Democrat Points Out Fact That No One In The Obama Administration Knows Anything About Actually Running A Business

This is coming from Senator Blanche Lincoln, who basically is just beginning to realize that she doomed her re-election bid by helping Democrats try to jam ObamaCare down her constinuency’s throats.  But a Democrat is a Democrat, and using the Democrat logic that a single Republican voting for one of their bills makes it “bipartisan,” it is therefore a “bipartisan” recognition that Obama’s White House is completely business illiterate:

Lincoln presses Obama on party ‘extremes’ at Q and A
By Jordan Fabian – 02/03/10 12:00 PM ET

Centrist Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) on Wednesday asked arguably the most contentious question during a discussion between Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama, hitting at conservatives and liberals.

Lincoln, who faces a tough reelection fight, asked Obama to push back against “people at the extremes” of both parties, especially against Democrats “who want extremes.”

She also took a swipe at Obama’s White House, referencing a constituent who “fears that there’s no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and make a payroll on Friday.”

Lincoln faces a steep reelection bid in 2010. She trails the likely Republican nominee, Rep. John Boozman, by 23 points and has only a 27 percent approval rating in a recent poll.

Obama responded by defending steps his administration has taken to right the economy and said “Moving forward, Blanche, what you’re going to hear from some folks…[is that] the only way to provide stability is to go back and do what we did before the crisis.”

The president reiterated that he would not return to past policies.

“If the price of certainty is for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression…the result is going to be the same.”

But Obama conceded that “Blanche is right that we sometimes get bogged down in ideology.”

Obama’s last statement immediately above reveals the mockery of his core promise as a candidate for president that he would be post-partisan and would reach across the divide.  He has done absolutely nothing of the sort, and has instead created the most poisonous partisan environment ever recorded in a president’s first year.

But I want to return to Blanche Lincoln’s “fears that there’s no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and make a payroll on Friday.”

Ouch.  The truth hurts when you stink on steroids.

It’s significant that this is a bipartisan statement which Democrats now share with Republicans.  Democrats were shrilly running every campaign against George Bush.  Oh, everything was about “Bush’s failed policies.”

Now Democrats are running away from Barack Hussein just as frantically.  And now all of a sudden everything is about Obama’s failed policies.

A full year into his presidency, Obama has lost more jobs in a single year than ANY president ever lost in a ANY year since records started being kept in 1940.

And at the very same time he’s destroying jobs while offering the most pathetic assertions to the contrary, he is presiding over the most insane deficit-laden government spending spree in the history of the human race.

Businesses understand that in the real world, you can’t avoid disaster by printing your own money.

And so you’ve got the DemocRATS jumping off the sinking ship.

You’ve just GOT to love the poetic justice.

Blanche Lincoln also has the virtue of being completely correct: the most “anti-business” administration in our nation’s history has the least actual real world business experience of any administration in history.

From National Journal Magazine:

Critics say that one area where the Obama team lacks luster and diversity is in the realm of business. Few of his key people can point to significant business experience. In 2001, Bush had four former CEOs (including his vice president) in the Cabinet: career Texas oil man Donald Evans at Commerce; Treasury’s O’Neill, who had run Alcoa for almost 15 years; and Defense’s Rumsfeld, who had spent some 15 years at the helm of three businesses, including the international pharmaceutical firm G.D. Searle. Cheney had been CEO of the oil-services and construction giant Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Even Bill Clinton recruited from business: Thomas (Mack) McLarty, CEO of the natural-gas company Arkla, became his chief of staff, and Hazel O’Leary, an executive vice president of a Minnesota utility firm, was his Energy secretary. (They failed to distinguish themselves in those posts, however.)

It’s actually far, far worse than that.

You want to see how the Obama administration compares to others in having people with actual business experience making decisions and running things?

