, anti-West, anti-white. All of that. That need to control is focused in these areas – to bring them all down and destroy them. That’s the President of the US: a man dedicated to its destruction.
You left out his mentor, Frank Davis, who was under KGB control.
I’m not sure what it means to say Obama is nothing but a set of “psychological agendas”. Aren’t we all. Yes, he’s a power-luster. That’s the very definition of a communist (he’s not a socialist). By definition people are drawn to communism by forms of megalomania — it’s an ideology bred for power lust. But to dismiss the ideas the man advocates — which are the narcotics of that creed — is to miss the great danger.
A man is what he upholds, and is what he does. Obama upholds the tenets of communist Marxism, lock, stock and gunbarrel. You might debate the label “communist” (I don’t) but you have to call him a Marxist. That he has a strong nihilist and megalomaniacal streak is simply a reflection of those ideas. Where *didn’t* Marxism destroy everything it touched? Where didn’t it seek total control over other people? That Obama exhibits some traits of borderline madness–where *didn’t* any Marxist leader exhibit that? The ideas create the man.
I’m not saying Obama is a genius, nor even a true “intellectual” — he originates nothing. He is, in Ayn Rand’s words, a total “second-hander”. But he is well aware of the ideas at play in our world. Ignorant, no. Brilliant no. Evil, yes. Call the man what he really is, is all I’m asking. Recognize the full danger of the man by the nature of what he is, is all I’m asking.
Ideas are the prime movers of history, much more than individual men. Yes, created by men, but once in play, evil ideas infect like a disease any other men who don’t have the proper antidote — adherence to reason, fealty to reality, and the ideas that implement that: a correct understanding of the nature of Man (he has to use his mind to support his own existence and be happy) and individual rights as the only proper function of government–which is the *cause* of capitalism.
But ignore the role of ideas and you ignore the danger of the disease. Prune one man from the gene pool — another replaces him.
Given the ideas at play in our culture for 100 years, a man like Obama *had* to appear. It wasn’t a matter of “if”, but when. So don’t place all the danger in the man. He’s really a straw man.
Obama is nothing more than the current figurehead of many evil ideas under a red umbrella, which have been stalking this world for far too long. That he is something of a caricature himself is merely a visceral statement of the fact that his ideals have become something of a caricature: Marxism. But he represents, unfortunately, way too many people who still hold and advocate those ideas, at least in this country. (Don’t kid yourself, Marxism is discredited as an ideal everywhere else that has seen it in action.) To imbue all the power in the man’s shortcomings is to blind oneself to the danger and let the nature of his ideas run amuck, unseen and unrecognized for the full danger they represent.
(And as a side note: those same ideas have deeply infected the Republicans. The neo-cons are the arch-examples of this. Marxism is just the political implementation of enforced altruism, and the neo-cons uphold that ideal. They are more dangerous than the Marxists because they conceal their ultimate motives so well, even from themselves.)
Robb – I see and completely accept your point. It is dangerous and naive to assume that the problem is only Obama, is only an individual with a psychological derangement..and that if we get rid of this individual, we’ll be fine.
Yes, I agree – the problem of collectivism, whether within communism or socialism, with its rejection of the rights and responsibilities of the free individual – is the basic problem facing the world.
This collectivism is attacking us on many fronts: economic and intellectual –
Economically, there’s basic communism as put forward by the UN. The UN’s key tactic at the moment is its AGW or ‘climate change’ wherein it is trying to force nations to hand over their surplus and wealth to non-producing nations, thus depriving the productive nations of their capacity for growth.
And, there’s the Islamic fascist agenda, which is trying to force populations into a denial of objective reality, a rejection of reason and logic, and submission to a death cult of tribal dogma.
So- I see your points. Quite accurate and frightening.
Wish I still had the abilities to convey my thoughts in writing as you do but…far to many deep thoughts and rubbish cluttering the old brain after 80 years.
In a comment of yours below, you stated ["This collectivism is attacking us on many fronts: economic and intellectual..."]
I cannot warn enough, the opposing ideology of the individualist anarchists that are continuing to take up homestead in the GOP and the “peripheral” of the GOP. Though sometimes circustance may dictate going to bed with the devil to benefit a greater cause, folks need to be aware and ever so vigilant longterm.
