We Need A Leader. Unfortunately We’ve Got A Fool-in-Chief

I wrote up my own comments in an article I wrote yesterday titled “Obama On Downgrade, Market Plunge: The Buck Stops With (Anyone BUT) Me.”  But Judith Miller’s systematic take-down on Obama’s speech should be preserved.

In Debt Downgrade Aftermath, Obama Serves Up a Silly Speech
By Judith Miller
Published August 08, 2011 | FoxNews.com

First, do no harm. That is a useful injunction for doctors, lawyers, and, it turns out, U.S. presidents.
 
But President Obama’s useless speech Monday about the basic soundness of the American economy managed to reinforce all the concerns Americans on the left and right have about his stewardship of the country.
 
The speech did at least temporary harm. As soon as he finished speaking, the already jittery financial markets plunged.
 
Americans didn’t want to hear that we’re fine people or that Warren Buffett thinks that we should have an impeccable credit rating.

They didn’t want him to repeat his basic talking points: the need to marshal the “political will” to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits, or create an infrastructure bank.

They didn’t want to hear his perfectly reasonable desire to solve the debt crisis over time by cutting spending after the economy recovers and by raising more revenue from what the president now calls “tax reform” rather than new taxes.

Americans wanted to hear what President Obama was planning to do to create jobs and stop our economy from slipping over an economic abyss into a double-dip recession.

His calm, passionless, “voice of reason” message, without a single new proposal except his pledge to make specific proposals in the future and work with the Congressionally designated super-committee to address the deficit and debt crises – “leading from behind again” – actually panicked the markets. And no wonder.  Americans were looking for a leader, and what we got was the professor again.

One must sympathize with the president. Last week was his worst week ever in the job.

First, he turned 50, usually traumatic for most people, even politicians.

Then he became the first president to have a downgrading of America’s credit worthiness on his watch – an action taken by Standard & Poor’s, a company that made a two trillion dollar mistake in its own budget calculations and which gave the highest credit rating to Lehman Brothers on the verge of bankruptcy and to the mortgage-backed securities that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. How do you spell “chutzpah” on Wall Street?

Then he presided over the deadliest day in Afghanistan– the loss of 30 Americans soldiers, most of them Navy Seal commandos, some from the same unit that killed Usama Bin Laden. (He lauded their courage and sacrifice in the only convincing part of his today’s speech – at the end of that speech, which he introduced with the world’s most awkward transition: “One More Thing.”)

Then markets plunged.

The president has now managed to deepen the alienation of the right – which I believe unfairly accuses him of being a free-wheeling tax and spender whose profligacy is responsible for the nation’s slow growth and falling credit worthiness.

Now, the left of his party, too, is in full rebellion. On Sunday, Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory, articulated the fury of liberal Democrats in a New York Times Sunday Review essay.

He excoriated Obama for failing to provide a “counternarrative” to that of the right and for engaging in “the politics of appeasement” with the Tea Party. The public, he wrote, was desperate for a Roosevelt who would name names and assign blame – to his predecessors. (Hasn’t Obama done a lot of that?) Instead, it got more rhetoric. Instead of indicting his predecessors’ economic policies that had eliminated eight million jobs, “in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency,” Westen wrote, “he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert.” The predictable result was a “half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy.”

How can one explain this lack of leadership? Westen offered several harsh theories. Perhaps Obama is, as conservatives have alleged, too inexperienced and hence, incompetent. Obama, he wrote, “had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state.” He had a “singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography.” Finally, before joining the Senate, he had voted “present” rather than “yea” or “nay” 130 times, “sometimes dodging difficult issues.”

But wait. Westen has an even harsher explanation, namely that America is being “held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.”

Ouch. No wonder Mr. Obama looked so very shaken during a speech that was intended to boost the nation’s confidence.

Obama came on television when we needed a leader.  And of course all we got was a clueless clown.

“Here’s my plan.”  “Here’s what we need to do.”  You’re not going to get anything like that from THIS Disgrace.

