Recently in All Hail His Obamaness Category

I've heard lots of people on both sides of the political dividing line describe Barack Obama using a number of terms and phrases, but the following from a comment to Karl Rove's op-ed about Harry Reid has got to be one of the best I've seen:

...I have never witnessed an administration so truculently at odds with the American public's values and culture. Obama combines the vindictiveness of Nixon with the ineptness of Carter. Add a dash of Adlai Stevenson's elite professorial aires (sic) and you have an accurate picture of BHO.

" The vindictiveness of Nixon with the ineptness of Carter." After thinking about it for a while it became clear to me that this description of our present President was apt.

Nixon may have been vindictive, but at least he was an effective President. Carter may have been inept, but at least he had actually done something substantive with his life before he became President. Obama cannot make either claim.

Yup. I'd say that pretty much says it all.

(H/T GraniteGrok)

As if we need any more evidence that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are paying off the public employees unions for their past support, there's this little $26 billion bribe just passed by Congress and signed by the Socialist In Chief.

Never mind that we don't have to money to pay for this. Never mind the string attached that are trying to force states accepting any of this money to bypass their own budgeting process. Never mind that the $10 billion of that money to be used for education won't help anyone because it won't be available until after the school year starts and cities and towns have already set their budgets and their personnel requirements.

It is a blatant, in-your-face bribe to the unions using our money and the Democrats in Congress don't care who knows it. It doesn't help that President Obama helped sell the lie by making claims he knew the general public wouldn't accept. For one thing there isn't a single public union contract out there that guarantees employment for life, but to hear the President tell it the $26 billion he and Congress just spent are supposed to help spendthrift states do just that. Since when are public employees supposed to be immune to the effects of a recession? Since when are we supposed to fund pay raises when many of us haven't seen a pay raise in two years, or worse, have received pay cuts?

All this little $26 billion bribe does is further illustrate the utter contempt the Democrats in Congress and the present occupant of the White House have for those of us actually paying the bills.

One of the many claims made in favor of ObamaCare is that it would mean a decrease in the workload at hospital emergency rooms as people seeking treatment would go to a regular doctor once they had health insurance. But if the situation in Massachusetts is any indication, that claim cannot be justified.

Just as Massachusetts' health care system has been the prototype for ObamaCare, it has also shown that many of the features included in ObamaCare won't work. The ER claim is but one of them.

A year ago at a town hall meeting on health care reform, he said, "We know that when somebody doesn't have health insurance, they're forced to get treatment at the ER, and all of us end up paying for it. ... You'd be better off subsidizing to make sure they were getting regular checkups." In late May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in Roll Call that "the uninsured will get coverage, no longer left to the emergency room for medical care."

Now we know better.

It's not terribly surprising that real data from Massachusetts, which has had universal health coverage since 2006, show otherwise. From 2004 to 2008, ER visits in the Bay State rose by 9%, with no discernable improvement after 2006. Why? At least part of the reason has been the inability of patients to find primary care physicians for last-minute visits. Let's face it: The ER won't turn you away, but individual and overburdened doctors can and will. The Massachusetts Medical Society has reported that new patients wait for a primary care doctor visit up to two months.

Under ObamaCare we can expect exactly the same results nationwide because exactly the same problems exist in the rest of the nation as well. ObamaCare doesn't increase the number of hospitals, physicians, nurses, and other medical care staff. All it does is place an even greater burden upon them than doing nothing. That is no way to 'reform' health care.

As the old saying goes, "If you tax something, you get less of it. If you subsidize something, you get more of it."

In this case "it" is unemployment, something the Obama Administration has done everything it can to foster more of, Obama's claims not withstanding.

Of course all the other disincentives for getting another job, or worse, creating them, keep getting bigger. After all, why should Congress or the White House actually pay attention to the employers who actually create the jobs?

Why should anyone in business today want to take the chance of adding employees when they don't know what the Obama Administration and Congress has in store for them? Both seem to be on an anti-business bender, blaming business big and small for the troubles we've all been experiencing. Never mind that it was a Democrat controlled Congress that started spending money like there was no tomorrow. (During the last 2 years of the Bush Administration the budget deficits were bigger than the previous six years combined. It was during the last 2 year of the Bush Administration the big spending Republicans in Congress were replaced by the even bigger spending Democrats.) Never mind it was Democrats in Congress who thwarted President Bush's efforts to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Why should Obama, Pelosi, or Reid let facts get in the way of their socialist agenda?

