So What's The New New Plan?

Let's examine Barack Obama's newest new plan for recovering the already-recovered economy ('cause remember, 2009 was the Summer of Recovery).  Here you go:

President Obama on Monday proposed a deficit reduction plan that calls for about $3 in new tax increases for every dollar in additional spending cuts as he seeks to put his imprint on the ongoing talks with Congress over reducing the government’s staggering debt.

The total tax increase would be several trillion dollars.  Hm, raising taxes -- especially a BIG increase like this -- in a struggling economy?  Not a good idea, says...Barack Obama (from the past):

Funny how things change, isn't it?  But let's dig a little deeper.  Obama says his plan is all about taxing the rich.  Never mind the fact that taxing the rich simply won't fix the problem.  The fact is that he's going to have to tax the middle class, where the real money is, while making the middle class think he's taxing only the rich:

It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Barack Obama's latest plan to combat the deficit.

Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries and people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in government revenues raised through new or increased fees.

There are other ways it would hit the middle class, too, from explicit taxation on families or small businesses earning more than $200k a year to smacking millions of families as being 'rich' when they're really just normal folks receiving dividends on investments.

It's the same old class warfare gig he's been peddling since he stepped into elected office years ago.  In fact, it's really, really similar to the first big stimulus plan he proposed right after taking office:

Obama’s new jobs plan looks remarkably like his $830 billion 2009 economic stimulus package. According to Al Hunt the latest Obama job plan stimulus includes tax cuts, infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits extension and direct aid to state and local governments.

So, if the last stimulus for $800+ billion didn't do squat to help the economy, the obvious natural choice is to push through another one for half that, right?  No?  Well, you're clearly wrong, because that's precisely what's happening.  The RNC put it this way:

If you really want to break it down, here's the short version of his new plan:

But never mind the 47% of Americans who don't pay any income tax at all.  It would be unfair to include them in any measure of what's fair, don't you think?

Anyway, isn't it good that he's at least leaping into action to do something?  Um, not really:

Everybody remembers the urgency of President Obama's attitude toward the awful jobs situation.

Back in early August, Obama said the jobs situation was so urgent that he was going to give another speech about it -- in a month or so, in September after his vacation on Martha's Vineyard.

And then in September the president announced he would give his major jobs speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7. But he neglected to check with congressional leaders first. And they suggested the 8th. So, since it was their House, the 8th it was.

"Tonight," the president said in the first 34 of his 4,021 words to a national television audience that night, "we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse."  ...

The president was in such a hurry to get this new spending going, everyone remembers, that during that address he said the phrase "right now" seven times. He didn't actually mean right now that night because the NFL season was opening a few minutes after his remarks.

But Obama did want to show how really urgent he said the situation was, even though it had taken him 961 days as president to say them. And even though from Day #1 of the brief Obama Era polls had shown jobs and the economy were the No. 1 priority among voters but he pursued healthcare and financial reforms first. And even though unemployment had been at or above 9% for 26 of the last 28 months.

So, given the president's professed urgency, the next day, Sept. 9, everyone asked where was his jobs legislation?

And, well, it seems the urgent jobs bill hadn't actually been written yet but should be ready in a week or two. When the laughter died, the White House said on second thought the legislation would be ready for a photo op the next Monday.

Well, here we are on the next Monday after that next Monday and we've just learned from the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin, that actually it seems that body won't really be seriously getting into the legislation for a while yet. The Senate has some other more important business to handle. And then there's this month's congressional vacation, which in Washington is called "a recess," like elementary school.

Here's the revealing exchange with a persistent host Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union:"

CROWLEY: When is the bill going to get on the floor?
DURBIN: The bill is on the calendar. Majority leader Reid moved it to the calendar. It is ready and poised. There are a couple other items we may get into this week not on the bill and some related issues that may create jobs. But we're going to move forward on the president's bill. There will be a healthy debate. I hope the Republicans will come to...
CROWLEY: After the recess, so next month? Or when will it actually begin to act on?
DURBIN: I think that's more realistic it would be next month.

So, as of right now, "right now" uttered on Sept. 8 really means sometime at least one month later.

Good thing the president's own Democratic party controls the Senate. Because, otherwise, there might be some kind of silly, unnecessary delays in deliberating Obama's urgent jobs bill that he says will surely help the nation's unemployed millions if only those Republicans don't connive to slow things down.

Whew, it's a good thing we've got his leadership on this tough issue!  But even more than that, this is the bazillionth time he's focused on the 'urgent' issue of jobs.  Observe:

