Tag Archives: Barack Obama

The President’s Jobs Speech

Posted on September 10, 2011 | 5 comments

Last night the President gave a speech.  In it, he described what his plan to help our economy is.  In my opinion, he needed to accomplish several critical items.

  • The speech would HAVE to represent something new.

The nation has grown weary of the same language and same ideas that this administration has pout forth to date.  What Obama is sellin’, no one is buyin’.  No one believes that spending more and more money that we don’t have on programs like roads-bridges, schools and hospitals is the answer to our nation’s problems.  I think that we knew this back when.  Back when Obama first recommended this strategy.  We simultaneously knew AND hoped.  It’s why none of us are very surprised that we are today where we were 3 years ago.

  • The speech would HAVE to create the feeling that the administration was willing to compromise with the Republicans.

Since the day he’s taken office, think “The Office Of The President Elect” bullshit, Obama has made it clear that he will do it his way.  He’s commented that “I won” during negotiations.  His actions, and quite frankly his naiveté, have demonstrated that if he only uses more words and passion, he’ll succeed in swaying his opposition.  Personally I suspect that this is what him positions of prestige in the worlds in which he has lived.  In the Halls of Ivy I feel that rhetoric and Grand Ideals are the coin of the realm.  Not actions and results.

Thoughts, not measurable metrics, are what these men trade on.

  • The speech would HAVE to energize America and Americans.

It didn’t.  It was a yawner.  Everything from the “Pass it Right Away” nonsense to the worn out “pay their fair share” nonsense, the feeling was an overwhelming, “been there, done that” take away.  This didn’t move the soul.  This speech didn’t reach into the heavens and grab you just right there.  This speech was more of a lecture.  Something that you wanted to be over, not hear more of.

For the first time, Obama’s skill in oration failed him.  If I didn’t know better, it was as if even he didn’t believe it.

Rather than be any of these things, it was none of them.  He didn’t present anything new, bi-partisan or energizing.  You could have taken random 35 second clips from any of his other speeches, strung ’em together for 34 minutes and done just as well – even better.  At least during those speeches, Obama himself believed what he was saying.

The facts are this:

  1. Government trades in power.  No government can invest appropriately because too many people owe other people money and favors.  True free acts of investment can not be made.
  2. Government doesn’t earn anything.  If the government would like to invest in segment A of the economy, it must first confiscate from segment B of the economy.  And it sucks at even that.  It’s less than a 1 – 1 shift.
  3. The wealthy pay more than their “fair share”.  The wealthy pay more of a share of the tax than they earn as a share of the income.  In fact, there are net “earners” of the Federal Income Tax system.
  4. We already allocate money for roads and bridges.  We tax such things as we think are necessary to care for repairs and new build outs.  Why we need to allocate NEW money for the is beyond me.
  5. It is not the role of the Federal Government to build schools.  THAT is the role of the individual school boards.

This speech failed.  It failed to provide new ideas, failed to provide any hope of bi-partisan agreement and it failed to energize even the giver of the speech.

I’ll leave you with this detail.  Obama implored lawmakers to “pass it right away”.  Yet he couldn’t be bothered to present anyone with the bill itself, saying only that he would deliver something a week from Monday.

Indeed.

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Posted in Economy, Government, Politics: National

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Obama Name Calling

Posted on September 8, 2011 | 11 comments

So, I’ve been pretty clear in my feelings toward our Gentle Leader.  I’ve been very clear that I think Mr. Obama is what we now call a Socialist.  While not strictly accurate by definitions, the word seems to have changed in meaning over time.  I do not think that he wants the state to own the means of production, but he most certainly wants to redistribute wealth.  Further, he has no fear of forcing corporations to follow edicts of his government.

Which has led me to calling Obama a fascist.  While I understand that many many people incorrectly identify fascism with the violent racist militarism we have seen in recent history, the real meaning of fascism is more akin to state control of economic forces.

However, while all of that may or may not be true, I have never read the books Obama penned himself.  I assume that in these books the President represents himself fairly.  And, I think, without having read even page 1, that he goes back to times when he was a young man.

I wanna keep an ongoing thought experiment as I read these chapters.  I wanna see what Obama HIMSELF says about what he feels.

