President Obama has asked for another speech in front of a joint session of Congress. This time it’s for his 2012 campaign launch jobs plan. Both President Clinton and President Bush served two terms and never had more than one joint session speech other than the State of the Union.
It seems Obama is incapable of any kind of leadership. His only talent is making speeches devoid of any real significance. It’s as if he needs to remind people he’s the President. How could anyone forget? Obama has had his entire term to solve our economic problems. Wasn’t that what the stimulus was for? Why did Obama pass ObamaCare? That certainly didn’t help with economic uncertainty.
The whole administration is a mess. The administration of “change” is the most status quo administration in history. President Obama is so clueless he doesn’t realize that the entire country has caught on… Why would we reelect this guy?
If Democrats wish to lie, demagogue, and drag Paul Ryan through the mud over the next two years as an election tactic it’s time for him to run for president. The United States has almost reached the point of no return when it comes to our fiscal situation. Right now there’s no one with the courage to address the problem. Our outdated entitlements are unsustainable. If they’re not reformed the nation will go bankrupt, inflation will spiral out of control, and most of the nation will be impoverished.
The Democrats don’t have a plan. Their only strategy is to tear down any idea that involves reform. Just a few weeks ago President Obama delivered his disgraceful remarks about Paul’s plan for reforming entitlements. Politicians are cowards. The most important thing to the Republican and Democratic parties is to strengthen their voting base. If the President was truly concerned about our current fiscal problems he would have offered a plan by now. Obama has been president for three years and he hasn’t outlined anything specific. The only person in Washington talking like an adult is Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan is also the only politician in the GOP who is capable of effectively communicating what’s in his plan and the problem we’re facing. Currently, the only thing Americans know about the Path to Prosperity are lies propagated by the press, the White House, and the Democratic party. That’s not to say that Ryan’s plan is perfect, but right now there’s nothing else. Ryan’s plan doesn’t balance the budget until after 2060. This is what passes for an extreme plan? It could be argued that Ryan’s plan isn’t aggressive enough. What’s the liberal alternative? If 2060 is extreme are Democrats trying to balance the budget by 2160?
If Paul Ryan doesn’t run for the White House Democrats will effectively campaign against Ryan no matter who the GOP candidate ends up being in 2012. There is only one issue that matters in 2012. It’s reducing our debt and the only way to do it is addressing our entitlement problems. The nation needs a leader who is able to be honest and communicate effectively. Ultimately if the Congress ever gets serious about this issue the Executive Branch has to lead. President Obama is incapable of addressing this problem. He may get reelected, but it will only mean four more wasted years. I’m not sure the nation has much more time to fix this problem.
Paul Ryan needs to run for the good of the country. Not because of his own ambition, not because he has the best chance to win, but because he’s the only one serious about the biggest problem facing the country. If the nation goes bankrupt the American dream may die with it.
The most depressing part of the whole budget battle in Washington is the left. Even if the Democrats cave to the Republican position on the budget the severe fiscal problems facing the nation aren’t addressed. The Democratic party and most of the people who vote for them are simply in denial. Or maybe they’re simply ignorant. I really don’t have an answer for it.
The main talking points from the left are raise taxes on the rich, cut the defense budget, and that Republicans want people to die. Here is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s take on the situation:
“Republicans want to shut down the government because they think there’s nothing more important than keeping women from getting cancer screenings. This is indefensible and everyone should be outraged,” Reid said on the Senate floor.
How can liberals complain about Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, or Glenn Beck when the Democrat’s leader in the Senate makes such idiotic statements? Reid’s statement is outrageous and detached from reality. Oh, but there’s more. MSNBC professional race baiter Jesse Jackson compares the current debate to the American Civil War.
“[T]his really is a Civil War fight,” Jackson said. “This is making the federal government dysfunctional on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. These guys will support three wars. They’ll support tax dodgers. They’ll support the wealthiest Americans getting tax breaks. They want to cut into education and health care. This is an ideological battle.”
Jackson said those trying to shut down the federal government are doing so to make an “ideological-religious point.”