I might also add another comment because it’s critical this week:
Obama’s primary, *overarching* purpose in caving on the tax cuts was to clear the Senate agenda for perhaps his last gasp chance at his biggest presidential goal: the new START treaty. This is an enormously one-sided agreement that will eviscerate the United States’ nuclear deterrent. If the totalitarian precedent of the Health Care bill was his biggest internal agenda, START is his biggest external agenda.
If *anything* can be done to keep the Senate busy with tax debates this week, it should be done so this doesn’t come to a vote.
FYI, the Republican pushing START is Richard Lugar. You may note that Lugar worked to bring Obama onto the prestigious Senate Foreign relations committee when Obama was just a newby Senator. Why? Most Senators wait years for that plum. Then Lugar took Obama to Moscow (as reported by Cliff Kincaid) where they left the plane and went into a locked room at the airport, and were alone for 4 hours before emerging.
The simple fact is that Lugar’s intentions should be treated in the same light as Obama’s, and Lugar is now mustering the needed Republican votes to pass this treaty. Both must be stopped at all costs.
New York and California . . . are our two most populous states
Actually, California and Texas are our two most populous states. New York has a population of approximately 19.5 million; Texas, of 25 million (in each case, to the nearest 0.5 million, as of July 2009).
Oops, my bad here. Especially since I have spent a fair amount of time hanging with the governor of Texas – a terrific guy in my estimation. Oh well – this what happens when you frosting NYC. You can take the boy put of the city, but you can’t take the boy out of the city, etc.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
…
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
“The Emperor is naked,” he said.
“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
“The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It’s true!”
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
Yes, your President is an Emperor with no clothes but, paradoxically, also an empty suit. So, he’s both the invisible man and the man who wasn’t there.
Perhaps he’s just a figment of his own imagination.
Any second, you’ll all wake up, and it will be November, 2008, and you’ll gasp, “I just had a vision of what would happen if we voted for Bozo!”
Also, I think that people are finally beginning to realise that Michelle Obama aint the saint the media tried to portray.
What we’re about to find out in the next 90 days or so is if we’re seeing Obama’s “Throw out the binky” moment, or if he’s falling into a cognitive disconnect he doesn’t have the stomach to get out of.
The “binky” in this case is all the core liberal special interest groups who came together to get Obama elected, and who Obama thought would then do all the work to get those programs passed, while he simply offered up his seal of “Absolute Moral Authority” as both the nation’s first African-American president and as the next Lincoln/FDR.
He and the left are in a spat now, because they see him trying to triangulate to win back the moderates — in fact the whole “Clinton-at-the-Podium” thing can be seen as some bizarre street theater designed not for the left or the right, but just for those swing voters. But the Tuesday press conference showed he’s not just pissed at the left for making him work by not getting their (his) agenda passed, he can’t hide his anger at having to triangulate in the first place.
So he’s got three choices coming up — a full embrace of triangulation, which means actually working with House Republicans and setting himself up full-time against the worst of the left’s ideas; total distaste for long-term triangulation that sends him running back into the arms of the left by the end of February or so, or complete confusion in trying to remain viable for 2012 and remained loved by the people who treated him like their secular messiah two years ago. If Obama’s going to careen arbitrarily between one tactic and the other, that’s when we really could see the guy descend into Captain Queeg territory.
Excellent article Roger – I haven’t agreed with all you’ve written as of late, but this one was spot on.
Like many of you, I do gloat at the glee of “I told you so.” But that small joy becomes very fleeting when I return to the reality that the problem is not Barack Obama, or hacks that have spent their states and our nation into future oblivion.
The problem is the people that both assist and allow men like Obama to make it to the Presidency in the first place. And that is a far more difficult war to win than replacing the man.
Bill Clinton is but one step above awful, a benefactor of serendipity of an economy that was in motion long before Slick hit the scene and the ignorance of a demographic that has forgotten less than year removed from office, Clinton’s ‘roaring economy’ was proven a facade.
“It’s tempting for some on the right to dismiss this as just New York and California, but these are our two most populous states…”
Actually, Texas has a greater population than NY.