Here are the percentages of people with private sector business experience serving in previous administrations:

T. Roosevelt…….. 38%
Taft………………….40%
Wilson …………….. 52%
Harding…………….49%
Coolidge………….. 48%
Hoover…………….. 42%
F. Roosevelt……… 50%
Truman……………..50%
Eisenhower………. 57%
Kennedy………….. 30%
Johnson…………….47%
Nixon………………. 53%
Ford………………… 42%
Carter………………. 32%
Reagan……………..56%
GH Bush………….. 51%
Clinton …………….. 39%
GW Bush…………. 55%

And the winner of the Chicken Dinner is…………..

Obama……………. 8% !!!

Yep! Thats right! Only Eight Percent!!!..the least by far of the last 19 presidents!! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what’s best for GM…Chrysler… Wall Street… and you and me?

How can the president of a major nation and society…the one with the most successful economic system in world history… stand and talk about business when he’s never worked for one?.. or about jobs when he has never really had one??!

And neither has 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers.! They’ve spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs….or as “community organizers” ..when they should have been in an employment line.

So when Blanche Lincoln points out that nobody in the Obama administration has any idea what it’s like to actually make a payroll, she’s completely correct.

What we have is a bunch of people who have either worked for egghead academia or the government their entire lives frantically pushing the buttons and pulling the levers of government to somehow stimulate businesses that none of them know anything whatsoever about.

Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton And The Amazing Chutzpah Of Barack Obama

You remember the Orwell novel 1984?  There was a vivid description of a “Ministry of Truth” that served the function of rewriting history via rewriting the news in order to make the past jibe with whatever Big Brothers current program happened to be.

Well, it turns out that Barack Obama needs a Ministry of Truth of his own.

Hillary Clinton – who repeatedly described having come under sniper fire in order to bolster her flimsy foreign policy credentials until it was revealed that no such event occurred – is about to become the Obama administration’s Secretary of State.

And if Obama just had one of those darned Ministry of Truths, he wouldn’t have to deal with what he USED to say about this incredibly qualified – oops, NOT! – woman who derived her entire career from her husband’s success.

The Associated Press had this:

Obama team repackaging Clinton after campaign digs

By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer Nancy Benac, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 30, 2:47 am ET

WASHINGTON – It wasn’t too long ago that Barack Obama and his advisers were tripping over one another to tear down Hillary Rodham Clinton’s foreign policy credentials. She was dismissed as a commander in chief wanna-be who did little more than sip tea and make small talk with foreign leaders during her days as first lady.

“What exactly is this foreign policy experience?” Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”

That was in March, when Clinton was Obama’s sole remaining rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Now, Clinton is on track to become Obama’s secretary of state.

And, unsurprisingly, the sniping at her foreign policy credentials is a thing of the past.

Obama adviser William Daley over the weekend said Clinton would be “a tremendous addition to this administration. Tremendous.”

Senior adviser David Axelrod called Clinton a “demonstrably able, tough, brilliant person.”

Last spring, though, Clinton was targeted with a steady stream of criticism via conference call, e-mail and campaign-trail digs from the Obama camp, all aimed at shredding her self-portrait as an experienced and confident leader on the international stage. Some of those doing the sniping will be taking up key positions — most likely along with Clinton — in the new Obama administration.

Greg Craig, selected to serve as White House counsel in the Obama administration, delivered a withering attack during the primaries on Clinton’s claims that she could rightfully share in the credit for some of the foreign policy successes of her husband’s presidency.

“She did not sit in on any National Security Council meetings when she was first lady,” Craig insisted in one conference call. He went on to knock down Clinton’s claims to influence in the Northern Ireland peace process, opening borders for refugees during the war in Kosovo, and making a dangerous visit to Bosnia.

“There is no reason to believe … that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton administration,” Craig wrote in a campaign memo.

Susan Rice, an Obama adviser who could land a spot in the new administration, mocked the idea that Clinton could lay claim to foreign policy credentials by marriage.

“There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are first lady,” Rice sniffed last March. “You don’t get that kind of experience by being married to a commander in chief.”

Clinton was only too happy to make light of Obama’s own foreign policy credentials, suggesting his biggest selling point was a 2002 speech against going to war with Iraq. “Many people gave speeches against the war then,” she said in a February debate.