Obama is THE POSTER BOY for the phrase “all talk, no action.”  All this man ever offers is another useless speech.

I’m still waiting for Obama to give his “My work here is done” speech:

But it appears he thinks he can still do more to destroy America.

Catastrophic Failure Of Leadership: US Birthrate Falls To Lowest Level In 100 Years

Have you heard?  America’s birth rate is lower than at any time in the last last 100 years.

There seems to be something profoundly wrong with Obama’s central message of hope and change.  There is something profoundly wrong with Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America.

22/08/2010
Recession effect? US birth rate lowest in 100 yrs

Milkwujee [sic]: The US birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century. Births fell 2.7 per cent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report. The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That’s down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families. “It doesn’t matter how you look at it — fertility has declined,” Ventura said.

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation’s history. The recession began that fall, dragging stocks, jobs and births down. “When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University. “It could take a few years to turn this around,” he added, noting that the birth rate stayed low throughout the 1930s.

As the report shows, it’s actually the lowest in a lot more than a hundred years.  But we’ll go with the lamestream media’s headline.  The REAL news here is that – while the low birthrate is being blamed on the recession – the birthrate is actually lower than it was during the Great Depression years (it was 21.3 births per 100 Americans in 1930, the year AFTER the Depression began).

The birth rate is shockingly down for not one but two years in a row.  Which is contrasted with 2007 (“Miss me yet?”),  when more babies were born to Americans than at any time in our history.  The Democrats under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would soon screw that up, however.

And now, Obama has not only crushed “hope” in America, but love as well.

Gotta ask: how’s that “Marxist as Moscow” “hopey changey” thing working out for ya here in “God damn America”?

The media is depicting this frightening news that American can’t replenish it’s population and is now going the way of the Dodo bird to the impact of the recession.  It’s the economy, stupid.  There’s only one problem with that: it wasn’t this bad in the GREAT DEPRESSION.

Now, I remember when Obama was campaigning for office and when he was trying to ram his stimulus – that he said would keep employment under 8% – through a Democrat-owned Congress.  Those were the days when Obama

… turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today’s economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

Obama got his presidency.  He got his massive stimulus boondoggle.  But he poisoned the well of American confidence in doing so.

For all his many failings – such as keeping the Great Depression going for seven years longer with his terrible economic policies – FDR was a man of incredible confidence who gave his people optimism in the future.  “Things are bad for us now,” he essentially said, “But we’ll lick this depression.  You just wait!”  And most Americans, perhaps gullibly given his awful policies, believed him.

Ultimately, FDR’s own Treasury Secretary and close personal friend Henry Morganthau, acknowledged the utter failure of FDR’s economic policies:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

But at least the people had confidence -however misplaced – in FDR’s leadership.

Unlike Obama, whom they have no confidence in at all.

I have said this many times, and said it quite forcefully hear only a couple of months after Obama assumed office:

At this point, Obama is demonstrating that he cannot lead. And in a way it’s not his fault; there was never anything in his life experience that indicated he could lead. Community organizer? Obscure Illinois State Representative [who used thug tactics to come from nowhere to claim the seat]? One-term Senator (who promised he’d serve his first six-year term but then ran for President after 158 days???)??? [….]

He is a total failure. We don’t have a leader, we just have a guy who campaigns for four years. The country will begin to increasingly drift until we get a real president.

And boy oh boy was I ever right.

Here’s a short list of news reports I came up with that revealed how America was in the grip of disaster while Obama was on vacation gripping a golf club:

