Quote of the Day
Choose thy love. Love thy choice.
German proverb
Obama, Voters, and the Tea Party: Some Comments
When I hear pundits talking about Obama being all but a lock for reelection next year, I get more incredulous: what are they talking about? The voters seem to be blasting the Congress over the bitterly partisan debt ceiling increase debate: when is Obama going to be held responsible for exacerbating the partisan divide given the fact he fraudulently and knowingly promised a post-partisan era? When is Obama going to held responsible for unprecedented federal deficits requiring a need to raise the debt limit? When is Obama going to pay a price for boorish personal, unprofessional conduct, whether we are talking about walking out on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, attacking the Supreme Court to their faces at the State of the Union address, or constantly bashing his predecessor?
When are we going to see Barack Obama going to take responsibility for being President instead of constantly making excuses for his failing performance and whining like a spoiled brat that his job is just too damn hard? When is Obama going to be held responsible for setting abysmal priorities on expanding a new healthcare entitlement while existing entitlements are all but insolvent, some $50T in unfunded liabilities? When is Obama going to pay a price for all his broken campaign promises (e.g., Gitmo, the Bush tax cuts, earmarks, the KSM trial, etc.) and for validating anti-American rhetoric his first year in office?
When did Obama show leadership as national debt approached the size of GDP? Did he back up his own bipartisan deficit reduction committee findings? Did he jawbone Dem House and Senate leaders into submitting budgets in the last Congress? When is Obama going to accept responsibility for losing the S&P's highest rating on government debt? While states and municipalities have been cutting personnel, funding and services to make ends meet as required by law, where was Obama's proactive sense of fiscal responsibility?
Here we have a President whom repeats the same disingenuous claims in favor of ObamaCare: after all, the American people are just not smart enough like he is, that they are irrationally going against their best interests, clinging to their guns, Bibles and ethnic prejudices. Darn, that education system just isn't good enough for people to see the beauty of well-constructed, 2000-page plus Democratic laws--we better put more federal dollars into education; he just has to find the magic combination words so even his stupid fellow American can follow the idea. It's not that American voters have substantive objections to the law, which requires Americans to purchase an insurance product, including third party overhead and profits, for the privilege of living in America (versus, say, pay for medical services as they occur), radically expands Medicaid at a time the program is all but insolvent and refunds providers below cost, and takes away $500B from Medicare funding, which is chronically underfunded just as the largest American generation is starting to retire...
President Obama wants the Congress to pass the debt ceiling, already in his third year of trillion-plus deficits, without a short-term austerity plan, even as the federal debt approaches GDP size, a symbolic threshold of fiscal sustainability, despite the fact that his own economists are baking in trillion dollar deficits over the coming decade, in and of itself doubling the entire federal debt through the Bush Administration. He trumpeted a near trillion dollar stimulus bill, selling it using unrealistic expectations about unemployment (and pushing "shovel-ready projects"). He argues against special interests but acts on behalf of crony union interests and meets with AARP, pharmaceuticals, providers, and others.
Today I was listening to Meet the Press when John Kerry blasted the Tea Party once again, blaming them for the S&P downgrade and fiscal crisis; this is so wrong--raising the nation's credit limit did not occur because of Tea Party fiscal policies: the Democratic Party has been in control of one or both Houses of Congress and the President since the start of the recession in late 2007 and the percentage of public debt relative to GDP has roughly doubled since then. The Democratic President and Democratic-controlled Senate has been spending recklessly: even when revenues fell by 40%, the Democrats pushed through nearly a 25% increase in discretionary spending, far above the cost of living. This is not a tax problem: it is lack of spending discipline while Democrats try to play word games, calling overspending "investments". Well, Democrats have had a free hand to do whatever it takes to stabilize employment, and the proof is in the pudding: despite heavy Fed-based liquidity in the markets to complement reckless Democratic spending, we have an official 9.1% unemployment rate, the largest number of long-term unemployed since the federal government started tracking them (the long-term unemployed are not figured in the unemployment rate as "discouraged workers"), and an anemic growth rate of under 2%, the slowest, least-job creating recession in recent history, despite the best economists available for Obama to work with. How in the world does any American voter really think giving Obama 4 more years on the clock is going to make any difference, if he hasn't already figured it out by now?
The real extremists and traitors in Congress are the Democrats whom have continued to stonewall austerity and feed the Big Government bubble. Haven't we been there and done that?
Political Humor. A periodic reminder you can find digests of daily late-night jokes at newsmax.
"Because of our national debt, every child in this country owes $50,000. China heard this and said, 'We’re hiring.'" - Jay Leno
[The bad news is that given Chinese wages, your kids are going to have to wash dishes at local Chinese restaurants for the rest of their lives...]
"Vice President Joe Biden referred to the tea party as “terrorists.” This is a real slap in the face — to terrorists." - David Letterman
[Vice President Joe Biden referred to Barack Obama as "the President". That is a real slap in the face--to Presidents.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Eagles, "Life in the Fast Lane". You have got to love a song with the lyric "he was brutally handsome, she was terminally pretty"...