Robert Gelbard, an adviser to the Obama campaign on foreign policy who worked in the Clinton administration, said in March that Clinton had more involvement in foreign policy than a lot of first ladies, but added that “her role was limited and I’ve been surprised at the claims that she had a much greater role.”

Well, never mind about all of that now.

“That was then; this is now,” said David Gergen, who has served as an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents. “Campaigns are ever thus.”

“Generally speaking,” Gergen said, “there is a recognition that campaigns bring a certain amount of hyperbole, and when it’s over you try to find the most talented people you can find to work with you.”

Clinton may not have been at the table when her husband made the big decisions, Gergen said, but “she’s been imbibing questions on foreign policy and decision-making since 1992.”

A spokesperson for the Obama transition team declined to comment on the shift in tone.

It also should be said that some of the wounds to Clinton’s foreign policy credentials during the primaries were self-inflicted, most famously her inflated account of the drama associated with a visit she made to Bosnia.

“I remember landing under sniper fire,” she recounted in a speech. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Soon enough, video footage surfaced of Clinton’s unremarkable airport arrival ceremony, where she was welcomed by dignitaries and posed for photos with children.

Clinton brought up the Bosnia trip to counter Obama’s suggestion that her experiences as first lady amounted to having tea at an ambassador’s house.

“I don’t remember anyone offering me tea,” she said of the Bosnia visit.

Clinton, in an April debate, blamed her Bosnia gaffe on campaign fatigue. But she did not back away from her claim to broad foreign policy experience as first lady.

“I was not as accurate as I have been in the past,” she said. “But I know, too, that being able to rely on my experience of having gone to Bosnia, gone to more than 80 countries, having represented the United States in so many different settings, gives me a tremendous advantage going into this campaign.”

Well, maybe not in the campaign, as it turned out.

But maybe, just perhaps, as secretary of state.

I publish the full article here because – all jokes aside – the media does a plenty good job of purging truth all on its own when their articles disfavor Democrats and liberals.  They’ll keep articles damning Republicans for decades, but those casting a negative light on their ideological heroes and heroines tend to get purged rather quickly.

Barack Obama’s political genius lies in his understanding how incredibly stupid the American people are, and in recognizing how quickly such stories are either dropped or simply vanish (such as this one, which used to contain the link to a story exposing Planned Parenthood’s racism until the American media version of the Ministry of Truth kicked in).  But the problem is that long after the articles describing Obama’s hypocrisy and Hillary Clinton’s inadequacy for the critical Secretary of State position are gone, she’ll still be the most inexperienced American foreign policy representative of the most inexperienced American President in history.

What has Hillary Clinton really run – besides the disastrous socialized health care commission that she ran so poorly that it couldn’t even produce legislation during a time of Democratic control of Congress?  And she’s going to bring those executive leadership skills with her to running the State Department?

We won’t even NEED a crisis to have a disaster.  But God help us if we experience an actual crisis.

By the way, I found the following Snopes article detailing Hillary Clinton statements a fun read.

Obama Doesn’t Have Enough Experience To Deliver

The experience issue continues to be a problem for Barack Obama, according to polls:

The poll suggests that perceived inexperience is more of a problem at the top of the Democratic ticket than in the No. 2 spot for Republicans.

Eighty percent say McCain, with nearly three decades in Congress, has the right experience to be president. Just 46 percent say Obama, now in his fourth year in the Senate, is experienced enough.

Are You Suffering From Barack-Sarah-Hillary Confusion Syndrome?

I was having headaches, and my brain constantly felt like it was spinning around in my skull.  So I visited my doctor this morning.  The doctor asked me a few questions, and then nodded.

“You’re suffering from Barack-Sarah-Hillary Confusion Syndrome.  I’ve been getting cases since last Friday.”  He chucked.  “At this rate, I’ll be able to retire early.”

I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded really bad.  “Is it serious?” I asked.

“Well, a couple of patients’ heads actually exploded.  They were trying to reconcile too many contradictions.”

The word “contradictions” combined with “Hillary,”  “Sarah,” and Barack,” and suddenly my symptoms returned.