• Jobless claims rise to highest level in 9 months.
• Pre-owned home sales drop 27.2% to lowest level in 15 years.
• New home sales fall 12.4% to weakest level since 1963.
• 1 in 10 homeowners with a mortgage are at risk of foreclosure.
• US foreclosures up 4%; top 300,000 for 17th straight month (Obama’s been president for 19 months).
• 14.42% of all mortgages either delinquent or in foreclosure.
• Foreclosures jump 25%.
• New durable goods orders excluding transportation post largest decline in 1-1/2 years.
• Frightening trend: Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default.
• 401(k) hardship withdrawals, loans SOAR.
• Dow Jones dips below psychologically-important 10,000 level.
• Nightmare ‘Hindenburg Omen’ triggered, but economic fundamentals just as scary.
• US unemployment figures increase fears of double-dip recession.
• Taliban in Afghanistan strengthening, spreading; violence surging.
• Top Marine General says Obama Afghan deadline gives sustenance to enemy.
• Spending baseline has increased $4.4 trillion under Democrat control.
• 2010 Federal Deficit Second Largest in 65 Years (2nd only to 2009).
• Trade gap widens, largest increase in imports in 26 years.
• Weak GDP raises fears, with Fed running out of options.

Did you notice how many of those new bad news releases reveal terrible numbers that go back decades?  And that things were NEVER this bad when Bush was president?

And here’s the headline that Obama finally comes back from the lap of luxury after his sixth vacation of the year to see:

Record number in government anti-poverty programs

And the story there:

WASHINGTON — Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

One major problem facing the country is that millions of Americans are glad that Obama is giving them welfare, versus the Americans who would rather have a president who leads the nation as a whole out of poverty and back to prosperity.

It’s not just Obama’s bad economy that is causing Americans to stop having babies and start fading away as a nation; it’s not even his terrible policies that are sustaining that bad economy; it’s his total failure of leadership that is creating this unparalleled lack of confidence in America’s future.

Fed Changes Mind After Changing Mind, Monetizing Debt Again As America Flushes Way To Ruination

First, the New York Times headline:

Fed to Buy U.S. Debt, Saying Recovery Has Slowed
August 10, 2010, 2:19 pm

The Federal Reserve acknowledged Tuesday that its confidence in the economic recovery had dimmed, and it announced that it would use the proceeds from its huge mortgage-bond portfolio to buy long-term Treasury securities, The New York Times’s Sewell Chan reports from Washington.

Bu bu but I thought Barry Messiah said this would be the summer of economic recovery.  I thought Barry Hussein had kissed the economy with his beatific wonderfulness and made it all better.

The fourth paragraph in the Slimes article underscores the fact that the Keystone cops of the Obama administration have absolutely no idea what they’re doing:

The Fed’s new stance marked the completion of a turnabout from a few months ago, when officials were discussing when and how to eventually raise interest rates and gradually shrink the $2.3 trillion balance sheet the Fed amassed through its response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Ben Bernanke came out back in February and had this finance fit:

Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress that the Federal Reserve does not plan to “print money” to help Congress finance the exploding U.S. national debt.  In fact, Bernanke told Congress that the U.S. could soon face a debt crisis as bad as the one in Greece if the U.S. government does not get things in order financially.  This represents a fundamental change in policy for the Federal Reserve, because they have been enabling the massive borrowing by the U.S. government over the past couple of years by “buying” the majority of new U.S. government debt that has been issued.  But now the fat cats over at the Federal Reserve have apparently changed their minds.  Using uncharacteristic bluntness, Bernanke told Congress that the Federal Reserve is “not going to monetize the debt”.So why is the Federal Reserve changing course?

Well, have no fear: the Federal Reserve is Re-changing course.  Like a boomerang that comes back around to smack an ignorant fool right in the head.  Perhaps they have come to realize that the U.S. economy is about to flush down the drain and plunge into a deep, dark hole, and they figure the fall might be softer if we land on giant piles of worthless currency.

Yes we’ll monetize the debt.  Oh no we won’t.  Oh yes we will.  Stop arguing with me!  But I am you!

I thought the following was a good article due to its provision of a historic context for today’s Fed decision:

Fed begins monetizing the deficit

The Federal Reserve, in announcing the results of this week’s meeting of the Open Market Committee, surprised the market by revealing it will begin purchasing US Treasury notes and bonds with the principal income it receives from its vast holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage securities. This practice – wherein the Fed buys up US government securities and injects cash into the public market as payment for these securities – is a form of monetizing the debt. The last time the Fed did this on a big scale was back in the 1960s when it attempted to mop up the excess Treasury securities that were flooding the market as a result of Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to finance the Vietnam War. That Fed program was viewed at the time as a failure, since the cash the Fed put back into the economy in exchange for the securities was a big reason – perhaps the major reason – why price inflation accelerated from the late 1960s until a decade later, when Paul Volcker managed to squelch inflation once and for all with forbiddingly high interest rates.