• December 2009: “Entering an election year, Democrats sharpen focus on jobs” Unemployment rate: 10.0%.
• January 2010: “Obama to focus hard on economy after Democratic loss” Unemployment rate: 9.7%.
• February 2010: “Democrats Seek to Push Ahead $15 Billion Jobs Bill, With More Steps to Come” Unemployment rate: 9.7%.
• March 2010: “Jobs Bill Signed Into Law by Obama” The first of many… err, one? Unemployment rate: Unemployment rate: 9.7%.
• April 2010: “Obama election-year jobs agenda stalls in Congress.” Unemployment rate: 9.9%.
• May 2010: “The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010.” Remember this when you hit the second July 2010 entry. Unemployment rate: 9.7%.
• June 2010: “Obama Urges Quick Vote to Spur Jobs” Unemployment rate: 9.5%.
• July 2010: “Harry Reid stresses job-based agenda” Unemployment rate: 9.5%.
• July 2010: “President Obama signs Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010 into law.” Yes, that’s the same thing as the May entry. Apparently, extending unemployment benefits counts as job creation. Also, remember this when you see the unemployment rate in May 2011. Unemployment rate: 9.5% (obviously).
• August 2010: “Obama Calls for ‘Full-Scale Attack’ to Revive Struggling Economy” Unemployment rate: 9.6%.
• September 2010: “Senators Urge Reid to Focus on Jobs, Adjourn Early” …Yes, that one’s unkind of both me and the Nevada GOP, but it was too funny to pass up. Unemployment rate: 9.6%.
• October 2010: “Obama to focus on jobs, economy on India visit.” This, a month after the Democrats failed to get an outsourcing bill past their then-59/41 majority. Unemployment rate: 9.7%.
• November 2010: “Reid: Jobs Are Priority #1 For Democrats” Unemployment rate: 9.8%.
• December 2010: “Obama & Labor Unions Meet to Plan Job Creation.” Based on this RedState report; Jim was as cynical about the likelihood of that happening as we were. Unemployment rate: 9.4%.
• January 2011: “Obama Address to Focus on Jobs, Cutting Deficit, Unity.” Unemployment rate: 9.0%.
• February 2011: “Jobs Message to Go Home With House Democrats” Unemployment rate: 8.9%.
• March 2011: “Democrats’ central message on jobs might not be enough” Unemployment rate: 8.8%.
• April 2011: “Democrat rips Obama for not focusing more on jobs.” Unemployment rate: 9.0%.
• May 2011: “Dems target unemployment benefits bill” Unemployment rate: 9.1%. Yeah, that was some real impressive job creation that came from paying people to not work for longer, there. And would it be mean of me to remind people that we were promised by the Obama administration to be between 6 and 7% unemployment at this point? …Yes, it would probably be mean of me.
• June 2011: “Obama Announces ‘All-Hands-On-Deck Strategy’ To Boost Private Sector Hiring” As I put it at the time: “Now watch this drive.” Unemployment rate: 9.2%.
• July 2011: “Democrats Focus on Jobs, Continue to Urge GOP to Work Together On Balanced Agreement to Pay America’s Bills, Reduce Deficit.” You dirty terrorists, you. Also: we’re all waiting for the July numbers on Friday: who wants to bet that they’re going to be any better than June’s?
• August: 2011: The Democrats plan to focus on jobs!

Good thing he's here to save the day.

But don't worry.  Despite not having enough time between vacations to put forward an actual jobs bill, Obama did have plenty of time to propose a bunch of new czars that can control your life through regulation without having any election accountability to the American people.  Good news, huh?

It is interesting to note that Obama's getting considerable heat from the liberal Left, too.  In fact, he's never polled lower in a Gallup poll of self-described liberals, his hometown newspaper is calling for him not to run for re-election, and there's even talk of him facing some primary challenges.  I know, it's hard to believe that anyone could be unhappy with Barack Obama for not being liberal enough, but that's another story all to itself that really speaks to the twisted mindset that is liberalism in general.

Whose Money Is It?

Obama is now out there proposing trillions of dollars of new tax hikes to try to bring down our national debt.  This raises the question: whose money is it?  Is the government entitled to take it before I can call it 'mine', and if so, how much of it?  The government thinks it's theirs first, and you get to keep whatever they leave you.  J.E. Dyer at Hot Air has a great take on it:

If any of us doesn't deserve to keep everything he has earned, then that man is a slave.  Alternatively, he is less than human; he has no moral standing, and no unalienable rights inhere in him.  He is like a farm animal.

Of course we all deserve to keep our own money.  If it is ill-gotten – stolen, swindled – then it's the crime that deprives us of it, not any inherent function of the armed authorities to prowl the land in search of "undeserved" bank balances.

The question of what we "deserve" boils down to which came first, the individual human with rights, or the state.  America was founded on the principle that the individual human with rights comes first.  Any idea that violates that principle is counter to our founding idea.  It is not possible to reconcile with our founding principle the idea of collective schemes in which we make some modification to "what we deserve."  We either deserve to keep all our own earnings – money – wealth – goods – or we do not have unalienable rights.

Now, what we decide to do with our own money will inevitably involve government functions of some kind.  People have to have a government in some form.  A certain minimum set of public services is essential to corporate human life.  The American founding idea is that we the people decide what government will do, and we decide how much money government will have to do it with.  Then we contribute out of what is inalienably ours.

In the American idea, the state doesn't operate on the basis of "what we deserve."  It operates on the basis of law: definitions adopted by due process, and objective circumstances.  "What we deserve" is outside the scope of the state's competence to decide.  If we enter relationships in which someone else decides that for us, they are voluntary; e.g., employer paying or promoting employee, fan-base keeping pro sports or the music industry profitable.

The percentage-based income tax and the practice of payroll withholding have combined for a century now to obscure in our minds the simplicity of our founding principles.  But the founding principles were very clear.  Modern interlocutors can seek to change the argument, toss red herrings around, and get us in full 6-year-old mode talking about "deserving" and "not deserving" according to whether we are Leona Helmsley or Mother Teresa, but the bottom line is that a man whose title to his money is considered – as a first principle – subject to the whim of his neighbor, is a slave.

America was founded on the principle that individual rights precede and constrain the state.  As far as government is properly concerned, we all deserve to keep 100% of our money.  The question of what we decide to do with it, and how the functions of government figure into that, is a separate and subordinate topic.

It is impossible to live as free men and women otherwise.

Bingo.

Another Snapshot Of My Work Life

The fun never stops...

An instant message conversation with one of my end users today (anonymization has been applied to protect the innocent and the stupid):

Jack: Good morning Brandon

Jack: Still havent heard anything on request 123456789

Jack: It shows assigned and I believe its with Joe Smith

Jack: Was placed back on 08/19/2011

Jack: :-(

Me: Have you checked with him?