Experience: Where Sarah Palin Is Sorely Lacking

You may have heard that one or two liberals believe that Sarah Palin is “dangerously lacking” in certain essential features that would qualify her to be our next Vice President.

Peter from Dover, New Hampshire helped me to realize that Sarah Palin is lacking in a number of important experiences.  To many, this list is more than enough to disqualify her from high office:

1) You have probably heard about Sarah Palin’s baby born with Down Syndrome, her daughter who became pregnant at age 17, and maybe even about her son who is about deploy to Iraq as a U.S. Army infantryman.  Unfortunately,  Sarah Palin lacks a kid who lobbies her for sweetheart deals the way Joe Biden’s son lobbied him for the 2005 Bankruptcy law “overhaul” that has been recognized to be directly responsible for causing the foreclosure crisis that screwed hundreds of thousands of poor suckers out of their homes.

2) Sarah Palin is sadly lacking in terrorist friends who that helped her get her start in politics and wish they blew up more of the country like Barack’s friend William Ayers.

3) Sarah Palin – in spite of all hope to the contrary – is lacking in criminal friends who helped her buy a million dollar house amidst extremely suspicious circumstances and are on their way to jail like Tony Rezko.

4) Sarah Palin – in spite of her known religious beliefs – is lacking a reverend and long-time mentor who harbors profound racist prejudices and anti-American views like Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  If that isn’t bad enough, she chose to attend a church which worshipped Jesus rather than one that pursued radical Marxist theology and black separatism.

5) Sarah Palin is lacking a spouse who says he has never been proud of his country in his adult lifetime, says that America is downright mean and guided by fear, and says that Americans hold on to ignorance and stereotypes.

6) Particularly troubling for many liberals is the fact that Sarah Palin actually chose to keep a baby with Down Syndrome instead of leaving it in a storage closet to slowly die of neglect, as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that Barack Obama voted against and would not allow to come up for a vote was written to prevent.

7) And what may be the worst of the worst – Sarah Palin is lacking a penis.  It is only appropriate to be a successful female politician if you are a Democrat, and only Hillary Clinton can run for the executive branch.  All Republican women desiring to make history must be destroyed by any means necessary.

For these and other reasons, Sarah Palin is clearly not qualified to run for Vice President according to Democrats.

It’s a shame, really.  I thought she would make a great VP.  But this lack of so many crucial experiences is simply devastating to her candidacy.

Experience: Obama Opened Can Of Something He Doesn’t Want To Eat

Early on after the Palin announcement, the Obama campaign went after her on her limited experience.  They seem to have backed off of the charge, but they left it hanging right over the plate like a bad change-up.

There’s questions like this on voters’ minds: Why does Obama have more experience than Palin? Well, put on your thinking caps.

Palin has led a city (albeit a small one) and a state (an ENORMOUS one with a small population – about the size of Biden’s Delaware, by the way).  Obama, meanwhile, has never run a city, never run a state, and never run a budget.

It’s frankly easier to do the same sort of thing on a larger scale than it is to start doing an entirely different sort of thing.  Obama has a short career as a legislator; Palin has a slightly longer one as a leader.  Palin was actually in elected politics 5 years before Obama.

Obama claims that his opposition to Iraq proves his judgment is better.  But if that is the test for good judgment, why did he pick Biden, who vigorously argued for the war?  And he showed terrible judgment in opposing the surge strategy.  And he didn’t really do so great with his “nuanced” statements about Russia’s invasion of Georgia, either.

Obama is out there now having to argue he has more experience than Palin, which really merely further underscores his lack of experience.

If anything, it’s kind of like standing in front of a mirror and shouting, “YOU’RE UGLY!”  I mean, dude, so are you.

Meanwhile, John McCain, who has a lifetime of valuable experience from both his military and government service, is the guy on the top of the Republican ticket.

Before Vice President Debate, Palin Already Beating Biden

Initially, 67% of voters didn’t have enough information on Sarah Palin to have any opinion whatsoever.  But after the rush of media coverage, 53% now have a favorable opinion of her, versus only 26% with an unfavorable opinion, said Rasmussen.