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record in regards to ObamaCare, but it appears our not-so-wise Congresscritters still don't understand the concept of It Ain't Gonna Work.

Again, the health insurance system upon which ObamaCare was heavily based is coming apart at the seams, with costs rising, courts overturning arbitrarily imposed rate caps, and actual access to health care declining.

But the Democrats in Congress and the White House insist everything will work just fine once the program goes national. Never mind that it's no better than what we're seeing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, just a heck of a lot more expensive and destructive. I guess they think that if they just believe it as hard as they can it will all come true. Too bad that history is against them.

There isn't a single member of Congress capable of pointing out a socialist health care system that works well and provides the level of care available here in the US. Why? Because it doesn't exist and never has.

Every such system eventually fails, either spectacularly or one slow painful step at a time. While a lot of people tout the British, Canadian, and French health care systems as superior to ours, they are wrong. Oh, they'll give us anecdotal evidence that out system really sucks, quoting long discredited WHO studies about things like infant mortality or life spans. But when it comes down to it, after taking a look at thinks like cancer survival rates, survival rates for strokes, heart attacks, actual infant mortality rates (taking into account that the US has a far higher survival rate for preemies, something the WHO stats ignore), the effectiveness of rehabilitative therapy, and a host of other branches of medicine, the US comes out on top. That's why so many people come from all over the world to be treated here rather than going to the UK, France, or Canada. Once ObamaCare kicks in and does great damage to our health care system, that will all change because the US will no longer have such a great health care system.

I must change course on this a little bit to cover something that has become a big pet peeve of mine in regards to ObamaCare.

One thing that drives me to distraction is the mistaken belief that ObamaCare will somehow provide access to medical care. It won't. It isn't designed to do that, despite what many may claim. What it's supposed to do is provide health insurance to those presently without it. It doesn't guarantee access to health care at all. Even today people with health insurance may have limited or no access to routine health care because they can't find a doctor who is willing to take on new patients. (In many cases it's not that doctors don't want to take on more patients, it's that they can barely handle the ones they already have.) Others won't take Medicare or Medicaid patients because of the extra requirements the government imposes on them in regards to staffing and reporting and the poor reimbursements. And yet others in certain specialties won't take on high-risk patients because of the fear of malpractice suits.

Does our health care system have problems? Absolutely. Does it make any sense to pass poorly thought out and damaging legislation that will only make the existing problems worse? Of course not. But that's what we ended up with, courtesy of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.

I have to admit to liking this line from Wayne Root's op-ed piece in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer.

I'd say it gets right to the base of what our present President has managed to accomplish, all while spending over a trillion dollars more than the government took in for revenue, such spending supposedly needed to stimulate job growth. Call it a major failure on his part.

It looks like Obama is trying hard to outdo two previous presidents in regards to their failures, those two being FDR and Jimmy Carter.

FDR managed to find a way to extend the Great Depression for years, his various economic interventions doing far more harm than good. A couple were even outright unconstitutional.

Jimmy Carter managed to take a moderate recession and turn it into a major recession all while making American foreign policy look like a joke. His one foreign policy success has managed to outlive the other two parties involved, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachim Begin of Israel, with his Camp David Accords bringing peace between those two nations that has lasted 33 years.

So far President Obama is looking to blow right past both of them on his way to being the worst president in modern history in regards to socio-economic and foreign policy issues. One example of the former: ObamaCare.

The unintended consequences of this major intervention into the health insurance/medical care industry are already being felt even though the major parts of ObamaCare don't go into effect until 2014. Two of the biggest side effects of this ill advised and poorly written law? The loss of experienced medical personnel from the health care ranks and businesses doing away with health insurance for their employees because ObamaCare will make it too damn expensive for them to continue providing it.

Under the many restrictions being laid upon health care providers by ObamaCare, doctors and nurses are seeing no future in remaining in their chosen professions and will be leaving them over the next few years. How is that supposed to translate into better healthcare for all? The answer: It doesn't.

With the new requirements for providing employee health insurance laid upon businesses, many of them, primarily smaller businesses, see no economic sense in continuing to do so. Again, ObamaCare provides big disincentives for those businesses. How does this help anyone? Again, the answer: It doesn't.

In the end, both of these unintended consequence will have a negative effect on the economy, and in turn, on jobs.