“This is a Civil War fight,” he said. “I think Time magazine has it right. This is the 150th anniversary of the 1861 Civil War. Now those are determined to shut the federal government down to make their point — their ideological-religious point.”
It’s it a little odd that a man who calls himself a reverend is talking about an “ideological-religious point?” I wish I could say that I’m picking some random nutjobs on the left, but these are respected liberals who are willing to say whatever it takes to cash in some political points. I don’t think Americans are listening to this garbage any more, but the same cannot be said of the left. The liberal echo chamber is creating a group of willfully ignorant condescending people. They don’t want to debate. They don’t want to be informed. They just want their Utopian worldview justified.
The anti-war left has their talking points: “Bush lied people died,” “Neo-con,” and “Haliburton.” The big government left has their economic talking points: “Reaganomics,” “Voodoo Economics,” “Tax the Rich,” and “The Shrinking Middle-class.” Ask a liberal to explain any of these nonsesnical terms and they’ll change the subject.
If we only taxed the rich more and got rid of our defense department the world would love us, we would have free health care, and every child would be a super genius because they would have free high speed internet. It’s all so dumb, but that’s the reality on the left.
Failure 2010
I’m headed back to sunny Florida. I haven’t had much time to write about last night’s election results. There’s not much to add. Pollsters like Rasmussen were pretty much right on the money again. The Republicans enjoyed a massive electoral wave all over the United States and took back at least 60 seats. The Senate was an uphill climb and I’m sure the DNC is happy it’s not 2012. Most of the Senate seats up for grabs were Republican and the Democratic seats were in solid blue states.
The most depressing part of the election to me is California. That state appears to be heading toward becoming a banana republic. First they elected Arnold Swartzenager, and now they’ve elect Jerry Brown. Brown hasn’t had a single good idea in three decades and now he’s the governor again. Thanks in part to out of control ballot initiatives California’s budget situation is unfixable.
In Florida the new Senator is Marco Rubio. The Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep him from being elected because he’s potentially a superstar politician. Let’s not parse facts. The Democrats stonewalled Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because he was Hispanic. They opposed Rubio for the exact same reason. When it comes to racism the Democrats have it down to a science.
Where do we go from here? I’m not so sure. The GOP has a lot to prove before I get too excited. I believe the Republican leadership should outline three or four main initiatives that have overwhelming support. A Balanced Budget Amendment, an alternative to ObamaCare, and a spending cut bill. These should have overwhelming public support and the Democrats will oppose each of them on philosophical grounds. The danger is spending cuts. Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of spending cuts, but I don’t believe it. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education should be gone, but there would be an outcry. Try to reduce farm subsides and there will be riots. Slow down the growth of Medicare and the AARP will stonewall it. I’m not sure what the answer is to this problem. Americans have to wake up to the reality that we can’t afford all this stuff.
What about President Obama? It’s far too early to start speculating about his chances in 2012. In 1982, Ronald Reagan got trounced in the mid-terms. In 1994, Bill Clinton’s reelection hopes looked bleak. A lot can happen in two years. If I had to put money on it I would bet on Obama. The economy doesn’t normally stay down for long. An economic rebound would eliminate all of Obama’s problems. The new leadership in the House shouldn’t underestimate the power of the White House. Obama has tried to paint the Republicans as obstructionists despite the fact they had no power. Now that the GOP controls the House expect the President to turn up the rhetoric.
Finally, it’s time to say goodbye to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I believe she is one of the worst Speakers in the history of the United States. She was divisive and horrendously out of touch with the American mainstream. It’s beyond me why the Democrats chose an extreme leftist as their party’s leader in the House. The leader of the party is typically not very popular with the opposition, but Pelosi wasn’t popular with anyone. Also, a special goodbye to Governor Charlie Crist. Crist has become the Florida version of John Edwards, without all of the bastard-child-mistress-wife-with-cancer-sleezy-lawyer-faux-man-of-the-people negatives, as far as we know. The man has no principle. His actions the past twelve months are a disgrace. Charlie Crist is the perfect example of a person who puts his ego and career ambitions ahead of everyone else. Good riddance.