Perhaps we can lay to rest whether or not the man is a capitalist or a fascist.  Or a socialist.

Or a whatever-ist.

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Posted in Fun, Politics: National

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Obama’s Speech: What He Should Say September 8, 2011

Posted on September 7, 2011 | 2 comments

Tomorrow, President Obama is going to speak in front of Congress.  There are things that he ought to say.

He should say that he is going to work to create an environment where people feel comfortable hiring other people.  In order to say this with a believable demeanor, I certainly hope that he has brought in people who hire people and worked to figure out what hiring people would take.

For example, if people who hire people say that they would hire more people if it cost less to hire people, he should then say that he will make it less expensive for people to hire people.

Pure and simple.

After he says that, Mr. Obama should say that he will allow companies that wanna hire people to, you know, actually hire them.  He could do this by allowing Boeing to open a factory in South Carolina.

For my non-Socialist Liberal friends, this is what we mean when we say that Obama is a socialist-fascist.  The President is preventing a private company from opening a factory where they want to.  In the United States.  He’s doing this because he doesn’t approve of the affiliation of the people that might be hired.

Now, after we make it cheaper and legal to hire people, the President should acknowledge that passing legislation that makes it impossible to estimate the cost of hiring people prevents the people who hire people from hiring people.  In other words, the President should declare that he is going to halt the implementation of his health care legislation.

What he WILL say:

The President won’t, of course, say the things that he SHOULD say.  Rather, he’ll continue his march down the campaign trail.  In fact, he signaled his intention Monday when he addressed labor groups in Detroit.

The President is going to call on Republicans to set aside party and do what’s right for America.  He’s gonna call on us all to help him pass him legislation that will reward big labor by initiating infrastructure spending.  He’ll call this repairing our roads and bridges.

Additionally, President Obama will continue to claim that the current economic conditions that we face were not created in 3 years and therefore, won’t be solved in three years.  The theme that the past decade of poor policy decisions will permeate the President’s campaign rhetoric from now until the election.  Tacking onto this will be the gentle and subtle reminder that “more of the same”, or a “return to the failed policies” is a recipe for disaster.

Make no mistake.  Obama should take this opportunity to lead.

He won’t.

It’ll be an exercise in a middle manager casting blame for his own bad decisions.

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Posted in Diplomacy, Politics: National

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Beware The Liberal Siren Song

Posted on September 2, 2011 | 9 comments

If you believe the likes of Barack Obama and his of his socialist, fascist friends, you will believe that the American system of economics benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

The rich get the breaks and the poor are exploited.

Don’t believe it:

Did you know that in Denmark, the poorest 30 percent pay 14.1 percent of all taxes and the richest pay 48.7 percent, while in the United States, the poorest 30 percent pay just 6.1 percent of all taxes and the richest 30 percent pay a whopping 65.3 percent? The surprising thing is not that the richest pay most of the taxes but that the U.S. has nearly the most progressive tax system in the world, while the Scandinavian countries have about the least progressive tax systems, contrary to commonly held belief.

Obama and his team are radical extreme thinkers when it comes to organizing our economy.  The only thing saving us is the fact that he and his team don’t have any experience in running an organization.  He simply couldn’t manage his way out of a wet paper sack.
Thank God!

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Posted in Economics, Politics: International, Politics: National

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Comments On Obama And Boehner

Posted on September 1, 2011 | 7 comments

All of this has caveats like crazy. All of this has elements of the “crazy”. All of it. And all of the people.

The Republicans are in the process of picking their nominee. Some are crazy, some are moderate, some are forceful and others are meek. All of that’s true and just because it IS true doesn’t make the process invalid. The primary is a key process in the larger process we loosely call “Democracy”. And THAT process should be respected.

The President wants to deliver a speech. And when the President wants to do that, in front of Congress or not, we should listen and pay attention. And if we are Congress, all the more so. However, with power comes responsibility. Recently I requested meeting with…my boss’s boss’s boss. He found time on his schedule and it was set. As the day to that meeting got closer, HIS boss requested time; the same time that he had blocked for me. He could have simply told me that we had to reschedule, he didn’t. He asked.

With power comes responsibility.

