Osamalini

Welcome to Fascism, american style. Do a google serch of Woodrow Wilson, or Liberal Fascism, and see that what is going on today has happened before. Happy Halloween indeed! Truth is stranger than fiction: Heil Osama!...T

Snake Oil Salesman, mmm, mmm, mmm

1st Barney Fag openly proclaiming the governments intention to take over everything, and actually KILL people who resist the takeover, and now B. Insane Osama cowering out of Afghanistan. One wonders if our republic will last till the 2010 electoral landslide?!...T

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Little Hope, Less Change

It's been awhile since VDH hit the ball out of the park like he does here. He really gets the nature of this Bourbon-esque monarchy that team Obama sees in the mirror. Well they had lots of mirrors at Versailles, as well.

United States of America does not possess the Guillotine. We have only impeachment and removal from office.

... Pity...T

Consider: The 120,000 troops in “the surge is not working” Iraq are now complaining of ennui —while the White House is paralyzed over whether to send more troops to the new escalating front in Afghanistan. How odd the present perceptions: Bush’s bad optional war became good in the public mind, and Obama’s necessary good war became bad. (Careful study of the history of both countries, the existing challenges, and the topography might have suggested to candidate Obama to be careful about demonizing the surge while chest-thumping a war he never wished to finish. Did Obama really think he would be elected, hailed as the anti-war laureate, simply summon home the troops from the “quagmire” in Iraq, and then fly over to Kabul to do a Victory Column speech?).

The Russian gambit failed; Putin humiliated the Eastern Europeans and then rubbed it in by lecturing us about “hands off Iran.” The July threat to Iran of comply—or “face consequences” by September—morphed into September’s comply—or “face consequences by the October head-to-head meetings—which, in turn, morphed into October’s comply—or some day soon face consequences.

Sorta, Kinda, Maybe Diplomacy

Soon we will get everything on the official transcripts and websites scrubbed down to read: Guantanamo really will close on March 1, 2010; Iran must comply this time by June 1, 2010; all combat brigades will be out by March 2008, 2009, 2010; health care must pass by August, September, October, November.

Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50. The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that. The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion. Unemployment may be headed over 10%. The people who voted for Obama were mad over Bush’s bailouts, unemployment, deficits, and supposed divisiveness. And?

They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics.

Please, please

Right now to save America we need some steady leadership that reassures businesses of lower taxes, less government spending, no new regulations, educational reform to improve the work force, and confident expansionary energy exploration and development. Instead, we get a prescription to terrify private enterprise: Mr. President, every time you besmirch someone as greedy, lying, and unduly rich, some business, somewhere, pulls in its horns.

Uncertainty Everywhere

Full recovery is uncertain, given (1) oil prices have been low and are now climbing, boosting the import tab higher and higher (what happened to candidate Obama’s promises of more drilling?); (2) interest rates are historically low, meaning the price of servicing the mega-deficits hasn’t hit yet; but they too will climb, further taxing the hocus-pocus borrowing; (3) so far higher taxes are just talk; but soon the income rates will climb at a time when many of the states have already increased their sales and income rates. Remember the promised end to the FICA caps on higher incomes; note the promised health care surcharge taxes. And keep in mind that 55% of those in the cross-hairs who make over $200,000 voted for Obama.

And You Get in Return?

I believe that even the soon-to-be murderously taxed upper brackets would patriotically hand over their money to a grasping government—IF it went to debt reduction.

But it won’t. Far worse. Millions will work from January to September to pay for Acorn-like subsidies, more NEA politicized grants, nationalized health care, canceling mortgage, credit card, and student loan debt of those who may well have been less than careful with their expenditures. In short, consider: the more you will be taxed, the more you will be demonized as deserving it, the more your money will be wasted, the more your country will borrow, the greater you country will become the world’s laughing stock debtor.

And that depressing fact is beginning to infuriate millions. If Obama needs a mop to clean up after Bush, someone will need a fleet of street sweepers for his financial detritus.

So I expect Obama’s ratings to dip well below 50%, and that will be something to fear, given his unfamiliarity with the notion that over 1 out 2 Americans thinks he is failing.

But imagine that you are a small business owner, and just consider—why expand now or rehire? since (a) I have no idea what the new taxes will be; (b) I have no idea about what all these new regulations, cap and trade, card check; etc will cost me; (c) I am beginning to think all this trash talk about bad doctors, insurance companies, the Chamber of Commerce, CEOs, the wealthy, etc. suggests this administration does not like me or what I do; (d) the government is everywhere: Ford now must compete against Government Motors; Banks against government-affiliated Citibank; Blue Cross against the public option; and so on. If I have a business, somewhere down the line there is going to be a government-run rival, sort of like your local can’t go broke PBS station in every avenue of commerce. Why insist on ensuring hustling employees when the rival, overpaid DMV-like work force can’t go broke whatever they do?

Meanwhile…

YouTube videos play 24/7 of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn—now that Van Jones yielded center stage—either idolizing the greatest mass murderer in civilization’s history or boasting about how Team Obama took the obsequious media to the cleaners. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod—apparently worried that the public thinks this two-headed Cerebus is too nice and meek—swarm the talk shows to blame Fox News. That’s the equivalent of a Bush around 2007 whining about MSNBC not being a news organization and the meanness of a Chris Matthews is hurting the war in Iraq. Sending creepy people out to say creepy things does not make sense, when a hit network loves showing Americans how these creepy people say creepy things.