As a vocal proponent of amending the Constitution so that the Federal government’s sole and exclusive power is to regulate college and professional sports, I am still somewhat dismayed at the news that sullied my desk the other day about Roger Clemens.
Roger the Rocket, so dubbed for his ability to strike out batters in years past, is now better known as Roger the Dodger for his inability to tell the truth about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Unfortunately for Roger, the truth apparently eluded him while under oath before a Congressional hearing on steroid use in professional sports. As a result, Roger has been indicted by a Federal grand jury for what amounts to perjury.
In a sane world – that is, one in which the Federal government’s sole responsibility is policing sports – Clemens’ indictment would have been a necessary evil as part of the government’s only Constitutional power. But in this mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world, Clemens is being persecuted for no good reason.
It’s absolutely pointless to spend tax dollars on a Federal show trial of Clemens. I must have checked my copy of the Constitution at least a dozen times searching in vain for any mention of Congressional responsibility for Major League Baseball. But maybe it’s one of those clauses that covers everything, like the Commerce Clause or promoting “the general welfare.”
Let me be clear… This has nothing to do with anything other than a bunch of Congressional blowhards taking down easy targets so they can at least look like they’re accomplishing something. There’s nothing at stake here; only the apparently fragile egos of our beloved representatives. Congressional hearings have become nothing more than a three-ring circus of ghouls pick-pocketing the dead and then piling into their gas-guzzling freeloader-mobile to pick-pocket the taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the city of Houston has to undergo another indignity in a long line of indignities that stretches back to the 1979 Cotton Bowl.
“Please! Remain in your seats, I beg you! We are not children here, we are scientists! I assure you there is nothing to fear!”
-Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein
Back in April 2002, David Levy proclaimed that the Unted States was in “the Frankenstein recovery.” If 2002 was the Frankenstein Recovery, then this is the Young Frankenstein Recovery. It’s so bad that it’s a parody of a stitched-together, made-up recovery. Charged with finding what we need to reanimate our economy, the geniuses on Capitol Hill, a.k.a., Igor, bring us the Abby Normal brain of “stimulus” spending. Unfortunately, after inserting the abnormal brain and pumping megagigawatts of electricity into his creature, Dr. Frankenstein didn’t have a plan after it came to life.
Likewise, our own Dr. Frankenstein, Obama, and his foolish sidekick, Igor, have created a monstrosity that threatens to force a double-dip recession. Sure, I suppose there’s a smattering of “shovel-ready” jobs, but that doesn’t exactly save the economy. To see another version of how Obama and Congress explained all the pointless spending to the American taxpayer, please check out the video clip below (the part of Obama/Congress is played by Marty Feldman; the part of the American taxpayer by Gene Wilder):
Liberals continue to believe the Great Depression myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive growth of the federal government somehow saved the economy and will always save it. All it really did was create a 7-foot-tall, 54-inch-wide gorilla that lumbered around terrorizing the villagers for an entire freaking decade. Now the monster’s twice as large and the angry racists villagers are fresh out of torches and pitchforks. Oh well. At least it can sing Puttin’ on the Ritz…
This won’t make partisan Republicans happy, but I think the economy is headed in the right direction. It probably won’t recover quickly enough to save the Democrats in November, but for Obama there’s a lot to be optimistic about. First of all the President was able to pass his key item: health care. It doesn’t matter if it’s unpopular; there’s no chance it will be repealed while he’s in the White House. Plus, thanks to the way the bill was written most of the truly heinous problems won’t starting destroying the heath care system for a decade. Sometimes it’s good to be King.
Save us Obi Wan Constitution. You're our only hope.
The economy is always the main issue in elections and I’ve thought for months Americans aren’t really angry with the White House; they’re angry about the economy. The Republicans should quit banking on the economy staying in the tank forever and come up with a plan to save the Republic. Obama and the Democrats are a short-term business cycle rebound from bankrupting the nation forever. At this stage it’s time for a Reaganesque “starve the beast” strategy. If Americans want to be sold a populist bill of goods then so be it.