It was this Comrade In Chief who taught the lobbyist arm of ACORN to pressure Bill Clinton into signing the two amendments of the Community Reinvestment Act, which gave government the illlegal authority to extort money from lenders to the tune of $15 Trillion dollars. This created our recession and gave him several excuses to redistribute our wealth in front of our faces. One of which was to quadruple the deficit in paying back those traitors who elected him with the lie he was creating shovel-ready jobs.
I may be doing many things but, one thing is for sure, I’m not laughing.
Roger closes this blog post with a well-taken, all-too-true remark: “The Republican leadership had better be strong. Their recent ‘compromise,’ as Charles Krauthammer has shown us, was not inspiring.”
The trouble is, Roger, and to a greater extent, Charles Krauthammer, have disparaged perhaps the most outspoken and influential alternative to that uninspiring Republican leadership, Sarah Palin, who would never have agreed to such a “compromise.”
Nothing new here at all. Obama has always voted present, in life as well as professionally. Head of Harvard Law Review without writing a single thing himself. Attaching his name to laws in the Illinois legislature that he had no part in drafting. Turning over the details of “Obamacare” to Pelosi and Reid to write. Setting up a commission to negotiate a cure for the deficit rather than proposing anything personally.
Ironically, his response to the most difficult problems has been “what did GWB do”? Gitmo, wiretapping, rendition, DADT, stimulous spending, troop surge in Afghanistan, and now tax cuts. No wonder the left has been going crazy lately. It’s like GWB is still in charge.
So turning the presser over to Clinton is just one more case of letting someone else do the heavy lifting while Obama basks in the glory of being The One. I sure he doesn’t see it as weakness at all. He most likely thinks of it as letting the hired help do the dirty work while he basks in the glory of being POTUS.
Dealing with pesky reporters is beneath him; there are parties to attend. Its good to be King, let the worker bees do the drudge work. As for the “don’t make Michelle mad” question, it’s the standard ‘good cop/bad cop’ ruse that most married couples use to take the heat off of themselves. I’d do something different if I could, but the spouse won’t stand for it. uh-huh…
The problem, of course, is when we end up with a life or death crisis. Be it Iran with a bomb, North Korea crossing the DMZ, or the total collapse of the economy due to pie in the sky entitlements and profligate spending. Or perhaps all three at once. Who will have both the power and the vision to resolve this for him? Can he then say to Bill “you handle this, I’m out of here”, and then go golfing? I’m sure we would all, {Democrat, Republican, Tea Partier} heave a sigh of relief if he did. But can he?
During the primaries, Hillary tried to warn US of the potential disaster of that ’3 am call to the White House’, but no one listened then. Chickens coming home to roost, and all that……
The Self-Triangulation, Auto-Strangulation of a Presidency
It’s all over for President Barack Hussein Obama. Mark Madoff did it with a dog leash. Barack Obama did it with a picture.
As IOwntheWorld.com put it, “Sad O [that would be Obama, IOTW's less-than-affectionate sobriquet for the president] is sad to know that Bill Clinton’s definition of ‘triangulate’ means that he, Bill, and Hillary are now the 44th Presidents of the United States.” And all this while Barry thought “triangulation” just meant using 3 angles.
Barry has been triangulated, self-strangulated might also fit, not by the Clintons but by “Sad O” himself who virtually abdicated his office on Friday when he walked off the presidential stage during a presidential press briefing and turned it over to Bill Clinton. At first, in a GWB moment, Barry and Billy couldn’t open the locked door to West Wing briefing room but Chief Press Hack Robert Gibbs helped them out and the door was thrown open: http://yhoo.it/i79NYz
The president would have been better off had Gibbs hidden the key.
These 4 pictures say it all, . . .
(Read more and see the pictures at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3016)
The 2 happiest people in the US are Jimmy Carter and Fritz Mondale. No longer the lowest common denominator.
Look people, the “Anointed One” makes his chess move’s and us babbling humans need to realize that the unbelieving conspiracy “heathen” understate the issues when they say that Obama is a radical. Alas, they know not the secrets we are all going to witness. The “Anointed One” is amazing (and according to Biden: he’s so brillant), and takes the people at the highly efficient Post Office and sends them right over to the Student Loan Program. The “Anointed One” knows all. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the Obama mega-money-raising engine whirred on at high speed, until the result became inevitable: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the “Anointed One.”