Jack: Oh...Thats a thought :-)

Yes, yes it is a thought.  A very good thought, and one worth having.  In fact, it would have been worth having before contacting me about it.  The really ridiculous part is that this guy actually did go the extra mile - most people don't even bother to find out who their requests are assigned to.

*sigh*

How long is it until I finish my MBA again??

An Empty Quiver And The Tax Cliff Of 2013

Here are a pair of stories that will have a huge impact on you in the next two years regardless of how much attention you devote to politics.  This post will be a bit on the long side, but there's so much red meat in here that it is well worth your time to dig into every word.

Obama's Quiver Is Empty

When Obama stands up to speak, he faces a collective "Been there, done that."

Ex-president George W. Bush with accustomed candor once shrugged after the end of his eight-year presidency, "People were kind of tired of me." That ennui happens eventually with most presidents. But in the case of Barack Obama, our modern Phaethon, his fiery crash is coming after 32, not 96, months.

We can sense the national weariness with Obama in a variety of strange and unexpected ways. There is the self-pitying anguish of liberal columnists who scapegoat him for turning the public against their own leftwing agenda. The current silence of "moderate" Republicans and conservative op-ed writers who once in near ecstasy jumped ship to join Obama is deafening. A growing number of Democratic representatives and senators up for reelection do not want their partisan president to visit their districts in the runup to November 2012. Approval ratings hover around 40 percent.

Perhaps strangest of all, there is now a collective "Been there, done that" any time Barack Obama walks up to the podium to give yet another teleprompted speech. The speeches still are well delivered; he still has a way with the mannerisms and cadences. But even his critics pray for his sake that he does not come out with yet another embarrassing "Let me be perfectly clear," "Make no mistake about it," or "Let's be honest" — as he goes back to bashing either the tired Bush bogeyman or yet another strawman Satanic reactionary who, if not for Barack Obama, supposedly would expose children to mercury, neglect roads and bridges, and finally dissolve government altogether. We have all heard ad nauseam that an eight-month-old Republican-controlled Congress has stopped Obama's legislative agenda for three years.

In truth, Obama is out of arrows. His quiver is bare, because he came into office as a rhetorical president without much experience or any ideas other than growing even bigger a tired big government. And now the public realizes that both the speeches and the big spending do not work. The result is that we collectively know what the president cannot any longer say — and it proves far greater than what he can say. He is well past the point of Jerry Ford's WIN buttons or Jimmy Carter's fist-pounding malaise speech.

Obama cannot jawbone interest rates down — they are already at near-zero on passbook accounts. Obama cannot ask the EPA to shut down any more powerhouses or the NLRB to try to close any more new manufacturing plants. Obama cannot really ask for any more big borrowing programs — not after running up $5 trillion in new debt and getting little economic activity in response. The bogus vocabulary of "stimulus," "shovel-ready," and "investments" provokes laughter; it does not ensure an unemployment rate no higher than 8 percent. He cannot, with a straight face, appeal to the collective wisdom of Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, and Summers — or quote the predictable shrillness of Paul Krugman on the need for ever greater debt. Those academic arrows were long ago shot in vain. In truth, every classical Keynesian remedy has been tried, and we are left only with the hard work of trimming regulations, talking up business, producing more fossil fuels, and returning to budget discipline, thrift, greater productivity, and radical reform of the tax code and entitlements. What Obama might say on all that, his ideological training and shrinking base will not allow him to say — as we saw from his shunning of his own Simpson-Bowles commission.

Obama cannot give one more speech on "civility." He has done that for three years — only to violate his own directives by urging voters to "punish" our "enemies" and demonizing those who make over $200,000 as culpable "millionaires and billionaires," "fat cats," and owners of "corporate jets." To oppose Obama is to be a "hostage" taker. The nation got Obama's accustomed calls to cool the partisan invective while Jimmy Hoffa and Maxine Waters were slurring tea-party members as "son of a bitches" and telling them to "go straight to Hell" — confident that Barack Obama's collective morality does not apply to them. The result is that another appeal to "civility" would now at best earn laughter.

He cannot promise a "summer of recovery," not after chronic 9 percent unemployment, soaring food and fuel costs, a herky-jerky stock market, near-zero growth, record deficits and debt, and the downgrading of the nation's credit. Perhaps Obama could promise us relief of only a $1 trillion annual deficit, a return to 8 percent unemployment, $3-a-gallon gas, a steady GDP growth rate of 2 percent, holding the debt at $16 trillion, and opening a single new oil field.

Nor can Mr. Obama any longer call for "millions of green jobs." Valerie Jarrett, Obama's personnel adviser, cannot any longer purr out, "Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. . . . We were watching him for as long as he's been active out in Oakland." Between that silliness and today, there have been just too many hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in subsidizing "green" sweetheart deals that ended in bankruptcies. More calls to buy government-produced Chevy Volts I don't think would work.

Obama cannot promise to close Guantanamo or try KSM in Manhattan. Nor can he even continue the demagogic attacks on the Bush-Cheney national-security protocols — not when he embraced and expanded them all. In 2012 his commercials will highlight killing bin Laden in Pakistan, not closing Guantanamo or ending Predator-drone attacks. And yet, neither can Obama's team speak any longer of "overseas contingency operations" and "man-caused disasters." He is between the rock and the hard place of both caricaturing and adopting the policies that work when they were alleged not to work — so he is quiet on that count too.

His address to Congress last week went nowhere. It was hyped well. It was delivered well. It was comprehensive. But Obama had nothing to say that we have not already heard from him — and that has not already failed or proved to be hypocritical.

When the quiver is empty, the archer puts his bow away. Silence, not "This is our moment," is the wisest course for Barack Obama now that the arrows are all gone.