And the Problem?

Obama’s agenda polls less than 50% on almost every element. What keeps him viable is that the public still likes him and his family personally, and takes him at his unity/no blue state-no red state/can’t we all get along? 2008 rhetoric.

Don’t they get the obvious: In reaction to that Olympian, above-the-fray brand, what does Obama do? He sends out two of the most unlikable, mean-spirited attack hounds to go after a news organization in Nixonian fashion, which only erodes the precious image of a kinder, gentler Obama—right now the administration’s only asset.

One almost gets the feeling that Time, Newsweek, the NY Times, the LA Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, the Huffington Post, etc. are all not quite enough to balance right-wing talk radio and Fox News.

The problem is that (1) it is always harder to defend a president than criticize him (as the liberals can attest from their 8 years of demonizing Bush); (2) those in the right-wing media are more populist and grass-roots than those in the staid left-wing elite media establishment. So Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck can caricature Obama far more effectively than can a Rachel Madow or Brian Williams bow to him; (3) the traditional left’s homage to dissent, protest, free-wheeling media outbursts, demonstrations, and over-the-top commentary is now, to use a Nixon term, “inoperative.”

Somehow we went from revolutionary fervor to the boring Ministry of Truth in nine months.

Personally I found the left far more interesting when they were suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome than Obamophilia.

Bottom Line: Code Pink and Moveon.org have been Gergenized.
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Why Obama will Fail

Very concise explanation of why Obama WILL fail. This failure is preordained, regardless of his policies fate in congress. FATE - interesting choice of words, as his presidency is an archetypal Greek tragedy; doomed to failure from it's inception for the exact same reasons it came to be: top heavy leftist-progressive majorities in congress, his own radicalism, and the singular moment of fatigue in the vox populi against the exhausted republican majority & Bush policies abroad.

As Athens fell, so shall Obama. One wonders what could have been had Athens stood. None will morn the passing of Obama and the progressive fascist fanatics at his back...T


An interesting paradox. Last year, America elected a president who, in attitudes and policies, is closer to the elites of Western Europe than any of his predecessors. Yet in the nine months that he has been in office, ordinary Americans have been moving away from those attitudes and policies and have increasingly embraced positions that over the years have made Americans distinctive from those in other advanced Western democracies.

Barack Obama's European tendencies aren't not in doubt. His policies on government spending, taxation, health care and carbon emissions would all tend to bring America in line with European norms, to a far greater degree than any other president of the last 40 years and probably any president ever.

And what of America's special place in the world? "I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama said on one of his trips to Europe, "just as I suspect that Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not at all. One cannot imagine Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Eisenhower or Reagan uttering such sentiments.

Obama told European Union parliamentarians in Strasbourg that he hailed "your dynamic union," but most Americans seem to have some vestigial knowledge that over the last 60 years, America has been more dynamic -- economically, culturally, politically, militarily -- than our friends across the Atlantic. And when presented with public policies that would make us more like Europe, Americans have tended to recoil.

Examples abound. Despite the recession, by about 50 to 40 percent Americans continue to prefer smaller government with fewer services to larger government with more services (June ABC/Washington Post and CBS/New York Times polls). Some 80 percent want the government to sell its interest in General Motors (July Rasmussen poll).

A 58 to 35 percent majority say keep the budget deficit down even if it takes longer for the economy to recover (NBC/WSJ June). A 53 to 33 percent majority oppose more government regulation of the finance sector (Rasmussen October).

As Europeanizing policies receive more attention, they become less popular. June's 50 to 45 percent approval of Democratic health care proposals morphs to a similar margin of disapproval in October (Rasmussen). And satisfaction with one's own health care arrangements rises from 29 percent in 2008 and 35 percent in May 2009 to 48 percent in August (Rasmussen again).

European elites support gun control and curbs on carbon emissions almost unanimously. Americans don't -- and are moving in the other direction. Support for a handgun ban has fallen from 60 percent in 1960 and 43 percent in the early 1990s to 29 percent in May 2009 (Gallup). By a 48 to 34 percent margin, Americans believe global warming is caused by long-term planetary trends rather than human activity (Rasmussen April); in 2008 it was almost exactly the other way around.

European leaders agree with Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo detention facility. Americans disagree by a 52 to 39 percent margin (NBC/WSJ June). Europeans accept a large role for unions. American approval for labor unions fell from 59 percent in 2008 to 48 percent in spring 2009, by far the lowest figure since Gallup began asking the question in 1936.

Gallup reports that 39 percent of Americans this year say their views have grown more conservative, while only 18 percent say they have become more liberal. No wonder Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who with Republican Bill McInturff conducts the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, said in June that Obama and the Democrats "are going to have to navigate in pretty choppy waters."

The late political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, who wrote a book on American exceptionalism, long noted that Americans are more individualistic and less collectivist than Western Europeans (or Canadians). The election of a president who in many ways seeks to push America in a European direction seems to have increased rather than decreased those differences.

Why? My explanation is that until November 2008, Americans did not have any reason to contemplate what a more European approach would mean in real-life terms. Now, with Obama in the White House and a heavily Democratic Congress, they do. And they mostly don't like it.

Hence the embarrassment of liberal commentators and, it seems, the president himself when five Norwegian parliamentarians tendered him the Nobel Peace Prize. European elites are delighted with Obama's European approach. Most American voters aren't.
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