Super Committee Fails To Come Up With Trivial Spending Cuts – Where Does The Buck Stop Again?

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Somewhere Else.”

Wait.  I’m sorry.  That’s Obama.  Truman’s sign said, “The Buck Stops Here.”

Where’s Harry S. when we need him?  Instead we’ve got an abject fool and failure whose only talent is pointing a finger at someone other than himself even when HE’S the man in charge.

The Super Committee has failed.  Wow.  Big surprise.  Congresss’ punting earlier this year didn’t result in their getting a touchdown.

Rep. James Clyburn, number three Democrat in the House, said, “The fact of the matter is Democrats have not coalesced around a plan.”  And how the hell were Republicans supposed to negotiate with Democrats when Democrats couldn’t even negotiate with themselves?  Democrats refused to even OFFER any entitlement cuts until the last possible minute.  Republicans, for their part, offered a plan that included increasing revenues.  The same Democrats that couldn’t get their own acts together voted it down.

This Super Committee was designed to fail from the very start.  And lo and behold, the Demgagogue-in-Chief crafted his campaign on running against a do-nothing Congress.

It has now been 935 days since Democrats have bothered to pass any kind of a budget whatsoever.  And we were supposed to believe that Democrats gave a flying damn about the budget.

Barack Obama has DOUBLED George Bush’s budget and TRIPLED George Bush’s deficit even as the fool demands FAR MORE SPENDING.  And we were supposed to believe that Obama gave a flying damn about spending or deficits.

But that’s the way this rigged game was played.  And now the game is played out.

Do you know what the cuts in spending Democrats refused to agree to amounted to?  About one percent.  They were looking for $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.  Given the fact that, under Obama, the budget has swollen to $3.729 trillion, which is $37.3 trillion over ten years.  Which amounts to a 3% cut in spending.

And there was never any way in the hell that Democrats will surely one day end up in that Democrats were ever going to agree to a 3% cut in spending.

Democrats say this is a revenue problem, rather than a spending problem.  It doesn’t matter than out the federal budget DOUBLED in ten years, which is to say that we are spending 200% more on government than we were ten years ago.

It doesn’t matter than the top one percent of earners are paying thirty percent of the taxes; “they’re not paying their fair” share no matter how much they’re paying because the people demonizing them are class warfare Marxists.

It doesn’t matter if entitlements such as Medicare are NECESSARILY GOING TO GO BANKRUPT inside of five years because Democrats abjectly refuse to do anythign to save that program.

It doesn’t matter if actual U.S. debt under this president now exceeds the entire GDP of the entire planet combined.

And it doesn’t matter if we are watching Europe fall apart before our very eyes due to the same damn socialism and inability to reign in spending that Obama and the Democrats demand America follow.

And where has Obama been?  What leadership did he demonstrate with these debt committee negotiations?

Besides create commissions, all kinds of commissions that have accomplished NOTHING.

Remember when Obama promised over and over and over again to transcend the political system and rise above partisan party politics?  The New York Times – clearly not conservative – said that that was Obama’s “core promise” to the American people:

WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.

To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.”

Is that what Obama delivered?  is it even close to what Obama delivered?  Even according to the liberal New York Times, Obama has fundamentally and profoundly broken his core promise to the American people.

2012 can’t come fast enough.  Because Obama is determined to campaign rather than lead or govern.  And this country needs to decide if it wants spending and socilaism and European failure, or whether it wants to finally pull its belt tight and cut out-of-control government and pull itself out of this mess.

The United States of America will not survive Barack Hussein Obama.  And he never really intended America to survive him.  No, the man who apologized for America while he set this country up to fail is using the Cloward and Piven approach of his fellow liberals.

The beast is coming.  He will be a big government liberal who will usher in the global government that liberals have always wanted.  And he will turn that big global government into total hell on earth.  And no human being who has ever lived will be more responsible for his coming than Barack Obama.