Obama shouldn’t have scheduled this speech on a date that conflicted with the debate. After all, he picked a day more than a week away after, AFTER returning from a 10 day vacation. The time clearly wasn’t crucial. But Obama didn’t do the reasonable thing-he did the partisan thing. And when he did that, he forced the Republican’s hand. And they pushed back.

Now, back to my example. My vice president asked me if we could reschedule. Even if I hadn’t been okay with it, I was, I would’ve agreed; he’s the boss and he gets to do things, even if I don’t like those things. Boehner should have called his Congress and told them to get to DC and be in their seats at the appointed hour.

But he didn’t. He declined to meet with the President of the United States of America. And instead, offered his own new date.

The whole nation was holding its breath, waiting to ee why Obama would do. We all knew it was chumpy of Obama to schedule the speech over the debate, but that Boehner pushed back was remarkable. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not fully comfortable with power. I’m not skilled in the proper use of it. But I’m a low-level manager still learning.

Obama isn’t. He’s the ‘effin President. And he got schooled in about as bad a way as I’ve seen in a long long time.

I don’t know what leaves me more saddened. The fact that we have a Speaker of the House who doesn’t respect the office of the President or that we have a low-level administrator sitting in the White House who doesn’t respect the office of the President.

Either way, today was the day that demonstrated, more than any other day, that Obama is in over his head. That he doesn’t know how to lead, to manage, to drive change, to innovate to take command. He simply doesn’t have the life experience to be the President.

To any reasonable American, today should have removed any doubt that this man does not deserve another term.

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Posted in Government, Politics: National

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Words And Definitions

Posted on September 1, 2011 | 2 comments

After the debt debate and compromise, all the talk was about the Tea Part and extremists holding the Republican party hostage.  In fact, our administration even refers to that element as terrorists lamenting the fact that there is simply no compromising with them.  That when faced with a group of people, “that extreme”, there is nothing that can be done.

I resonate.

Compromise in general and typically implies a healthy merging of ideas and policies.  It means we’ll take a little of this and combine it with a little of that and we’ll end up with something that resembles what we each started with.  However, since Barack Obama has come into office, that version of compromise has changed.

Since he famously started “negotiations” with “we won” he has done business differently.  Compromise no longer means moving from one’s position in order to find a reasonable solution.  To this administration compromise doesn’t mean “meeting in the middle”.  It means, rather, how much will it cost me.

So conversations begin with Obama saying that I want this thing.  And that thing doesn’t change during the debate.  What DOES change is what he’s willing to pay to have it.  And THAT is what he calls compromise.

Which means, of course, that there is no compromise.  Instead, you have ideology being forced through salesmanship. And the people we’re dealing with, the ideology of these people, is frightening.  Absolutely frightening.  In normal times, times when people will walk away from the cliff, it’s bad enough.  They are taking positions as a point of negotiation.  But not this President.  Not today’s Democrats  Not these people.

These people wanna rule by force.  They want to impose their agenda and are unwilling to walk it back.  I’ve used words like Socialist and Fascist.  Folks have objected to such language.  It’s very unpleasant being called socialist or fascist.  I get it, I don’t like those words or ideas either.

But when the facts are the facts, it’s hard to hide from ’em:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has had an outspoken recess, sparring with the Tea Party, the president and other members of Congress during the Congressional Black Caucus’s (CBC) multicity jobs tour.

Tuesday night was no different, as the congresswoman urged President Obama to use his bully pulpit to demand that “gangsta” banks offer mortgage modifications that would enable people to stay in their homes or face withering taxation.

“It’s time for the bully pulpit of the White House to bring the gangstas in, put them around the table and let them know that if they don’t come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes that they’ve worked so hard for, we’re gonna tax them out of business,” Waters said at an event in Los Angeles.

She is specifically advocating that Obama use his power by fiat to force banks to change mortgage contracts for people who can’t pay on them or “force them out of business”.

THAT is the definition of fascist.

THAT is the implication of socialism.

Take from other people in order that others may benefit.  And if that must be done through force of law, gun and sword, so be it.

When Biden says that you can’t negotiate with these people, it’s because there is no negotiating with Obama and his people.  You can not even START to have a conversation that includes the concept of the government taxing these people out of business.