I am not surprised to hear these stinking lies about our “Anointed One,” it should be apparent to anyone that this was coming down the pike. I do have a couple questions about future process steps concerning these developments? When the “Annointed One” decides to start bar-coding everyone, will we get to decide if the mark is on our hand or forehead? Allot of people will prefer the hand, (especially women of course), unless your a porn actress or something along those lines. Also, my girlfriend was wondering if the Administration will be getting fashion advice from Hollyweird or the New York City crowd? We are both agree that the Administration “Maoies” as the “Anointed One ” so lovingly calls them,will be getting uniforms similar to the SS uniforms in Germany in WW2. With big letters abreviating “Barack’s Socialists.” So shall we start calling them the BS?
You can add Massachusetts to your list, Roger (and the jury’s still out on New Jersey although things are definitely looking up). It can’t possibly escape anyone’s notice that the biggest thing these states have in common is that they’ve been under liberal control for decades now (the occasional Republican governor doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact nor does having one state house or the other under occasional Republican control–the liberal mindset prevails and Republicans in those states for the most part go along to get along).
I think perhaps the “too big too fail” fallacy applies to states as well as corporations. Will the failure of CA or NY (or, to a lesser degree, the others) have a huge negative impact on the economic health of the country at large? OMG yes. But, will it be less or more than the impact of endlessly infusing massive amounts of public capital into states that simply refuse to reform their profligate ways? I suppose we won’t know until such time as one does actually fail. Myself, I’m betting our Golden State will be the first.
I gave up gloating over the revelation that Obama’s clothes have no emperor early on. The situation is far too serious for that. But sometimes the man makes it very difficult for us to entirely contain that gloat.
Like it or not, the American media convinced gullible Americans to elect this no-account egotist to the White House.
There is NOTHING to laugh to at here.
Americans should be crying.
And angry at themselves for falling for an empty idea created by the unquestioning leftist media.
I’m sorry.
You will perhaps think that I just call him names and label him but I repeat what we must not forget:
this president is doing exactly what he wants to do.
Subversives are internationalist.
Their only enemy is the might of America.
This president acts as the leader of international subversion.
He weakens America.
If we think to this administration at a purely national level, we miss the decisive point.
He doesn’t care of looking childish.
He is actively decreasing our power, at any level.
He is very successful.
exactly.
There is zero evidence to think that he cares one iota about what the American majority thinks.
As you say, he is far too busy subverting the country to spend more than a milisecond or two expressing his contempt for us.
Yes, we should gloat, and we MUST gloat, by laughing and attempting to humiliate each and every Leftist that supported Obama.
The goal must be to get his administration to take military action to stop Iran from getting a nuke.
On the economy, the voters needs to face these two facts:
1) most taxpayers are, on the world standings of wage to work, overpaid, and
2) almost every gov’t bureaucrat is grossly overpaid, as well as more damaging than helpful to economic growth.
The biggest gov’t problems are due to excessive gov’t wages and pensions and health car fiasco non-solutions. (More doctors are needed. We don’t need/want insurance, we need care. Doctor care.)
I disagree no one should gloat, instead we need to get angry to our fellow citizen who voted for this pseudo intellectual fool.
Be careful when you are faced with wounded animal, it can get very dangerous. Now we are dealing with a uncontrollable psychic lefties, similar to wounded wild beast.
Step back and watch the left destroy itself.
Leftists are hopeless. The people who need to be spoken to are the Republicans who voted for Obama. Here’s looking at you Chris Buckley et al. I do not include Powell in this group because I don’t think he was ever anything more than a racial opportunist.
I have had the same dread since he was elected. And let’s face it, our “gut” instincts were spot-on.
No soup for you, KansasGirl!
“Gut instincts” have been deemed “RAAAAAAAAAAACIST!” by the PC-Police.
Now, say ten Hail-0bamas and repent before you are dragged, kicking and screaming to the gulags.
Let’s face it…”common sense” is something that can’t be taught. You are either the person who doesn’t need electric stop-signs to stop when appropriate or you are the fool who runs into oncoming traffic when the electronic stop-signs malfunction. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people who have far too much power who need helmets and a leash.