Obama On Downgrade, Market Plunge: ‘The Buck Stops With (Anyone BUT) Me’

A quote from Fox News Special Report on Obama’s remarks today:

“He didn’t offer much new or take responsibility for the exploding debt. …  The White House doesn’t seem to want to admit it’s been adding to that debt handily.”

Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner (that’s the guy who wasn’t smart enough or honest enough to pay his own taxes before taking a job making him responsible for everyone else paying their taxes) was asked if the White House accepted any responsibility for this disaster.  And nope (see also here for video):

Harwood: Do you feel that you or the administration’s policies are in any way responsible for this downgrade?

GEITHNER: Absolutely not. You’ve seen the president work incredibly hard and make really amazing progress trying to heal the damage caused by this terrible crisis. And you saw him work his heart out to try and bring both parties together to reach agreement on a long-term fiscal deal. Made some progress, didn’t solve it all, but a very good down payment.

Mind you, this is the same utterly clueless idiot – who represents the arrogance and stupidity of the Obama administration – who said there was “No risk” that the U.S. would be downgraded to begin with.

Nothing to see here folks.  The White House had nothing to do with any of this.  Don’t look to us for any answers.  Go talk to President Bush and blame HIM three years into the Obama administration. 

At the White House press conference, Jay Carney repeated the party line that no one should look to the White House to be responsible for anything.

On the TV circuit, Democrats repeatedly trotted (or is that “Trotsky’d”???) out the poll-tested talking point that this is the “Tea Party downgrade” because the Tea Party wanted to reduce America’s debt which is clearly stupid in any debt crisis, right?  I mean, so what if America’s debt just crossed the tipping point threshold of being more than its ENTIRE gross domestic product?!?!?

Democrats are crawling out to any mainstream media venue that allows cockroaches (that’s pretty much any mainstream media venue, mind you) and calls the Tea Party “terrorists.”  But the vote on the debt ceiling extension combined with the fact that Democrats never bothered to offer any plan of their own on top of the fact that they still haven’t come up with an F-ING BUDGET after 832 days really ought to point out that when they point a finger at us and call us “terrorists” three fingers are pointing back at themselves.

Democrats would have to quadruple in maturity to even qualify as “infantile.”

Sadly, Bush is the only president who is responsible for anything these days.  Did I mention we’re well into the third year of the failed Obama presidency?

Here are a few write-ups in the blog world that I found interesting:

50 Minutes Late Obama FINALLY Speaks About S&P,He Takes NO Responsibility More Lecturing and Blames Congress!

Barack Obama says the U.S. always is and always has been a triple-A country, despite its rating agency downgrade.

He said also the U.S. didn’t need a rating agency to tell it that it’s political system was having trouble functioning.

Speaking at the White House on the Standard & Poor’s downgrade, Obama renewed a plea to Congress to take action in September of help create jobs and cushion Americans from a still weak economy.

Obama said financial markets around the world “still believe our credit is triple-A.  I and the world’s investor’s agree.”

Well, if “agree” means “panic-selling that puts us into bear-market territory” with a 635 point smackdown that constitutes the sixth largest loss on the Dow in history, then Obama ISN’T completely out-of-touch with reality.

Obama offered no solutions whatsoever.  That after not bothering to speak at ALL for the entire weekened after the downgrade was announced on Friday, and apparently after showing up fifty minutes late to his own pony show.  The markets were down when Obama started speaking, and after he reasurred the world the markets pretty much said, “That’s it; we’re outa here.”

Obama’s Address to the Nation: Draws line in sand, there must be no lines in sand other than the ones I draw
Posted by William A. Jacobson   Monday, August 8, 2011 at 2:03pm

Barack Obama read a statement today, my paraphrases and quick transcription:
 
Disputes downgrade. Quotes Warren Buffett that U.S. should have AAAA rating.
 Need “balanced long term approach” — needed “day I took office.” Blames “prolonged debate over debt ceiling” for downgrade, and string of economic disruptions in Japan, Europe and the Middle East.
 
Solution is simple: “Tax reform that will ask those who can afford it to pay their fair share.” And “modest adjustments” to entitlements.
 