Even with some businesses now hiring again, the question that must be asked is What kind of jobs need to be filled? It certainly isn't going to be the kind that were lost over the past 3 years. Instead, the jobs needing to be filled will be lower paying jobs.

The good news for people out of work is that overall job vacancies are up 21 percent over the past six months, based on a separate Labor Dept. report. The bad news is that there are still five unemployed people for each job opening. That's down from a peak of 6.2 at the end of last year, but at the beginning of the recession in December 2007, there were only 1.8 people competing for each vacancy. That means, for many months to come, a lot of talented people will be going head-to-head for new positions, a lot of which are still concentrated in lower-wage industries.

Where are the good jobs Obama promised? They certainly aren't out there in the real world. Of course they might have been if he hadn't done everything in his power to extend the length and depth of the recession by providing all kinds of incentives for businesses to hold off expanding and for people to remain on unemployment.

With the hundreds of billions of dollars slated for 'stimulus' spending, very little of it went for things that would have actually helped during and after our country's economic recovery. Every dime of that money should have gone into infrastructure for things like the thousands of bridges, roads, and highways that need upgrades or replacement, water and sewer system upgrades and expansion, port facilities, airports, electric power distribution systems, and telecommunications systems upgrades (particularly for rural areas of the nation). Instead, most of what was spent went to creating more government jobs, jobs which produce nothing in the way of goods or services like private industry. The government jobs also produce little in the way of actual revenue for government, unlike private sector jobs.

Tax increases also place a greater burden on the economy, reducing the amount of discretionary spending by wage earners. Obama hasn't grasped the fact that every time the government takes more from the taxpayers they have less to spend on the goods and services that drive the economy. By allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of this year, Obama will not see a great increase in revenue next year. Instead he'll see revenues fall, as will the GDP. The fall in revenue will have a number of causes, one of the biggest being individuals and corporations shifting income, dividends, or capital gains payouts forward to this year in order to avoid paying the higher taxes next year.

The increase in tax rates will cause businesses and individuals to change how they do business in an effort to minimize their tax burdens, something quite normal for them to do. For some individuals that means foregoing pay increases or bonuses that push them into the next higher tax bracket. This is because if they pay at the higher tax rate they'll end up with less money than before their raise. In effect, the pay raise punishes them for doing well because of the higher tax burden it brings.

The return of the estate tax - the so-called "death tax" - at the end of the year will also collect very little in revenue as the smarter folks will find ways of transferring their estates before their deaths, avoiding paying 55% of its worth to the federal government. Of those failing to do so, the 55% estate tax may end up costing jobs as some family owned businesses will have to be liquidated in order to pay the taxes. Somehow I doubt that was the original intent of the estate taxes. But because the "soak the rich" mentality permeates Congress and appears to be Obama's economic raison d'être, it will come back with a vengeance and will end up hurting far too many American business owners, their families, and their employees. More jobs will be lost because of it. (If you don't believe that, all one needs to do is look at the effects of the now defunct "luxury" tax on cars, boats and planes. Sales fell off to almost nothing and thousands lost their jobs. The amount of revenue collected by that tax was minimal, but the government paid out millions in unemployment benefits. While not a perfect illustration of the unintended effects of a poorly thought out tax policy, it does get the point across that the government is vastly overestimating the potential revenues to be gained while ignoring the side effects. No surprise there.)

I could go on and on with a list of things Obama has done or wants to do that will have the effect of killing jobs here in the US, but I have better things to do. I also have to include Congress in this as well as we've seen the Democrats in the House and the Senate working towards the same outcome with poorly written, unreadable legislation that does nothing more than burden taxpayers and businesses with increasing levels of regulations that will, in the end, help no one and kill jobs.

[rant]

It is with increasing dismay I watch our President try to drive us down the path to economic ruin.

While some make the case that he's doing it deliberately, with malice and forethought, others ascribe his attempts to 'fix' America's economic problems to willful ignorance, a psychological incapability to believe he can be wrong, or outright stupidity.

Personally, I think it's a combination of all of those things, with the psychological aspect being the leading factor.

There's no doubt in many American's minds that Barack Obama is a classic narcissist, believing he's the only one with the knowledge to fix America's problems. It doesn't help matters that he seems to require unquestioned adulation. Anyone disagreeing with him on any point is seen as being unworthy, wrong, or some kind of close-minded ideologue, something our thin-skinned President has made abundantly clear on more than on occasion.