The market was expecting some sort of monetary stimulus, but not this. The expectation was that the Fed would renew its “quantitative easing” program involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities – a program designed to push down long term mortgage rates. That program was successful inasmuch as mortgage rates are at record lows, but it left the Fed with well over a trillion dollars of these securities on its balance sheet. Fed officials have lately been pondering publicly how to get rid of these securities, and apparently have concluded they can’t under present market conditions without forcing mortgage rates back up again, which would only hurt the housing market. Instead, these officials have concluded that the Fed has no choice but to hold on to these securities until they mature, which is well over 10 years from now for the portfolio.

The Fed receives billions of dollars of principal and interest payments every year on this portfolio, and what to do with this cash has always been open for discussion until now. But using principal proceeds from these securities to monetize the government debt is fraught with risk. For one, should the housing market start to weaken again and foreclosures rise from current levels, the Fed will be sitting on billions of dollars of credit losses on its portfolio. This could eat up most if not all of the profit it would otherwise earn on this portfolio. Second, older investors have memories of the nasty inflationary consequences the last time the Fed monetized the debt, and the market has become very skittish about the risk of inflation, and maybe even hyperinflation ala Weimar Germany, that could result from the enormous fiscal and monetary stimulus put into the economy since 2007.

In terms of these risks, the best thing the Fed has going for it at the moment is that the pricing problem facing the current economy is not inflation, but deflation. A growing number of economists, and even some Fed governors, are worrying outright about deflation, but at least in a deflationary environment the Fed is given a lot more leeway to monetize the debt and build up its balance sheet as a consequence. The Fed press release today did not mention deflation per se, but the FOMC no longer described the economy as “progressing”, as it did in June. Instead, the Fed sees an economy with substantial slack, a stagnant housing market, repressed earnings power for workers, and very low inflation.

The bond market was happy to buy Treasuries on this news, concentrating in the 2 to 10 year maturities, in anticipation of higher prices (and thus lower yields) once the Fed begins actively purchasing. So far, in other words, the bond market sees no risk of inflation, much less hyperinflation, and is content to see yields continue to head to record low levels. Such excessively low yields on government bonds have only been seen in deflationary economies like Japan has experienced for nearly two decades. This is in essence what the bond market is forecasting for the US economy.

The stock market, which has been on a tear since early July, took this news in stride, but time and past experience is weighing heavily on this stock rally. When bond yields fall to record lows, this has never boded well for equities. In a deflationary economy, stock prices are one of the main victims, and the US stock markets have so far shown no significant adjustment downwards to reflect deflation. Stocks may have some serious “catching up” to do.

At the least, we can say we are no longer in that environment in the spring when Fed governors were talking seriously about how they were going to remove all their monetary stimulus now that the economy has recovered. Instead, we are witnessing yet another round of monetary stimulus, a recognition by the Fed that their previous efforts have failed to ignite a sustainable recovery.

All this from the Federal Reserve, an entity that is neither “federal” nor a “reserve.”  It is a private bank that issues currency based on fiat of delegated institutional power.  And what it is doing now is akin to photocopying a dollar bill to pay a credit card bill.  Another analogy would be if you were facing bankruptcy, and decided to start buying your own furniture from yourself.

Mind you, this is only partly the Federal Reserve’s fault.  They are in an impossible position as the Failure-in-Chief continues a path of spending America into collapse, and they have to figure out how to finance Obama’s addiction.

The Obama administration alternately fearmongered and promised that if the stimulus was passed that unemployment would not rise above 8%.  They lied.  The rate has been dropping from an earlier high exceeding 10% only because discouraged workers who give up are paradoxically dropped off the roles and aren’t counted.  Then they spent months creating pure fictions such as “created or saved” as “evidence” that Obama’s failed policy had succeeded.