Sally, we’re all volunteers! The people “in charge” just show up. If you want to drive the agenda, show up. Some Tea Party organizations are bigger and more involved than others. Some have consolidated, some have split.
Where do you live? There is probably an active group near you.
Hmmm…this was for Sally up there in the Comment #1 thread, at 2:15 pm.
Since we are entertaining ourselves here, maybe someone can count up the number of incidents Obama has had which have been declared by a majority of the denizens of PJM to be the ultimate moment of his disgracing himself, proving for ONCE AND FOR ALL that he was a clown, weakling. fraud etc. Mr Lucky likes to keep records of things, so maybe he can help us out with the actual number.
I, alas, have not kept count but know that there have been many. Here’s a prediction; there will be at least as many more in the next two years.
As for the next SIX years…who knows?
It will probably six years. The extreme right won’t accept anyone but Palin and stay home if she doesn’t run. The moderate right will stay home if she does run. Either way we our stuck with a traitor as President.
Well Dwight, at least you’re consistent. But history doesn’t look well upon your bland acceptance of the collectivist path that those behind 0bama are orchestrating for this nation, nor do your constant apologia for the same do you any credit. The quote that follows applies directly to you and those like you.
If you are an Obama supporter, then you have accepted collectivism and the premises of the ideas that support it. Like it or not (and perhaps you do), know it or not (and perhaps you don’t care), you have opted for slavery of the most insidious type. Those choices have consequences. Regardless of what you may think, you are exempt from none of them.
Oh, and spare us the tedious and ridiculous ad-hominem attack against Rand. You cannot gainsay anything any of the ideas, principles and the substance of this quotation. Perhaps that’s what you fear the most. As well you should.
I won’t bother with the attack on Rand, but rather state that I usually feel relatively free to do whatever I want, or at least need, to do. I pay my taxes and don’t whimper or bluster about whether I am paying 20 or 25 percent. I have plenty and I just can’t get into that haggling mindset of brooding about the unfairness of whatever it is I have to pay. So many righties and lefties are perpetually offended, the former by the unfairness of what they have to pay in taxes, equal rights for gays, some of the liberties they feel they have lost, and on and on; the latter by the unfairness of wealth distribution and the presence of guns in our society, not to mention US malfeasance in foreign policy, and on and on. Both sides, as I stated yesterday tend toward a state of perpetual outrage, and both feel that they are more MORAL people because of their vigilance and outrage. Instead, I see a certainly personality type that simply needs to feel outrage, that they are somehow not fulfilled as human beings, unless they are on the warpath/peacepath.
Both sides sometimes warn me that unless I join them, I will end up in a concentration camp run by the other side. I think, rather, that whatever the current game in town is, I can play it at least as well as 75% of the population, and that’s good enough for me to keep from going broke or going to jail. Some hate that stance even more then they hate their enemies, but it’s actually sort of average squared. So it goes.
He who rides the fence to long eventually saws himself in half.
If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.
Dhimmitude is death.
submit submit submit
Dwight believes that he’s got a Get Out of History Free card. Nothing could be further from the truth. And no one will be more surprised than his ilk when they discover that no, they are manifestly NOT exempt from the consequences of their very bad ideas.
You are out of your mind, Dwighty old boy.
Things are only starting to get interesting. Once the effects on the value of the dollar caused by the record setting deficits incurred by this gross incompetent become apparent, the last two years will seem like a Sunday Picnic.
For a while I have been wondering which literary figure Obama resembled. Now I know. My vote goes for Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. Lord Jim deserted the Patna along with the rest of the crew. Obama deserted his press conference.
But Lord Jim lived the rest of his life trying to atone for his moment of cowardice in abandoning the ship. Can’t see Obama doing atonement for anything.
My vote for literary character is Pisthetaerus – the human founder of Cloudcuckooland – in the play “The Birds”, written by Aristophanes in about 414 BC.
Read that and you’ll see that Obama isn’t the first Obama. Somehow ancient Greece survived previous Obamas to become what modern Greece is today – er wait, um what the.. oh horsefeathers!
Should we gloat? HELL, YES! It should be rubbed in the face of every self-righteous blowhard that ever called anyone “RAAAAACIST” for disagreeing with President Disaster. It should be thrown up in the face of every MSM pundit or commentator who would presume in the future to feel qualified to preach to us unwashed masses: “Hey, Napoleon Krugman! You were DEAD wrong about Obama, why the hell should we listen to you about more stimulus?”