I wrote last month about the Balanced Budget Amendment. This is a very populist bill that despite its economic theory problems is a best solution available to solve the nightmare fiscal situation we’re facing. Let’s be frank. Despite the fact the President has insisted that his health care bill is deficit neutral, it’s not. He’s living in fantasy land. The claim is laughable and reflects what Obama thinks about the intelligence of the American people. Even The Economist, which endorsed Obama’s bill, thinks that it’s going to add to the debt. The GOP should move fast and make the Balanced Budget Amendment the keystone issue in the 2010 election.
Faced with a Constitutional amendment mandate, Congress will be forced to either raise taxes or cut entitlements. The nation needs to make this choice sooner, rather than later. If we had honest leadership we would be addressing these problems now instead of passing it off on some other generation. The only question is can enough people push for this amendment before it’s too late?
If the RNC is any indication there’s not a lot of hope for the GOP. The RNC supposedly doesn’t like big government but they don’t mind it as long as they’re in power. There needs to be a revolution inside the GOP if there’s any hope of tackling America’s fiscal problems.
The U.S. entitlement problem was grim before Obama was in the White House. Instead of fixing it Obama has doubled down on entitlements. Mark Steyn has an article out today titled “Welcome to Deemocracy.” As usual Steyn sums it all up.
Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they’ll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don’t have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.
Steyn also points out that ObamaCare will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II. Someone has to collect all those taxes.
I’m not a conspiracy theory guy. I believe President Kennedy was shot by a communist named Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe President Obama was born in Hawaii. I believe that terrorists carried out the attacks of 9/11 and that it’s not a sinister strategy by the Bilderberg Group to raise gas prices. However, I have to admit that it’s just a little strange that after the U.S. government purchased GM that Toyota is under fire from the government and the press due to recalls.
Toyota isn’t the first car manufacture to issue a recall. The press has been beating up Toyota for week. Every time there’s a wreck involving a Toyota my local news editorializes “could this be because of the accelerator problem?” The public hysteria is fuel by the media. Remember the Swine Flu? Remember the New Orleans cannibals? Theodore Frank has a op-ed in the Washington Examiner titled “I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius.”
Even if one believes all the hype, the reaction so far has been a giant overreaction. Fifty-odd deaths over 10 years and millions of Toyotas is a drop in the bucket compared to the general risk of being on the road at all. It’s entirely possible that more people will be killed driving to the dealer for the recall than lives will be saved from going through the safety theater demanded by the Department of Transportation.
It’s fascinating to me how people are consumed with worry about things that aren’t really dangerous. It’s like the lawmakers in Maine who are worried about cell phones. The most egregious aspect of the Toyota alarmism is when the Toyota executives were dragged before Congress. Or another way to look at it was that the executives were dragged in front of their competitors. Now that the government owns a large portion of GM isn’t it just a little bit of a conflict of interest for them to beat up Toyota?
I have been against the balanced budget amendment since I learned about it in economics. The reason to oppose it is simple. It hamstrings what the government can do during a recession. In 2001, when the economy was slowing Bush cut taxes (the wrong way) to help jumpstart the economy. Under the balanced budget amendment Congress would have to remove some kind of program to be able do that. But now I’m beginning to change my mind about the balanced budget amendment. Not because the arguments I just listed are incorrect, but because it appears Washington is unable to restrain spending even in the face of a fiscal catastrophe.
My only fear about passing the amendment now is that it might be too late already. Even if the government was in balance this year there would still be long-term problems with debt the U.S. has accrued over the past three decades. However, a balance budget amendment would force Congress to either raise taxes or reduce the size of government. Supporting a balanced budget amendment isn’t the best choice, but the only one that will force Congress to confront the problem. It is also an attainable goal. Congress was only a few votes short of passing the bill during the Clinton administration.
The GOP would be wise to make this part of their platform for the upcoming elections. The balanced budget amendment enjoys a lot of populist support and Americans are clamoring for fiscal restraint in Washington. The amendment would change the tone in D.C. for the next 20 years. It’s time politicians start figuring out how we pay for all these entitlements we’ve dreamed up over the past 60 years and stop worrying about adding more
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