To quote:

“One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called `jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason…” – Allan Meltzer, professor of political economy

“There is no way to measure how many jobs are saved.” – Harvard economics Professor Gregory Mankiw

Then Obama spent months telling us that the economy was recovering when it really wasn’t, culminating in his bogus “summer of economic recovery.”

This is an administration that falsely takes credit for a false recovery even as they falsely blame Bush and refuse to accept responsibility for their own policies.  It’s “win, we win, lose, Bush loses.”

These people should have zero-point-zero-zero credibility.

CBS Poll: Only 40% Approve Of Obama On Economy

Obama keeps talking about “moving forward.”  But only an increasingly shrinking minority of Americans want to go anywhere with him.

From CBS:

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

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Economists have declared the economic recession over largely over, but most Americans don’t share their optimism, and they are increasingly blaming President Obama for their money woes.Mr. Obama’s approval rating on the economy has tumbled five percentage points from last month, according to a new CBS News poll, with just 40 percent of those polled expressing full confidence in his actions.

More than half of those questioned (54 percent) said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy. Last month, 45 percent approved. The drop in approval has been seen mostly among independents, just 35 percent of whom now say they approve.

Three in four Americans think the effects of the recession will linger for another two years or more. Just 20 percent said they believed the recession’s aftereffects would continue to weigh on their lives and livelihoods for another year or less. The public is generally more pessimistic now than in February.

The national unemployment rate continues to hover just beneath the 10 percent mark, and it is estimated that many more Americans are underemployed – meaning they have given up looking for a full-time job, or are working fewer hours than they would like.

The poll shows widespread concern among Americans when it comes to employment. Seven in ten Americans rated the job market in their area “fair” or “very bad”; only a quarter of those polled described it as “good”.

There did appear to be some optimism that the job market would improve over the next year — but not a lot. While 28 percent said they expected the job market in their area to get better over the next year, twice as many — 56 percent — said it would likely remain the same. Another 14 percent predicted even fewer available jobs in the coming years.

CBS News Poll Database

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This poll was conducted among a random sample of 966 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

Gee, Obama.  So much for your “summer of recovery.”  Got any other crap-sandwich assurances for us?

You can’t lie and weasel your way out of this one.  You’ve kept giving us “Are you going to trust me, or are you going to trust your lying eyes?” rhetoric.  And, well, we’re finally starting to open our eyes.

More than 70% of Americans say that the job market stinks in their area.  You promised us hopey-changey.  But more and more Americans are giving up even bothering to look for work in your Obamanomics nonsense.

As the job market in the United States continues to shrink more and more Americans are simply giving up hope. This is great news for the unemployment rate but for many jobless it leads to breadlines and homelessness.

The jobs are not coming back! The United States job market must add 125,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with young people entering the jobs market. For “recovery” to happen the United States would need to add closer to 250,000 jobs monthly. This is simply not going to happen. […]

The unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent, the lowest level since July 2009. But it fell because 652,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren’t counted as unemployed.

Even your very own Vice President is saying that you’re not going to do a damn thing to bring back the eight million jobs that have been lost, Barry Hussein:

Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.”

Which is a pretty good way of realizing that your crappy policies are useless.  Why look for work when there’s “no possibility” to restore the lost jobs under Obama Hussein?

And, heck, more and more Americans (maybe after listening to all of your disgraceful apologies around the planet for how awful America has been) are just renouncing their U.S. citizenship altogether:

WASHINGTON — Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.

“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group based in Geneva. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”

I guess you’re going to have to redouble your already maximally demagogic rants blaming Republicans for everything.

The mainstream media propaganda depicted you as transcending the political divide and rising above petty politics, Barry Hussein.  But all you’ve gone is demonize and demagogue a now increasing majority of the American people.

Obama’s Vicious ‘Elder Abuse’ Political Attack Against IG Gerald Walpin

Last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which was designed to strengthen protections for IGs, who have the responsibility of investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse within federal agencies, against interference by political appointees or the White House.  Two things the act provided was 1) that Congress be given 30 days notice before any firing; and 2) that specific cause for firing be given.