Combine that with the following warning in the Wall Street Journal about the games Obama's playing with American taxpayers:

President Obama unveiled part two of his American Jobs Act on Monday, and it turns out to be another permanent increase in taxes to pay for more spending and another temporary tax cut. No surprise there. What might surprise Americans, however, is how the President is setting up the U.S. economy for one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2013.

Mr. Obama said last week that he wants $240 billion in new tax incentives for workers and small business, but the catch is that all of these tax breaks would expire at the end of next year. To pay for all this, White House budget director Jack Lew also proposed $467 billion in new taxes that would begin a mere 16 months from now. The tax list includes limiting deductions for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), limiting tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and a tax increase on carried interest earned by private equity firms. These tax increases would not be temporary.

What this means is that millions of small-business owners had better enjoy the next 16 months, because come January 2013 they are going to get hit with a giant tax bill. Let's call the expensive roll:

• First comes the new tax hikes that Mr. Obama proposed on Monday. Capping itemized deductions and exemptions for the rich would take $405 billion from the private economy for 10 years starting in 2013. Taxing carried interest would raise $18 billion, and repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production would get $41 billion.

• These increases would coincide with the expiration of the tax credits, 100% expensing provisions and payroll tax breaks in Mr. Obama's new jobs program. This would mean a tax hit of $240 billion on small business and workers. That's the downside of temporary tax breaks and other job-creation gimmicks: The incentives quickly vanish, and perhaps so do the jobs.

So even if the White House is right that its latest stimulus plan will create "millions of jobs" through 2012, by this logic a $240 billion tax hike on small businesses in 2013 would cost the economy jobs. This tax wallop would arrive when even the White House says the unemployment rate will still be 7.4%.

• January 2013 is also the same month that Mr. Obama wants the Bush-era tax rates to expire on Americans earning more than $200,000. That would raise the highest individual income tax rate to about 42%, including deduction phaseouts, from 35% today. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found in 2009 that $437 billion of business income would be taxed at higher tax rates under the Obama plan. And since some 4.5 million small-business owners file their annual tax returns as subchapter S firms under the individual tax code, this tax increase would often apply to the same people who Mr. Obama is targeting with his new tax credits.

The capital gains and dividend taxes would also rise to an expected 20% rate from 15% today. The 10-year hit to the private economy for all of these expiring Bush rates: about $750 billion.

• Also starting in 2013 are two of ObamaCare's biggest tax increases: an additional 0.9-percentage point levy on top of the 2.9% Medicare tax for those earning more than $200,000, and a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. This will further increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%, for a roughly 60% increase in investment taxes in one year.

The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.

The White House also predicted a similar economic takeoff from the 2009 stimulus that was supposed to make a tax hike possible in 2011. Then last December Mr. Obama proposed new tax incentives only for 2011 because the economy was supposed to be cooking by 2012. Now it wants to extend those tax breaks so the economy will be cruising in 2013.

All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.

For the White House, the policy calendar is dictated above all by the political necessities of the 2012 election. Mr. Obama will take his chances on 2013 if he can cajole the private economy to create enough new jobs over the next year to win re-election, even if those jobs and growth are temporary. Business owners and workers who would prefer to prosper beyond Election Day aren't likely to share Mr. Obama's enthusiasm once they see the great tax cliff approaching. Look out below.

What's the point of all this doom and gloom?  First, to show that there are many legitimate reasons to oppose this regime from being in power one second past January of 2013.  When I question how much more of this radical liberal administration America can survive, I'm not kidding or exaggerating.  If articles like these don't bring that point home for you, nothing will.  If you're like me, though, you wonder what you can do about all this.  It's simple: take action.

Contact your elected representatives on these issues.  Tell them what you think, and justify your thoughts with real facts.  Even more importantly, don't allow people around you to skate when they throw out the empty platitudes and policies that have brought the world's largest and most powerful nation to the brink of economic disaster.  Be polite and respectful, but have your facts at hand and be confident.  Make them defend these policies and actions that have utterly and demonstrably failed.

It is this grass roots person-to-person contact and persuasion that will create the tidal wave of momentum that will sweep the self-destructive and self-loathing Obamacrats from power in the 2012 election.  Ultimately, that's what absolutely must happen if America is to be restored to the last best hope of mankind.

And that starts with you, right now.

The Plan

Paging Hillary...?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Hillary Clinton isn't out of the picture yet.  In fact, I never was convinced that she was out of the picture, and as time has gone on since Obama's election I'm only becoming more and more convinced that Obama is going to be a one-term President due to getting thrown out of his own party.  More and more people are starting to find this conclusion, too.  Observe this from Hot Air:

Three weeks ago, I posed the question of what would happen if Democrats became so convinced that Barack Obama could not win a second term that they asked him to step aside.  Yesterday, the New York Times reports that leaders in the party are starting to come to the conclusion that Obama may not be able to succeed — and that has alarm bells going off:

Democrats are expressing growing alarm about President Obama's re-election prospects and, in interviews, are openly acknowledging anxiety about the White House's ability to strengthen the president's standing over the next 14 months.

Elected officials and party leaders at all levels said their worries have intensified as the economy has displayed new signs of weakness. They said the likelihood of a highly competitive 2012 race is increasing as the Republican field, once dismissed by many Democrats as too inexperienced and conservative to pose a serious threat, has started narrowing to two leading candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who have executive experience and messages built around job creation.

And in a campaign cycle in which Democrats had entertained hopes of reversing losses from last year's midterm elections, some in the party fear that Mr. Obama's troubles could reverberate down the ballot into Congressional, state and local races. …

But a survey of two dozen Democratic officials found a palpable sense of concern that transcended a single week of ups and downs. The conversations signaled a change in mood from only a few months ago, when Democrats widely believed that Mr. Obama's path to re-election, while challenging, was secure.