When his plans don't come together as he wishes, it's always someone else's fault, either through their sheer incompetence or their less than total commitment to his ideas. It's never because his plan was faulty. Never mind that many of his new ideas are merely rehashes of old ideas already found to be unworkable, or worse, cause far more misery than doing nothing. It's like the old mantra of "Yeah, but this time we'll do it right!" running through his head. It won't matter because the old ideas still won't work.

While saying he is willing to "reach across the aisle" in a show of bipartisanship, far too often he's done just the opposite. It has become clear to me his definition of bipartisanship is indeed "All you Republicans sit down, shut up, and do what I tell you to do!" Many of his followers believe he can work in a bipartisan fashion, but looking of his history in Illinois and the US Senate show he's never done so. So how is it that they believe he'll do it now?

His attempts at foreign policy fill me with dread, seeing how his "smart diplomacy" has been neither smart nor diplomatic. How is it he thinks that by insulting our allies and cozying up to our enemies that he'll be able to bring about a kinder, gentler America loved by all? He's on a fool's errand. There will never be a point where everyone loves America. All he's doing is generating contempt for him, and by extension, for the US.

It appears he also believes that by sheer force of his personality that he persuade foreign heads of state to accept his vision of what needs to be done. If nothing else, the G8/G20 summit in Toronto put the lie to that, with many of them telling him "Sod off!", so to speak, after he tried to persuade them that his vision of how to fix the economic problems everyone is dealing with is the only one worth considering. Ireland has shown that he's wrong by taking austerity measures and pulling themselves out of their recession without the need for more stimulus spending.

He doesn't seem to understand that even Keynes believed any deficit spending for economic stimulation should be of short duration or it could end up causing greater economic hardship than if thee were no stimulus spending at all. It appears Obama's working to make sure the stimulus is a more permanent thing, mostly by making sure most of the jobs created by such spending are government jobs rather than private sector jobs. He doesn't understand that those government jobs do little more than suck money out of the economy and give little in return. How is that supposed to stimulate anything?

OK, I think I've said enough for now. It's time for me to back away from the keyboard and go to bed.

[/rant]

Again and again we've heard President Obama's detractors (including me) saying the BP oil spill is Obama's Katrina.

We're wrong. It's worse than that.

While President Bush was limited in what he could do by law since the state and local governments were ultimately responsible for their actions prior to and after Katrina, Obama's response to the oil spill in the Gulf has been dismal considering the federal government had sole jurisdiction since the accident took place in federal waters. To equate the two is dishonest.

I remember when then Louisiana Governor Blanco complained at one point that the federal government had done little to help during and after Hurricane Katrina. Apparently she wasn't aware the feds could do nothing until she asked for assistance. Until then the federal government could do nothing as they had no jurisdiction. The same was true of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, condemning the federal response prior to and after Katrina struck when ultimately it was his responsibility to see to the safety of his constituents. It was his failure to use the resources he had on hand that caused a lot of the misery and deaths that followed in Katrina's wake.

It must be remembered that the two incidents are also dissimilar since Katrina was a natural disaster and the BP oil spill was man-made. But still these two incidents show the differences in approach between Obama and Bush, with Obama being too laissez faire about something well within his area of responsibility and Bush being restrained by law from helping at the state and local level until there was little the government could do except help pick up the pieces.

You know it's bad when even CNN is dumping on ObamaCare.

The CNN report linked above covers the growing problems with Massachusetts health insurance program upon which ObamaCare has been modeled. None of the goals stated in the Massachusetts version have been met. The system is failing financially, with no control over costs, mandated coverage adding to health insurance premiums, subsidies for low/medium-income earners heading ever upwards, disincentives for people to work (higher income means paying a lot more for health insurance), and unintended incentives for businesses to drop their employees health insurance plans entirely.

The Massachusetts system is a preview of what we can expect as ObamaCare kicks in.

Already the the side effects of ObamaCare can be seen as the costs of it become more apparent. If most of the details of this bill had been made known to all of Congress before the vote it never would have passed. Anyone in Congress with a modicum of knowledge about business would have been able to see the negatives of ObamaCare far outweighed any perceived benefits.