And truthfully, whether we gloat or not, it’s not going to make a damn bit of difference on the extent of the mess this idiot is going to make in his final two years. So let’s have fun while we can, there might not be much else to laugh at for awhile.
I do not really understand the hysteria. Obama has been trapped by the mid-term elections. Obama has been exposed, and has been forced to begin to compromise. He’s such a lightweight that he needed Clinton to make his argument, though this hardly proves that Barry is ready to walk away from his Presidency. It is also unlikely that he’ll allow Bill to steal the spotlight so openly again.
I have come to believe that PJM political bloggers and many posters refuse to hear good news about the conservative side in America.
Obama will probably win re-election if the GOP isn’t purged of the old guard, blue-blooded, country clubbing, Democrat-lite Republicans. We see in this lame duck session the GOP trying to throw the 2012 election to Obama by caving to him, by giving him another faux stimulus, and by appointing non-conservatives to important committees’ chairmanships. The extension of unemployment benefits, the appointments of Upton and Rogers to chairmanships are almost as dispiriting to conservatives as McCain’s nomination was in ’08.
Can we take up a collection to bribe a member of the WH press corps to ask POTUS, “Where’s Bill? Can we get his opinion on that?” at the next presser?
Sorry, I’m going to go on gloating…apologetically.
As I said 2 years ago, I repeat again: Voting for Obama was for many the cheapest indulgence – as understood in Martin Luther’s time – but the greatest self-indulgence.
Oops! Make that “unapologetically” – though that should have been clear.
How many times have you heard a prog state that they voted for this community organizer because it was a historic election.
Fortunately, the media apprised voters of Obama’s lack of practical experience before the 2008 election, rather than help elect an affirmative action President who enjoys taxpayer-paid on-the-job training.
We can thank the “sleeping generations” and the shallow minds of the GOP and Independents who voted for Obama…for this presidency. The ONLY thing he misrepresented during his two years of campaigning was his “professional” political experience to lead the most powerful nation on earth. Add to those people who voted for Obama…the people who voted in an absolute majority of socialist progressives in the congress in 2006.
As a socialist progressive ideolog he has accomplished his largest objectives and would be happy if he served not another day as president. Americans and the world know our nation is sailing rudderless under this captain of yet two more years in office.
All the banter should be directed towards “how do we minimize further domestic damage for the next two years of a lame duck (grid locked) congress and a presidency with still more socialist progessive objectives on his plate?” Foreign affairs will have to be what it is until we wake up and get a president who will deal with Iran appropriately (a rubble pile) and serve notice on the rest of the Muslim world manipulating the worlds economies, social unrest and wars.
Again, thank the non thinkers and shallow thinkers of America for where we are today and…with this president and congress’.
with tea party still containing racists I am not worried
And with the Democrats and left containing fools and bigots, neither am I.
You should be doubly concerned that the Jon Stewart “sanity rally” was predominantly white (without ‘enough’ minority ‘representation’) and only white people can be ‘racists’ apparently even though a “black panther” yelling “Kill cracka babies” is perfectly acceptable in your pitiful, cretinous world-view.
Please, just go back under your rock where you belong. You disgust me.
Roger somehow omits Texas and while New York is indeed the third most populous state, it is soon to be eclipsed by Florida. So we do have some albatross states still in la-la land, but their impending crash will wake up their slumbering citizenry.
Will it be too late?
Too late for what? The train is already careening toward the precipice, the bridge is out, and there’s no time to arrest momentum.
Change is coming, folks. But here’s the good news: we have a strong reservoir of reverence toward freedom. When the crash comes and it is obvious who the statists are that brought us to this point, we’ll be able to round them up and give them the same treatment similar aristocrats got in France. You are a statist? The guillotine for you.
In the end, we will have to fight for our territory and tell the Chinese to stay out–that the statist pigs who incurred the debt have been dealt with, and that the debt is therewith cancelled.
We need to have a permanent rule of law, that bars spending what we do not have. That alone would cancel all “social programs” that have served as the means for the left to steal our birthright.