The article goes on to describe how the Dems appear to be misunderstanding the root cause of Obama's re-election prospects, but I think the key point is that even Democrats are starting to get nervous about what The One has done to them, and question whether or not it's possible for him to win in 2012.

The Hillary Plan B was a crazy theory back in 2008 when Hillary bowed out, but the evidence since then sure raises some pointed questions.  Basically, the idea is that Obama has done such tremendous damage to the nation that his responsibility and culpability is inescapable.  Unless there is a genuine recovery between now and the 2012 election -- which is unlikely, given the economy-destroying policies that Obama has implemented -- he is going to be held largely responsible no matter how much Soros money is dumped into his re-election campaign.  The numbers just don't lie, and they paint too vivid a picture that resonates with too many people, and every Republican candidate should be able to blow gaping holes in Obama's campaign with it, especially given that Obama had a pure Democrat majority to implement his policies.  Faced with such a scenario, and the very real prospects that Obama's failures just might anchor the entire Democrat party to make the historic losses of 2010 pale in comparison across the nation, he may 'choose' not to pursue a second term.  He'll plead family time, health, getting done what he wanted to get done, or some other flimsy excuse that won't admit to being booted, but the reality is that he's out.  Hillary Clinton has the name recognition and the experience to be able to heroically step right into the thick of things and slug it out with any of the Republican candidates, especially when you factor in Slick Willy.  She's a familiar commodity with Democrat voters, and though they might not particularly like her (or the thought of another Clinton), she'd be a palatable candidate compared to any Republican.  She's also the only woman who could counter a potential Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman candidacy, and I don't think enough people are giving enough credence to the notion that women will want their turn at the 'first' Presidential gig, too.

It's obviously way too soon to know anything for sure, but if the economy continues to limp along, and if Obama continues to rely on now-repetitive speeches that everyone knows are devoid of any substance while failing to put forward any legitimate solutions to any of the problems facing this struggling nation...well, it's not such a crazy theory anymore.

Looking Forward

One of the reasons we commemorate significant events of tragedy from the past is to reinforce new behavior that will help such tragedy from happening again in the future.  With that in mind, let's look at just a few things surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how we're moving forward, specifically in regard to military readiness:

It is no big secret in the military. The force is worn down to nubs by a decade of war, the last two of which have been waged under the management of an administration fundamentally hostile to the Armed Services.

The fact is Obama is only comfortable cutting one sector of the budget: Defense. This is not to say that Defense is without waste, fraud, and abuse but it isn’t destroying jobs and the economy like Health and Human Services, EPA, and Labor. Right now cuts in defense are projected to total a half trillion dollars. Under Secretary Gates $178 billion, earmarked to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was given up to support budget reductions.

Chairman Buck McKeon is going to hold a series of hearings over the next three weeks, around the anniversary of 9/11. Tomorrow the theme will be The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years After 9/11.

No part of the budget should be sacrosanct but neither should we send young men and women in to combat without the best equipment and support the nation can offer.

These people are the ones defending our freedom and prosperity.  It is a source of unending national shame to patriotic Americans that our armed forces are being whittled away by our elected leaders.  Not only is this a sign of extreme ungratefulness to the sacrifices of these good men and women (and their families), but it is also the height of foolishness because the foreign threats and dangers to America are growing by the day.

Unfortunately, so are the domestic ones, whether by the fundamental transformation of American society into a European socialist state, the systematic takeover of the American economy by an insatiable and corrupt government bureaucracy, or by the rejection of American exceptionalism.  It is a sad commentary that we must be vigilant against not only the threats from outside our borders, but also from our very own leaders.

9/11 + 10

It's been ten years since the worst terrorist attack on American soil.  In the past, I have posted video footage of that day as a remembrance (and you can see some of that footage again here if you want), but this year I'm going to do something a bit different and just post a couple of the many outstanding remembrance videos, along with some other related information later in the day.

The first video was made by a very good friend of mine who does multimedia at a local megachurch, the second was posted at one of the most trafficked conservative blogs on the Internet, run by a guy here in Missouri.  Both are short, powerful, and outstanding.

No, we will never forget.

Quick Speech Follow-Up

Just as a quick follow-up to the previous post about Obama's jobs speech last night, here are a few more details that you might be interested to know.  The markets didn't think too highly of it, and promptly tanked at the opening bell.  And when the AP -- which nowadays really just functions as the Democrats' transcribing service -- takes the speech to task for being wildly inaccurate, you know it's bad:

His plan would be fully funded, it would not add to the deficit, it would create jobs immediately, and it was chock-full of bipartisan ideas.  The Associated Press fact-checked these claims, and found them all false.

Paid for?  No:

Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional supercommittee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future – the "out years," in legislative jargon – but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use.

Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due.

Bipartisan? Uh-uh:

Obama's proposed cut in the Social Security payroll tax does seem likely to garner significant GOP support. But Obama proposes paying for the plan in part with tax increases that have already generated stiff Republican opposition.

For instance, Obama makes a pitch anew to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which he has defined as couples earning over $250,000 a year or individuals over $200,000 a year. Republicans have adamantly blocked what they view as new taxes. As recently as last month, House Republicans refused to go along with any deal to raise the government's borrowing authority that included new revenues, or taxes.

Deficit-neutral? Negative:

It's hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery.

And immediately effective?  Not even close:

One is to set up a national infrastructure bank to raise private capital for roads, rail, bridges, airports and waterways. Even supporters of such a bank doubt it could have much impact on jobs in the next two years because it takes time to set up.

The AP doesn't address Obama's insistence that this package will work at all, and rightly so, since that is more of a political analysis than a fact check.  However, the same elements Obama insisted last night would stimulate job growth were the same elements that comprised the 2009 stimulus bill.  We have the same speeded-up infrastructure spending (this time masquerading as an "infrastructure bank"), the same money for state bailouts dressed up as rescue packages for teachers and first responders, the same Making Work Pay-type temporary tax cut for workers, and a "hiring tax credit" that flopped when Jimmy Carter first tried it.