With the unintended incentives ObamaCare gives businesses to drop employee health care, or worse, have all future hires brought on as temporary or contract employees, Obama's promise that we'd "be able to keep our present health insurance if we want to" rings hollow and shows he either doesn't truly understand the ramifications of health care reform, or doesn't care. The fact that he needs to spend $125 million of taxpayer funds to sell the idea that ObamaCare will be wonderful proves how bad it will be. If it was truly all that great it would sell itself. But the more he tries to push it on the American people the more they resist letting him destroy the imperfect but world class health care system we have.

Anyone with even a little math ability can figure out that the numbers don't add up, that they don't take into account real world conditions, and totally ignore the effects of the fiscal disincentives that will cause companies to drop health insurance for their employees and induce health care professionals to leave the medical field.

The owner of a one time Chrysler dealership in the Laconia, New Hampshire area has let known his displeasure about the loss of his franchise as part of the restructuring of Chrysler Corporation after it was taken over by the government.

A former Chrysler dealership in the Lakes Region is closing up shop a year after the automaker's bankruptcy plan took effect -- and it's not going quietly.

Chrysler's bankruptcy plan included stripping its name from nearly 800 dealerships across the country -- including six in New Hampshire. It has been a struggle for many of the dealerships, and one in Belmont is closing its doors after 20 years.

The sign painted across the empty showroom windows expresses the owner's outrage.

"The sign says, 'This business is now closed because of Obama's economics.' I put that up there because it was his task force that closed -- or took away -- 789 franchises from small businesses," said Alan Silberberg, owner of Lakes Family Auto Center.

A number of successful and lucrative dealerships were forced to close their doors while lesser dealerships survived. It appears to many the selections of which dealerships to close were quite arbitrary and did not reflect the economic viability of those franchises. There have also been grumblings that some dealerships whose franchises were terminated were selected based upon their political leanings, with those owned by supporters of the GOP selected more often than those owned by Obama supporters.

Frankly, I believe it's because there were far more successful dealerships owned by Republicans than Democrats, so the burden fell more upon those franchisees in direct proportion to the balance between Republicans and Democrats...but I could be wrong.

As Paul Ingrassia reminds us, today was the first anniversary of the GM bankruptcy. You know the one, where the White House subverted the Constitution, stiffing the bond holders and debtors and giving the proceeds to the UAW, who were in no way a debtor.

What it was was a payoff to the unions for backing Obama, plain and simple. There's no other explanation I can find that makes any sense.

Brent stole my thunder, at least a little bit, when it comes to Obama and the increasing appearance that he's in over his head.

Obama talks a pretty good game, but when it comes to actually performing his duties as President of the United States he isn't walking the walk. Seeing that he's sided with Mexican President Calderon against Arizona's immigration law that mirrors the federal immigration law that goes back 70 years doesn't exactly endear him Middle America, either.

The economy was a shambles and what did Obama do? Spent almost a trillion dollars the government didn't have on half-assed 'stimulus' programs that did nothing but stimulate pork-barrel spending on a scale not seen since FDR, but did nothing to create anything but more government jobs. Then, rather than focusing his efforts on actual economic programs that would get government out of the way of economic recovery, he has Congress ramrod through a health care reform package that has had the effect of damaging economic recovery even more than if he did nothing, and in doing so will be spending trillions more the government doesn't have.

If this isn't incompetence, I don't know what is.

Then there's his latest show of incompetence: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Some have called it Obama's 'Katrina', and they're right. It is just one more example of his many mistakes.

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

It seems the every day duties and requirements of being President do not interest him. Then again, he's never really needed to actually perform the duties of the various offices he's held, being busy with running for the next higher office and all. But here he is, at the pinnacle of elective office in the United States, and he finds he actually has to work for a change. Somehow I doubt this is what he really signed up for. He's discovered he has to work every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and he's not liking it one bit. He's learned the Utopia he thought he'd be able to create once he got in office is beyond his abilities. The more he tries, the worst his failures become. It doesn't help that he's been leaving much of the decision making in regards to all the 'wonderful' programs and entitlements he believes the taxpayers should be funding in the hands of even less competent advisers and, even worse, Congressional leaders with less economic savvy than the average person on the street. He's living in a dream world.

An assessment of President Barack Obama's speech on Saturday to the graduating class at the United States Military Academy leads to one of only two possible conclusions:

Either Obama does not live in the real world, or he wants Americans to believe that they don't live in the real world.

Neither possibility is comforting.

The speech has been described as a repudiation of the doctrine of pre-emptive war to prevent attacks on U.S. soil, and so it is.