When you combine an administration made up of people unwilling to step away from their ideology and are willing to to use the White House as a “dictator” to institute their version of society, you push away from the table and walk away.

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Posted in Government, Politics: National

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Obama Can Sleep Well Tonight

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 2 comments

If I get him fired in 2012, he can sue me for hurting his feelings:

A jury’s $60,000 verdict against Minneapolis blogger John “Johnny Northside” Hoff for a posting that got a man fired will stand, a Hennepin County judge has ordered.

In a nine-page ruling, District Judge Denise Reilly wrote that ex-community leader Jerry Moore provided “direct and circumstantial evidence” to support the jury’s verdict that a blog post by Hoff led to his termination by the University of Minnesota.

Hoff “acknowledged that it was his goal to get [Moore] fired and that he was working ‘behind the scenes’ to do so,” Reilly wrote. “After the fact, [Hoff] took personal responsibility for [Moore’s] termination and announced his ongoing, active involvement in the University’s actions.”

The case has drawn the attention of numerous free-speech advocates, including the Society of Professional Journalists, which filed a brief in support of Hoff.

Hoff, who learned of the order on Monday, called it “a dark day for the First Amendment.”

“I didn’t think it would go this way,” he said. “I’m shocked.”

The jury ruled last March that Hoff’s scathing blog post amounted to actively interfering with Moore’s job at the U, even though Hoff’s statements were true when he linked Moore to high-profile mortgage fraud.

The jury awarded Moore $35,000 for lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress. Hoff sought to overturn the verdict or get a new trial. Reilly denied both efforts.

It was true.  All of it.  And he was found guilty.

I know nothing else about the story, so I should ‘prolly withhold righteous judgement, but this kinda stinks.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Liberty

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Meanwhile, In Other News

Posted on August 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

With all the news this weekend focusing on Irene, it’s important to note that Obama and his administration continue to operate in the back-ground.

For example, there are reports that the “War on Terror” is moving along swimmingly:

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Atiya Abdul Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, a U.S. official said Saturday.

The official would not discuss the circumstances behind his death, but did say Rahman is a key loss for al Qaeda.

“There’s no question this is a major blow to al Qaeda. Atiya was at the top of al Qaeda’s trusted core,” the official said. “He ran daily operations for the group since Shaykh Sa’id al-Masri was killed last year, and has been (Osama bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri’s) second-in-command since bin Laden’s death in May.”

Excellent news during a day filled with storm damage!

Further, on the science front, specifically geology, the Obama administration is equally busy:

Richmond, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Scientist studying the recent Virginia earthquake have identified a new geological structure that many feel explains the recent seismic activity in the region.  The region had known boundaries, referred to as tectonic zones.

Researchers began studying historical sources for past earthquakes in the region and were surprised to find indications of such activity from an unlikely source; Native American relics.  In fact, there are records dating back as far as the 1600’s that show significant activity in the region, known as Unega Gihli.

The Obama administration, eager to understand what Unega Gihli meant brought in linguistic experts to study the reference.  As it turns out, Unega Gihli is Cherokee for “Bush’s Fault”.

All is well in the world of Team Obama!

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Posted in Politics: International, Politics: National

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What The?

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

You have to win to govern.  And winning vs. losing in political races is a zero sum game.  When your opponent gets more votes, you lose and he wins.  This creates a situation where elected officials want to “win” the vote as much, or more, than they want to “win” the debate.

I get it, but this still sucks:

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans are so anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll-tax increase on virtually every wage earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Apparently not.

They’re saying a tax cut should end as planned, opposing President Obama, who wants to extend it. The policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.

Huh?

Surly they can explain themselves?

Tax reductions, “no matter how well-intended,” will push the deficit higher, making the panel’s task that much harder, Camp’s office said.

Nope.  They can’t.

I may give this whole thing up and just go watch some baseball.

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Posted in Economy, Elections 2012, Government, Politics: National, Republicans Can Be Leftists Too

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Hope And Change

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s a long way until election day.  But I’m beginning to have a degree of Hope myself:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 20% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -24.

That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for President Obama, a level previously reached just once last September.

I’m surprised that the junior level administrator made it this long.

 

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Posted in Elections 2012, Politics: National

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