Not a lack of plans, “insistence on drawing lines in the sand.”
 
Most immediate concern of Americans is slow pace of recovery coming out of “worst recession” in our lifetimes. Extend payroll tax cut as soon as possible, and extend unemployment insurance payments. One million fewer jobs if don’t do this. Plus, more infrastructure spending.
 
These are proposals Republicans had agreed to in the past and should agree to now.
 
“This is the United States of America, no matter what some ratings agency says, we will always be a AAA country.”

So put on your make-believe pirate hats, boys and girls.  Because we’re going to live in a fun pretend world where we AREN’T downgraded and all of Obama’s utterly failed policies are just working swell.

I like the way the headline brings out that only Obama’s line in the sand demanding tax hikes will be accepted.  If you have your own ideas, you’re responsible for the crisis because OBAMA IS HE WHO MUST NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.

Obama set this crisis up in two ways: 1) he demanded the largest debt ceiling increase in history which in turn forced Republicans to demand concessionsn (see here for the historic asininity of that demand).  Just so he could get through the 2012 election for his own political ambition at the expense of the country; and 2) He NEVER offered his own plan and took any personal leadership whatsoever; and 3) he repeatedly used the horrific spectre of a “default” which forced Standard & Poors to take his idiot fool warning seriously.  Republicans repeatedly tried to assure the nation that we were never in any risk of default; on top of the fact that we had enough revenue coming in to pay all of our fundamental obligations, we could simply print more money if we truly had to.  But Obama chose to fearmonger and demonize us into this credit downgrade.

Mind you, I am asking the question that if “making the people who are already paying ALL the taxes pay their ‘fair’ share” is the answer, THEN WHY THE HELL IS SOCIALIST TAX-HELL EUROPE going down the toilet and out into the stinky sea?

Barack Obama NEVER bothered to offer a plan so that anybody could have any idea where he was at any point to actually intelligently negotiate with him.  His budget was such a sick, pathetic DISGRACE that it got voted down 97-0 in his own Democrat-controlled Senate.  And did I mention that Democrats STILL HAVEN’T BOTHERED TO SUBMIT A BUDGET AFTER 832 DAYS?!?!?

This downgrade is a national disgrace.  And the man with whom the buck stops whether he’ll ever actually accept any responsibility or not is the FIRST DOWNGRADED PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.  What I said remains true: this entire fiasco proves that Obama is dishonest, polarizing and in over his head.  And at no time has Obama ever once demonstrated ANY leadership whatsoever.

Let me ask you something.  I’ve said repeatedly that Barack Obama – the president of God damn America and the symbol of God’s wrath on this nation until this disgrace leaves office IN disgrace – would lead us into a Great Depression with his reckless and depraved spending.  Meanwhile, Obama, the Democrat Party and the left said that Obama would lead us unto a glorious recovery.

I’ve been pointing out since December 2008 right after Obama was elected that we would be staring into the abyss of a Great Depression due to this evil man’s failed policies.  I pointed out in that article that the Great Depression began with a market tank, followed by a series of failed liberal-progressive policies that were like sugar for a diabetic; at first things seemed to get better, and then we had the real crash.  You look at what I wrote in that article and tell me that we aren’t right on schedule. 

We have the worst economy since the LAST time a failed socialist ran it into the ground in the 1930s.  Surprise, surprise.

Let me point out that as early as October of 2008 I was pointing out the FACTS that CEOs “went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.”  Let me point out that I pointed out that same fact again in February 2009 after Obama’s foolish and wicked policies started taking shape.

Who was right?  And who has been totally full of CRAP from the getgo?

Conservatives have been right again and again and again and Democrats have continued to demonize us even as their own failed policies have kept failing just like we said they would.

Pawlenty on Obama: ‘You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.’

Tim Pawlenty just went way up on my list of candidates after that particular remark in my title.

Is Obama anti-business?  Well, how about this for a factoid: 77% of investors think he is.  He was anti-business in 2009.  He was anti-business in 2010.  And he is still anti-business in 2011.  How many eggs are you going to get when you’re out to get all the chickens and when the chickens know you’re out to get them?