But it is so much more.

In what it contains, in what it ignores and in what it willfully misinterprets, it stands as a remarkably clear and forthright statement of the utopian mind.

The question of whether the president actually believes what he said is immaterial. The question that matters is how far this wistfully self-destructive longing for an internationalism that works will be allowed to drive American policy.

Never mind that history shows that every attempt to 'create' a utopian society has always ended in disaster, sometimes with far reaching consequences outside the society in question. Sometimes those consequences include the deaths of untold numbers of people wishing nothing more than to be left alone to live their lives. Others have tried internationalism (or at least their version of it) and it, too, ended with the deaths of millions. Such societies always have the tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which has never been a good idea as it usually leads to despotism, corruption, diminution of the value of human life, and in the end, horror for those within the society.

Obama has become a walking, talking object lesson, showing everyone, including the Democrats, how to lose public support in a very short period of time, even among your own party members. He's focused on the wrong issues, gone about trying to fix the wrong things at the wrong time using long disproven methods, while ignoring the public will at every turn. He has tried to ignore problems even the usually supportive MSM have been hammering him about.

Again, his performance during the Gulf oil spill has been, shall we say, underwhelming, as has been his responses to a number of other events. As Michelle Malkin puts it, "America has become accustomed to President Obama's crisis face: eyes glazed over."

At his first press conference in 308 days, Obama fielded questions about the Gulf oil spill, immigration, the war in Afghanistan and the mounting outrage over Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak's job-trading allegations with a sluggishness bordering on geriatric. His aplomb was a bomb.

The commander-in-chief's mumbling, diffident tone contradicted the "I CARE" message of urgency that drifted across the teleprompter screen and rolled languidly off his tongue.

It seemed to me that he really didn't care all that much because dealing with all these pesky Presidential duties is taking him away from the really important things, as he sees them. I'm not sure what those 'important' things are, but I doubt they really have anything to do with the good of the American people. Rather, could they be things that have to do with the good of Barack Obama? If his known history is any indicator, I'd have to say "Yes". Then again, isn't that like anyone in over their heads, having reached their highest level of incompetence?

UPDATE: Ann Althouse also piles on with "Obama tells us he thinks that if he somehow gets people to think about him and how much he's thinking about what he thinks they think he should be thinking about, then he's done his job.

Yeah. Right.

Isn't it ironic that just as President Obama plans to make a push for Cap-and-Trade in an effort to generate "green jobs" and develop alternative energy sources the Spanish are ready to abandon their efforts to do so?

Apparently the Spanish program has failed miserably, driving up energy costs, putting a big drain on their already fragile economy, while creating very few green jobs. Their intentions may have been good but the actual results have been poor, with none of the promised benefits materializing.

This is the program Obama wants to emulate? Even the Spanish know that isn't such a great idea.

The president of the United States, Barack Obama, doesn't seem to have chosen the right model to copy for his "green economy," Spain. After the government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero demonized a study of different experts about the fatal economic consequences of renewable energies, an internal document from the Spanish cabinet that it is even more negative has just been leaked.

The internal report of the Spanish administration admits that the price of electricity has gone up, as well as the debt, due to the extra costs of solar and wind energy. Even the government numbers indicate that each green job created costs more than 2.2 traditional jobs, as was shown in the report of the Juan de Mariana Institute.

But none of this has deterred Obama's plans to lay a heavy burden upon the American people and the American economy all in the name of "saving the planet."

Why is it our President feels the need to do everything he can to cripple the economy with pie-in-the-sky feel-good laws that, in the end, do far more harm than good? Until recently I would have said it was due to his blindness to the evils of socialism. Instead, I have to think that it is something far more basic: he's an incompetent surrounded by incompetents (his advisers).

As the old saw goes, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Obama may have book smarts, but he has never exhibited one ounce of intelligence or aptitude when it comes to governing the country. Then again, he never had any executive or economic experience before he was elected to the Oval Office. The only thing he's been good at has been getting elected.

Now it's official: It's all George W. Bush's fault!

Just one year ago, fresh from his inauguration celebrations, President Obama was flying high. After one of the nation's most inspiring political campaigns, the election of America's first black president had captured the hopes and dreams of millions. To his devout followers, it was inconceivable that a year later his administration would be gripped in self-imposed crisis.

Of course, they don't see it as self imposed. It's all George Bush's fault.