The bottom line is this:

Obama didn't offer one single new idea last night.  He didn't even offer an idea on how to pay for the bill, whose price tag Obama never mentioned once in his speech but has now bloated from an initial estimate of $300 billion to $450 billion.  Instead, he told Congress to figure out how to carve the cost out of future spending while it battles over meeting its $1.5 trillion commitment from last month's debt-ceiling increase.

Over and over again last night, Obama lectured Congress to "pass this bill."  It seems more like Obama passed the buck — and now wants to wash his hands of the failures of Obamanomics.

On the same subject, today the White House admitted that it's going to take them another two weeks to figure out just exactly how this new paid-for 'stimulus' will be paid for.  And that's after weeks of vacation at Martha's Vineyard, too.  Tricky thing, this idea of paying for one's expenses!

Obama also made another in a long, long list of stupid off-teleprompter gaffes because he can't be bothered to actually learn about American history.

The Speech? Meh

So, let's sum up the latest big jobs speech.  In short, it was -- as expected -- another retread of the same old thing.  More spending, more government.  Here's a good short response:

Let’s forget the fact that Obama’s entire Stimulus 10.0 is a counterintuitive proposal that doubles down on the very failures that precipitated this speech.  Let’s also disregard the fact that enshrining unemployment insurance as a permanent handout will perpetuate unemployment.  And more union-induced, short-term money drops on infrastructure will do nothing but stimulate traffic jams.  Let’s focus purely on the very numbers that the administration has offered –numbers that would undoubtedly be revised upward, if the plan is passed.

Total package – $447 billion
- 50% payroll tax cut for every employee, dropping the rate from 6.2% to 3.1%= $175 billion

-Obama also proposed cutting the employer payroll tax in half on the first $5 million of a firm’s payroll in 2012. About 98% of firms have payrolls of $5 million or less.= $70 billion

-National infrastructure bank = $10 billion

- Pork project handouts to unions for roads, rails and bridges= $50 billion

-An unprecedented extension of unemployment insurance benefits to be extended for another year, beyond the 99 weeks= $62 billion.

-Handouts to public school teacher unions, even though we already spend more per capita on education than any other country=$35 billion

-Refurbishing schools, a responsibility of local government=$25 billion

-Handouts to community colleges=$5 billion

-Rehabilitate vacant property=$15 billion

Despite the steep cost, Obama claims that it will all be paid for.  How will he pay for it?

While he has failed to account for the source of revenue, he hinted to tax increases on rich people and closing oil company tax loopholes.  But here is the kicker.  As we’ve pointed out previously, the revenue from removing those oil company tax deductions would be a paltry $2 billion.  The revenue from eliminating the so-called corporate tax deduction would be a miniscule $300 million!

To put this mathematical farce in another perspective; the entire revenue from corporate taxes in 2011 is estimated to be $192 billion.  Yet, Obama plans to offset $447 billion worth of stimulus!  He would need to drastically raise personal income rates to a crippling level, in order to accomplish that.  Or, more likely, he will just increase the deficit.

Here’s another point:  We all love tax cuts, but the payroll taxes are different because they are needed to pay for Social Security.  Yet, Obama plans to cut revenues by $245 billion, or 36%, of the entire annual revenue (projected at $687 billion) of the so-called trust fund.  Being that he will ostensibly slash half of payroll taxes, that number is surely too low (as is the estimate for unemployment benefits).  So, Mr. President, if Social Security is really a pay-as-you-go system, how can you blithely raid the trust fund?  Answer: #PonziScheme. Look who wants to get rid of Social Security now.

Meanwhile, Obama has blown through the entire $400 billion increase in the debt ceiling – in just one month.  The debt now stands at $14.7 trillion.  The Senate voted down a resolution of disapproval tonight, paving the road for another $500 debt increase.  Hey, what’s another $447 billion among fellow socialists?

It. Won't. Work.  It hasn't before, and it never will.

You know what will create jobs, though?  For the government to get out of the way and let companies do their thing, especially companies in the energy sector: 

A much more comprehensive response to the speech can be found here.

And in more important news, the Green Bay Packers beat the New Orleans Saints in a great game that came down to a goal line stand on the last play.

Headwinds And Moderates

Two things for this morning.  First is yet another of Michael Ramirez' stellar cartoons, brilliantly explaining the current economic and political situation of the day.

Second, in response to an article suggesting the conservative Right needs to moderate, Rush Limbaugh rattled off an absolutely brilliant monologue on yesterday's show about moderates and moderating our conservative principles.  There really is no summing up...just take the few minutes and listen.

Click here for audio

Amen!  That's the key part, I think, though he goes on to expound at some additional length, and it is well worth your time to listen to the whole thing (second part is here).

The reasons Limbaugh expresses are precisely why I despise the hypocritical nature of RINOs and the multitude of incidents where the political Right fails to stand on their principles.

There's just too much at stake here, and the future of America as we know it -- and as it was founded: a nation of freedom and prosperity and Judeo-Christian values -- is being attacked on a daily basis now.  Moderation is tantamount to admitting a defeat, albeit a slower and gentler one.  Edmund Burke is generally credited with saying, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Translation: when good men moderate, evil wins.

Personally, I'd rather have a victory than a gentler defeat, especially when the defeat results in a socialist tyranny where the government controls my life and the lives of my children.  How about you?

You'd better make your choice soon...there is no third option.

The New Tone: Election Preview?

Classy:

Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.

"We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war," Jimmy Hoffa said to a heavily union crowd.

"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong," Hoffa added.