Barack Obama co-sponsored that act.  But now that he’s president, he apparently thinks himself to be above such petty limits, given his reaction to an Inspector General whose investigation just concluded that one of Obama’s personal friends had abused nearly $900,000 in government funds.

According to Washington Examiner journalist Byron York, “Walpin was told that he had one hour to either resign or be fired.  Senate sources say Walpin asked why he was being fired and, according to one source, “The answer that was given was that it’s just time to move on.  The president would like to have someone else in that position.”  Walpin declined to resign.”  The White House tried to muscled Walpin out of his job, and only began to follow the law after Walpin refused and public pressure was placed on them.

Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the White House:

“I was troubled to learn that [last Wednesday] night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated,” Grassley wrote.  “As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions.  Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure.  This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny.”

The Democratic Senator who actually authored the law that mandates that the president give Congress 30 days’ notice before dismissing an Inspector General, along with an explanation of cause, Senator Claire McCaskill, said as of June 16:

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service.  The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal. ‘Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.  I’m hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible.”

When Gerald Walpin was told about the “loss of confidence” explanation, he said, “That’s a conclusion, not a cause.”

And that’s when the White House issued a different reason for removing Inspector General Walpin.  White House special counsel Norman Eisen on June 15 said:

“Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions, and exhibited other behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve.”

Which is essentially an argument that Gerald Walpin is too senile to do his job.  The Washington Times points out that this answer as to cause by the White House “treads on exceedingly shaky ground that raises the specter of improper age discrimination.”

Glenn Beck, during the course of his TV program on June 17, pretty much proves that it is nothing SHORT of a vicious personal attack as well as “improper age discrimination.”

Beck: You had this meeting [the meeting in which Walpin was called ‘confused’ and ‘disoriented’] in May.  And then they asked you to give a 20 minute speech, where you got more time than the head of the corporation, right?

Walpin: That is correct.  That’s what I was told.

Beck: So why would they do that if you were confused?

Walpin: It’s idiotic.

Beck: They’re trying to besmirch this man.  So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you the test.  This is the state examination.  If Grandpa comes in and he’s like, “Ooh, I’m drooling and I’m – peanuts? Where did I lost my shoes?” That’s when you go to the hospital and they give Grandpa this test.  Let’s do it.  I’m going to do it exactly the way they do it in the hospital.

Beck proceeded to give Walpin the assessment test live on the air.  And Gerald Walpin demonstrated rather conclusively that he was neither ‘confused’ nor ‘disoriented.’

Personally, I think the American people should use the same line of reasoning, citing Obama’s mention of having visited all 57 states as proof that he is too confused and disoriented to do HIS job.

The Washington Times has an article entitled, “IG Witness Blows Up White House Excuse” that reveals the shocking pattern of transparent deceit used to try to destroy a good and honest man.

HotAir offers the following concise account as to what happened prior to Gerald Walpin being dismissed for being older than retarded:

Let’s unwind the timeline a bit to test this new allegation.  Walpin pressed hard to prosecute Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson for defrauding the government over more than $400,000 in community service grants.  Johnson, an Obama supporter, got a deal from the White House that allowed him to manage federal funds again and avoid paying back at least half of the grant money he used illegally.  The White House cut Walpin out of those negotiations, and Walpin went to Congress about it.

At that point, the White House called Walpin and told him he had an hour to resign or be fired.  Now, if the White House thought that Walpin was somehow incapacitated or disoriented, why bother to make that call at all?  In fact, wouldn’t an employer with an ounce of empathy send the employee to a physician for diagnosis first?  Even without the empathy, the proper course would have been to address the issue with Congress first instead of making an intimidation attempt to someone the White House now paints as all but senile.

This is nothing more than a bare-knuckled smear job, a despicable attempt to use allegations of mental illness to discredit someone who ran afoul of Barack Obama for taking the independence of his job seriously.  That may play in Chicago, and it used to play in Moscow, but it shouldn’t play in Washington DC and America.