George Bush, who doesn't have a vote in Congress and who no longer occupies the White House, is to blame for it all.

He broke Obama's promise to put all bills on the White House web site for five days before signing them.

He broke Obama's promise to have the congressional health care negotiations broadcast live on C-SPAN.

He broke Obama's promise to end earmarks.

He broke Obama's promise to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent.

--snip--

Yes, it's all George Bush's fault. President Obama is nothing more than a puppet in the never-ending, failed Bush administration.

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

(H/T Instapundit)

Could this be President Obama's worst nightmare? Could it be the Democrats may suffer from their own version of A Nightmare On Elm Street?

The answer is yes should these Republicans succeed in their efforts to gain the title of House Representative.

Among the many reverberations of President Obama's election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years.

But now black Republicans are running across the country -- from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in the primary.

While Democrat leaders try to downplay the chances of black Republicans running against incumbent Democrats, they are overlooking the increasing anger against Congress, and Democrats in particular. I have a feeling far too many Democrats feel that the American people will have gotten over the anger caused by Democrats in Congress (and the White House) ignoring the will of a majority of Americans and shifting the course of US hard to the left. Come November quite a few Congressional Democrats may find they're out of a job, with some of them replaced by conservative blacks.

Of course should a wholesale defeat of a large number of Democrats take place in November I expect the Democrat leadership to say something along the lines of "Obviously the electorate didn't understand our plans and failed to appreciate the new direction we're trying to move this country," or "The voters were stupid and bought the TEA party rhetoric hook, line, and sinker." But they would never admit they were wrong or that the American people didn't want this country to become another dystopian socialist economic hellhole the Democrats have been trying so hard to create.

I know the Democrats would like to regain their supermajority in the Senate, but isn't this going just a little too far?

1. In the past when Puerto Rico voted no to statehood the question asked on the ballot was, 'Do you want to become a State?' Each time this question has been asked the citizens of Puerto Rico have overwhelmingly voted that they do NOT want to become a state.

2. The current bill introduced in Congress is NOT, in fact, intended to 'grant Puerto Rico the right to decide if they want statehood,' as lying Congressmen and Senators claim. This bill changes the wording of the question that is to be put to the citizens of Puerto Rico - a scheme designed to trick the citizens into something they have already indicated the do not want.

3. The bill would require Puerto Rico to ask the following question on the ballot. In place of 'Do you want to become a State' would be the question 'Do you want to maintain current status?' This is key. By changing the wording on the ballot one gets an entirely different result. Polls, for example, indicate that Puerto Ricans do not want to maintain the status quo (which means they want some changes) yet they still do not want statehood. But this ballot would not even ask the question 'Do you want Statehood.'

That's only the beginning. If the first ballot has a clear majority voting 'no', the follow up question during a later ballot only gives them the choice of statehood or independence, with no third choice to for no change in status. That's no choice at all.

Are the Democrats that desperate that they need to resort to trickery to ensure a Democrat majority in the Senate?

Wait. What am I saying? Of course they'll do that. They play by Chicago Democrat rules now, just like the Teleprompter In Chief.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing for all the details of this backdoor attempt by the Democrats at garnering two more seats in the Senate.

I attended the Tea Party in Manchester, New Hampshire this afternoon/early evening and got back just before 9PM.

I'll have an honest to goodness post about it tomorrow Saturday.

In light of my previous post about the burden of an elite education, a discussion following this WSJ piece about Sarah Palin by Norm Podhoretz brought up the subject of intelligence versus the ability to get things done. A number of those commenting posited that a high IQ does not automatically mean a person is capable of governing. That certainly seems to be the case with the present occupant of the Oval Office. He may have a high IQ (and there's quite a bit of debate about that subject in the comments), but he's shown he is in over his head.

Probably one of the best analysis I've seen on this subject, particularly in relation to Obama and Palin, comes from commenter Jake Peachy.

There is this problem of confusing smartness, IQ, and academic achievement with wisdom. There is no fool like an educated fool that does not have the correct big picture outline to properly organize information, and you cannot start with the details themselves to create big picture reference points.

What is so often missing with this contrived theoretical knowledge is that sense of three-dimensional understanding--- that intuitive depth perception called the wisdom, (a lot of which is formalized in religious and cultural heritage and tested by history) that gives you the big picture framework to properly place the details. The unwashed masses are more likely to sense intuitively the correct big picture framework because of a closer relation to real world experience.