But it's not just coming from the wacko Left union thugs.  It's also from the wacko Left elected thugs:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D., California): "The Tea Party can go straight to hell, and I intend to help them get there."

Or Rep. Andre Carson (D., Indiana): "Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me — I'm sorry, Tamron — hanging on a tree."

What was that about a new tone back in January of 2008...?  Anyway, here is some very plausible analysis:

These statements are proof of two things: 1) The Left is realizing the country is turning against big-spending liberal policies and they can't handle it, and 2) the 2012 campaign will be nothing but personal attacks from the left against conservatives and Tea Party members. The above comments were just from the past week or so, and both President Obama and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz have given their tacit approval with their silence. Even when pointedly asked by Fox's Gretchen Carlson, Wasserman demurred. Hey, what happened to her call for civility?

They're not just hypocrites; they're revealing their campaign strategy for 2012.

They are backed into a corner and have no way out but to attack, attack, attack. ...

The professional Left knows the day of reckoning is coming, when the American people will call them to account for what they have done to our economy and our country. Their response will be to blame you, blame your family, blame your neighbors, and blame anybody but themselves. And this is just the beginning.

You've been warned: it's going to get ugly, slanderous, vicious, and incredibly untruthful.

But let's get back to the President himself.  Obama took the stage shortly after Hoffa's remarks.  Did he chastise Hoffa for his coarse and combative tone?  Did he stand above the 'partisan rhetoric'?  Did he suggest that what really needs to happen is for Americans from both sides of the aisle to come together to do what's right for America?  Nope:

When he took the stage, President Obama said he was "proud" of Jimmy Hoffa and other labor leaders.

Obama's mouthpiece avoided the question when given the opportunity to comment later:

[ABC's Jake] Tapper asked for the White House's reaction in light of President Obama calling for civility in political rhetoric after the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

"First of all, those weren't comments by the president," Carney told Tapper. "The President wasn't there. I mean, he wasn't on stage. He didn't speak for another twenty minutes. He didn't hear it."

"Mr. Hoffa speaks for himself. He speaks for the labor movement," Carney said about the Teamsters President. 

"The president speaks for himself. I speak for the president," he added.

"Were the comments appropriate," Carney was asked.

"Can we move on," Carney responded as he tried to get a question from another reporter.

I guess Obama reserves that sort of scolding only for the Right.  In fact, based on history, it appears that Barack Obama wholeheartedly believes the same thing that Hoffa does.  Remember:

** Obama: "They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun"

** Obama to His Followers: "Get in Their Faces!"

** Obama on ACORN Mobs: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!"

** Obama to His Mercenary Army: "Hit Back Twice As Hard"

** Obama on the private sector: "We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick."

** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean "hand to hand combat"

** Obama to lib supporters: "It's time to Fight for it."

** Obama to Latino supporters: "Punish your enemies."

** Obama to democrats: "I'm itching for a fight."

Ironically, VP Joe Biden was also recently speaking with a different group of union thugs, saying they were the "only folks keeping barbarians from gates".

Orwell would be so proud.

Euphocrats

From RedState:

Ever notice how adept the Democrats are at the use of euphemisms to try to hide their agenda? We’ve seen it a number of times recently: “revenue enhancements” instead of “tax increases” during the debt limit debate, or “balanced approach“, which again hid the Obama agenda of jacking up taxes. How about the efforts of Debbie Wasserman-Schulz (“competitive option”) and Nancy Pelosi (“consumer option”) to hide the real Democrat agenda of governmental intrusion in private health insurance (the semi-euphemistic “public option”).  Even the Harry Reid Democrats’ use of “compromise” is a veiled attempt at hiding their agenda of “my way or the highway“.
The euphemism du jour has been established today by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  Apparently FEMA has discovered that Americans really do think “government” has become a bad word.  In an attempt to produce a kinder, gentler “government”, FEMA and Boss Barack have decided that they are part of a big, happy “federal family.  Now I come from a pretty big extended family (my mom had > 12 brothers and sisters, which means I have a LOT of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.)…but I’m not all that fond of a big “federal family”.

As the Palm Beach Post points out, this isn’t the first time the term has been used.  It appears to have originally surfaced during the Clinton administration, courtesy of our old friend, Al Gore.

During the Clinton administration, Vice President Al Gore responded to 1999 flooding in Iowa by pledging that “the federal family is committed to providing the necessary resources to comfort every person and family devastated by this disaster and to help them return to their normal way of living as fast as possible.”
A Google search shows the phrase appearing 10 times on FEMA’s website during the Bush years. Since Obama took office, “federal family” has turned up 118 times on fema.gov, including 50 Irene-related references.

The Post also notes:

“’Government’ is such a dirty word right now,” says Florida State University communication professor Davis Houck. “Part of what the federal government does and any elected official does is change the terms of the language game into terms that are favorable to them.”

I think Obama and FEMA are simply misreading the public and are fundamentally mistaken here.  ”Government” isn’t a dirty word – too much government and the wrong kind of government is the problem.  Conservatives are not anarchists – we don’t unilaterally oppose government, although we do believe it should be no larger than what the U.S. Constitution dictates.  We also believe government does have its place, and there are right and appropriate places for government to act.  For example, with respect to Hurricane Irene, the National Weather Service (NOAA) provided an invaluable resource in forecasting the path of the hurricane and giving residents in the path ample warning to seek shelter and high ground to escape the impact of the storm.  As a resident of Tornado Alley, every year I personally am thankful for NOAA Weather Radio and the warning services they provide.
What has angered Americans about “the federal family” isn’t that it’s “government – the problem is the insatiable appetite for our tax money by “the Family”.
The problem here is that the Left doesn’t want us to understand their agenda, so they hide behind pretty words.  They’re Euphocrats.
UPDATE:  One of my favorite authors/bloggers, Gene Edward Veith, touched upon this topic this morning.  In his piece, he refers to an essay by George Orwell, titled “Politics and the English Language“.  In it, Orwell states:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer…

That “gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims” is precisely what we are dealing with regarding the Euphocrats and the hiding of their agenda.  While I don’t completely share Orwell’s cynicism about politics as “…itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly hatred and schizophrenia”, there certainly is plenty of that going on when it comes to Obama’s “federal family”.