Michelle Malkin further unloads on Obama:

Far from being “confused” and “disoriented,” Walpin is clear as day. Anyone who actually reads through his audits and investigative reports knows that. You can, should, and must read Walpin’s reports both on CUNY funding abuse and on the Johnson scandal here.

I also continue to hammer at the Michelle Obama angle. Her vested interest in propping up the government-subsidized volunteer industry stretches back to her days leading the Chicago non-profit Public Allies (scroll down to the end of my column for what the AmeriCorps’ inspector general found while investigating money troubles at Mrs. O’s old friends at Public Allies). And we can’t forget her days working to promote national service — and to set up cozy public chat forums with her husband and Weather Underground Bill Ayers — while at the University of Chicago.

Last week, I said this reeked of the Clintons’ Travelgate. It’s much, much worse.

That’s right.  The “Michelle Obama” angle.  A video that everyone should have watched BEFORE the election (along with a serious consideration of her views and attitudes) comes into play.

Surprise, surprise: the Chicago political power couple know how to play Chicago politics!

Do you remember how Democrats came unglued when George Bush fired seven US Attorneys who served at his pleasure?  In spite of the fact that Bill Clinton had previously fired every single one of NINETY-THREE US Attorneys and replaced them?  The Democrats charged that he singled the seven attorneys may have been singled out.

This is a clear case of singling out and punishing one man who initiated an investigation that DOCUMENTED that Obama friend Kevin Johnson abused $850,000 in AmeriCorps grant money.

This is the height of the politics of personal destruction.  Every American should be outraged; but in particular, every older American should be out in the streets for such a vicious personal attack on a VERY alert and intelligent older man.  If you’re an older worker, and you don’t want some young punk doing to you what Obama is doing to Walpin, you should be flooding the White House with angry phone calls.

This isn’t Bush’s firing of seven US attorneys; this is Nixon’s Midnight Massacre.

Hillary Clinton: Good Speech, But Not Much Of An Obama Endorsement

Hillary Clinton gave a pretty good speech. She presented her case for her candidacy, citing all the reasons why she ran and all the aspirations she had for America. And she said that those same reasons were why she now supported Barack Obama. She did outwardly all the things the Obama people wanted her to do.

But she didn’t do any more than the minimum.

The McCain campaign jumped all over what Hillary Clinton didn’t say:

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds responded, “Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief. Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead. Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president.”

I  took notes on an interesting discussion  on Fox News.  There analysis was insightful about what Hillary didn’t do.

The interesting thing about this speech is that she could have given it about ANY Democratic nominee. It could have been given of John Edwards or Joe Biden or Bill Richardson. She didn’t say a word about him as a person. She didn’t talk about what she’d learned about his character over the last 18 months. She didn’t trace his biography and tell us what about his character or experiences would make him fit to be President. She never said she respected him. She never said she had confidence in him. She never said he was ready to be president. She never said she’d come to have confidence in him as Commander-in-chief. She never claimed he was experienced or ready to lead. And in the past she has said that he WASN’T ready to be president, ready to lead, ready to be Commander-in-chief.

In the end, Hillary Clinton supported Barack Obama for President because he is the Democratic nominee for President. She would have supported Daffy Duck if Daffy Duck were the Democratic nominee.

Interestingly, she said Michelle Obama would make a great first lady. She never said the same about Barack Obama making a great President.

It was a minimalist endorsement, and she didn’t go one iota beyond what she needed to.

Contrast Hillary’s speech endorsing Barack Obama with Barack Obama’s speech introducing Joe Biden.

Heck, the last quarter plus of her speech presented her historic role as the first major female candidate for President. “This is the culmination of the women’s movement of 1848.” That sort of thing. That was the rhetorical high point of the speech.

The speech didn’t in any way culminate with a presentation of Barack Obama’s vision for America. In the end, the speech was more about Hillary (and Hillary supporting the Democratic Party) than it was about Barack Obama as the candidate for President.