Intellectual folks are enamored with a theory of knowledge used effectively by hard sciences. Since there is no concrete definitives in the so-called "social sciences", these definitives are then invented through the use of rigorous logic that seems airtight. From this base, a lovely complex edifice of theory appears that is erroneous at the base. The intellectual folks fall in love with their handiwork and think themselves wondrously wise because they understand it, using great words with mysterious meanings known only to the practitioners, while the great unwashed masses do not bother with it ----- because it is obvious to them that it does not square with reality, a reality that is vastly more complex than the most sophisticated theory of intellectual derivative.

Sarah Palin's real-world experience gives her that intuitive depth perception, that she may not be able to effectively articulate. In the microcosm of her experience with Alaskan government, she understands very well the greed of power, the sense of entitlement by the political class who do not see themselves as servants of the people, but their masters. This gives her the correct big picture outline in foreign-policy because the single biggest driver of history is about the intoxication of power, that drive and will to power with the development of a belief system that justifies absolute power. It is these belief systems that allow men to become as gods controlling the lives of millions. Thus the endless wars of unrestrained quest of power.

She also understands very well, from real-life experience, that the cycles of economic growth and wealth creation that comes from a free trade free market economy, where participants connect horizontally versus top-down control. As of yet, her ability to effectively articulate is not equal to the skill of Ronald Reagan.

If she does become president, I have full confidence in her perspective and if she surrounds herself with very able advisers, she would do very well. A presidential candidate doesn't necessarily have to have full experience when very able experience is available for hire. After all, we can only elect humans, not an omniscient all wise deity.

"After all, we can only elect humans, not an omniscient all wise deity." Unfortunately it appears far too many of the Obama faithful seem to think he is a deity. But he is not. He is a man, and he is fallible, despite the Democrats claim to the contrary.

A side note: During the presidential campaign in 2008 the Democrats kept slamming Sarah Palin for her lack of experience. They made a bigger deal out of Palin than John McCain, not realizing they were not comparing between McCain and Obama, but between Palin and Obama. If one looked honestly at that comparison, Obama came up short in a number of areas.

Palin was a serving governor, meaning she was the commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard. It also meant she had some foreign relations experience, dealing with both Canada and Russia. Obama had only been in the US Senate for two years and had spent most of that time voting 'present' or running for president.

Palin cleaned house in Alaska politics, routing out corruption in state government wherever it was, not discriminating between Democrats or Republicans. Obama on the other hand is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine.

Palin is a successful businesswoman. Obama managed to piss away $110 million of Annenberg Foundation funds with nothing to show for it.

Palin speaks plainly. Obama obfuscates when he orates.

Palin went to a state university (Idaho). Obama when to Columbia and Harvard Law School.

Palin is just plain folks. Obama is an arrogant elitist, condescending to us 'plain folk'.

All that being said, is Palin more intelligent than Obama? No, probably not. But she is smarter, and that's what makes the difference.

While browsing the news today, I came across an interesting story on Fox. Evidently, I must be old-fashioned. I always thought debate and free thought were integral parts of the American way, and all aspects were to be considered before a decision is made. Evidently, the President disagrees.

President Obama is not worried about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday. 

Now this is interesting. Rather than just note that there are others (a majority, in fact) that happen to disagree with the President's ideas on socializing improving healthcare, he simply writes off this disapproval as a "procedural" event, almost as if those who oppose don't really oppose - they're just playing the part. This, in my opinion, just shows the true arrogance of a man who clearly does not see reality. I'm sure in his world this is a cut and dried deal, just waiting to be sealed with a tally. Unfortunately, for the millions of us who can't escape reality on Capitol Hill, things may be a bit different (like, really different... Really, really different).

President Obama is not worried -- and doesn't think Americans should worry -- about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday. 

So, let's get this straight. The debate against your plans is just a "procedural" event; yet, your primary plan for passing this measure is bypassing the traditional voting method? Logic seems to be telling me that if there are only routine "devils-advocate" debates against you, why not put it up for a real vote, and enjoy near-unanimity? Oh, wait. They can't do that, because the debate is real. I'm sorry, but when your voting tactics are raising legal questions, one of your own floors' whip is in disagreement with your methods, a 12-point margin is calling your plan an outright "Bad Idea", and you have to come eerily close to buying votes, it may just be time to give it up.

 

---TNJ