The most important quote:

“Palin earns positive reviews from 78% of Republicans, 26% of Democrats and 63% of unaffiliated voters. Obviously, these numbers will be subject to change as voters learn more about her in the coming weeks. Among all voters, 29% have a Very Favorable opinion of Palin while 9% hold a Very Unfavorable view.”

By way of comparison, on the day he was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden was viewed favorably by 43% of voters.

What I find significant about this is the two numbers – 53% and 63%.  We have never seen Barack Obama or Joe Biden – or for that matter John McCain – poll over 50% at any time.  Paliln’s pull with unaffiliated voters seems incredibly promising.

The full article followed by additional commentary appears below:

Democrat Says Sarah Palin Choice ‘Shockingly Irresponsible’

Democrat strategist and CNN commentator Paul Begala claimed that John McCain’s choice of Vice President is “shockingly irresponsible” and suggested that McCain is “out of his mind.”

He suggested that Democrats would launch an all-out attack on that basis.

Good.  Let’s make experience the issue.  Let’s make this years’ Presidential election a referendum over who has the most relevant experience.

I found Begala’s argument a classic example of concentrating so much on rhetoric that reality was discarded altogether.

On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 program, Begala attempted to make the argument that Sarah Palin had no experience in foreign policy.  And that it was “shockingly irresponsible to place her a heartbeat away from the Presidency.  When it was pointed out that, if anything, Barack Obama had even less experience, and that Barack Obama is actually running for President, Begala did not bother to respond to that issue.

Instead, he framed it this way: 18 million Democrats voted for Obama, which is another way of saying that 18 million voters decided that Obama did have enough experience.  However, in the case of Sarah Palin, only one man made that determination.  Therefore Begala could rest at ease with Obama’s experience, and legitimately attack Palin’s lack thereof.

Well, apart from the fact that 18 million other Democrats essentially voted that Obama didn’t have enough experience, there’s another problem: Barack Obama in actual point of fact doesn’t have any more experience than Sarah Palin.  If 18 million Democrats decided the world was flat, it wouldn’t make it so any more than if merely one did.

Not only has Sarah Palin been to Iraq, but she went there in her capacity as the head of the Alaska National Guard.  Obama visited Iraq as the head of nothing.

Further, Sarah Palin as Governor has actually negotiated with foreign governments, most notably Canada, Russia, Japan, and South Korea.  Can Barack Obama point to an official negotiation with a foreign government?

And, if it isn’t already obvious enough, Sarah Palin as Governor of oil-rich (as well as other experience in the energy field) is vastly more aware of the key energy issues than Barack Obama.

And most certainly, as Governor, Sarah Palin obtained incredibly relevant experience as a senior executive.  Nothing Barack Obama has ever done is comparable to Palin’s governing.  Campaigning for President does not qualify one to be president any more than applying for medical school qualifies one to be a physician.

So in considering Paul Begala’s frankly stupid claims, it’s rather hard not to have Shakespear’s “sound and fury, signifying nothing” quote come to mind.

The big political knock on Sarah Palin is that she doesn’t have a great deal of experience.  But, amazingly, that may become her greatest political asset, as unhinged Democrats, in decrying a candidate for Vice President’s lack of experience, actually underscore the lack of experience of their candidate for President.

John McCain just turned 72 today, it is true.  And he’s had skin cancer.  But he’s been given a clean bill of health, his mother is 96 years old, and skin cancer is generally only fatal if is allowed to advance untreated.

Sarah Palin, if elected, would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, it is true.  But no heartbeats would separate Barack Obama if he were elected.  Instead, the most inexperienced American President in the last century would immediately begin to run the country at one of the most critical periods in the nation’s history.

I have to laugh: an inexperienced Presidential candidate is fine.  But an inexperienced Vice Presidential candidate?  Well, there’s cause for all kinds of concern.

I don’t think John McCain minds allowing experience to be the central issue of the campaign.

One note: You can count on in-the-tank-for-liberals reporters asking foreign policy “gotcha” questions as a matter of routine between now and election day (something they somehow never got around to doing with Barack Obama).  Do you know who the President of Bolivia is?