Here's what one of the key Founding Fathers had to say about the subject:

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

I like Jefferson's philosophy much better than the Euphocrats...don't you?

Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism

I really like a lot of Shelby Steele's writing.  He's thoughtful, intelligent, and has the ability to break complex issues down into manageable pieces.  Here's a great example:

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama's character, today's left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-'60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America's exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America's greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.

Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform. Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street—as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself.

Anti-exceptionalism has clearly shaped his "leading from behind" profile abroad—an offer of self-effacement to offset the presumed American evil of swaggering cowboyism. Once in office his "hope and change" campaign slogan came to look like the "hope" of overcoming American exceptionalism and "change" away from it.

So, in Mr. Obama, America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.

But then again, the American people did elect him. Clearly Americans were looking for a new kind of exceptionalism in him (a black president would show America to have achieved near perfect social mobility). But were they also looking for—in Mr. Obama—an assault on America's bedrock exceptionalism of military, economic and cultural pre-eminence?

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.

Yet today America is fighting in a number of Muslim countries, and that number is as likely to rise as to fall. Our exceptionalism saddles us with overwhelming burdens. The entire world comes to our door when there is real trouble, and every day we spill blood and treasure in foreign lands—even as anti-Americanism plays around the world like a hit record.

At home the values that made us exceptional have been smeared with derision. Individual initiative and individual responsibility—the very engines of our exceptionalism—now carry a stigma of hypocrisy. For centuries America made sure that no amount of initiative would lift minorities and women. So in liberal quarters today—where historical shames are made to define the present—these values are seen as little more than the cynical remnants of a bygone era. Talk of "merit" or "a competition of excellence" in the admissions office of any Ivy League university today, and then stand by for the howls of incredulous laughter.

Our national exceptionalism both burdens and defames us, yet it remains our fate. We make others anxious, envious, resentful, admiring and sometimes hate-driven. There's a reason al Qaeda operatives targeted the U.S. on 9/11 and not, say, Buenos Aires. They wanted to enrich their act of evil with the gravitas of American exceptionalism. They wanted to steal our thunder.

So we Americans cannot help but feel some ambivalence toward our singularity in the world—with its draining entanglements abroad, the selfless demands it makes on both our military and our taxpayers, and all the false charges of imperial hubris it incurs. Therefore it is not surprising that America developed a liberalism—a political left—that took issue with our exceptionalism. It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.

But this leaves the left mired in an absurdity: It seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door. (Think of England or France after empire.) To civilize America, to redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline—as if we can redeem America only by making her indistinguishable from lesser nations.

Since the '60s we have enfeebled our public education system even as our wealth has expanded. Moral and cultural relativism now obscure individual responsibility. We are uninspired in the wars we fight, calculating our withdrawal even before we begin—and then we fight with a self-conscious, almost bureaucratic minimalism that makes the wars interminable.

America seems to be facing a pivotal moment: Do we move ahead by advancing or by receding—by reaffirming the values that made us exceptional or by letting go of those values, so that a creeping mediocrity begins to spare us the burdens of greatness?

As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.

Like me, he is black, and it was the government that in part saved us from the ignorances of the people. So the concept of the exceptionalism—the genius for freedom—of the American people may still be a stretch for him. But in fact he was elected to make that stretch. It should be held against him that he has failed to do so.

There is no small amount of irony in the fact that the man who was elected to supposedly heal the racial wounds of American history -- and who is singularly well-positioned to genuinely do that -- has turned out to be the man who has singularly failed to do so.

However, I think the greater point in this article about the question of American exceptionalism is the really interesting one.  Whether you believe Obama is the deliberate destructor of American greatness and prosperity or a bumbling incompetent with a vicious ideological bent, the results are the same: he is overseeing an American decline the likes of which hasn't been seen before.

This is what the conservative Right is referring to when they say that we cannot afford another four years of Obama's 'leadership'.  Not only have the policies implemented by Obama and the Democratic Congress over the past couple of years had an immediate and detrimental effect on unemployment and our current economic reality, but the underlying structures that these liberals have put in place -- baseline budgets with the stimulus and other spending permanently entrenched, Obamacare, etc. -- have far-reaching effects that will fundamentally alter America if they are not aggressively rolled back.  The more time passes, the less likely that those alterations will be killed.

Until it's too late to make any changes at all to restore what made America great in the first place, of course.  Just ask Greece or Britain how that works out.

Deficits And A Trip Down Memory Lane

First, let's recall what Barack Obama said about expanding the deficit while he was campaigning:

Wow, really? Unpatriotic? Let's see, what were the major points? Oh yeah:

• Bush was wrong because he drove up the national debt by $4 trillion over eight years
• that's equivalent to $30k per person that has to be paid back
• that's irresponsible and unpatriotic

Hm. Okay, now let's look at what Barack Obama has done himself:

• spend, spend, spend
• drive the national debt up by $4 trillion in two years
• that's equivalent to $45k per person that has to be paid back

Remember this?


Bush's annual deficits are less than Obama's monthly deficits.

Do we really want to use this as the measuring stick for patriotism? Well, I'm up for it, sure, but I don't think it's going to do Obama any favors when it comes time for reelection. The facts can only be spun so much, and America isn't buying this tripe anymore.