Here’s an article that talks about this former governor who has been successful where Obama has failed, failed and failed some more.  What is interesting is how we hear Pawlenty talk about how to fix our broken economy, and Obama talking about wtf???

Republican presidential candidate Pawlenty: ‘We are in deep doo-doo’
By Abdon M. Pallasch Political

How badly has President Barack Obama managed the United States’ economy?

Pretty badly, says plain-talking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a campaign stop in Chicago Tuesday.

“We are in deep doo-doo. We are in deep crap,” Pawlenty said Tuesday, in a locale meant to drive home the Republican presidential candidate’s differences with the president.

In a classroom at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, located across the street from the law school where Obama used to teach, Pawlenty laid out his tax-slashing, budget-cutting proposal that he says will save the U.S. economy:

There would be only three tax rates: Zero, for low-income earners who currently pay no federal tax; 10 percent, for single people earning up to $50,000, or married couples who earn up to $100,000; and 25 percent, for people who earn more than that (down from a top rate of 35 percent now). He would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and end the estate tax.

Those tax cuts, plus a freeze on federal spending, would spur growth of 5 percent a year, he said.

Democrats immediately said Pawlenty’s proposed tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, who finished a speech on the North Side just before Pawlenty started his, credited Pawlenty with “good stagecraft” for holding the speech on Obama’s old stomping grounds. But he said Obama’s budget-fixing recipe is better.

Pawlenty “left his own state with a $5 billion deficit and now he’s counseling the rest of the country on how to handle finances,” Axelrod said. “He proposes massive new tax cuts for upper-income Americans … that would produce huge new deficits. He wants to replay the same formula that got us into the jam in the first place.”

But Pawlenty told the classroom full of students at the university that people should not focus on “whether this makes some group a little more wealthy or a little less wealthy. You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.”

Flirting with the so-called “third rail” of American politics, Pawlenty said he would raise the retirement age for younger workers to start collecting Social Security in the future. People nearing retirement now would not be affected, he said.

“If you’re coming in new to the work force, gradually, over time, we are going to raise the retirement age,” Pawlenty said. “If you’re wealthy, you’re not going to get the cost-of-living adjustment.”

Proposals that can be short-handed as “cutting Social Security” can kill campaigns, but Pawlenty said, “It’s going to be the ‘Jack Nicholson election.’” Referring to the movie “A Few Good Men,” Pawlenty said, “There’s that famous line when he’s on the witness stand and he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ The American people, I think, can handle the truth. It doesn’t mean we freak ’em out. It doesn’t mean we scare ’em. … I’m only doing this because I love the country. We’ll only get it to a better place if people are willing to tell the American people the truth. I am. President Obama isn’t. He’s ducking, bobbing, weaving.”

In a speech at the Misericordia, a home for children and adults with disabilities, Axelrod told the story of how, back in April, he and Obama were crafting a joke about Pawlenty for Obama to use at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The two were interrupted by a National Security Council staffer who had to brief Obama on something, so Obama asked Axelrod to leave the room.

When Axelrod came back in, Obama rejected a suggestion for a joke about how Pawlenty “could really be a strong candidate but for his unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.”

“ ‘That’s so hackneyed, bin Laden, that’s so yesterday, Why don’t we take that out,’ ” Obama said, Axelrod recalled. “ ‘We’ll put in “Hosni.’’ ’ ” Axelrod didn’t think that was as funny, but he agreed to it.

“It was only the next day that we realized that he had not only eliminated Bin Laden from the joke. He had given the order to eliminate bin Laden from the face of the Earth,” Axelrod told the crowd.

Later, speaking to reporters, Axelrod laughed when asked if he agreed with potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin, who said over the weekend that Paul Revere’s famous ride was an attempt to “warn the British’’ — that the British were coming.

“I think that’s a good reflection of why we can’t abandon education,” he said. “We need good education so everybody knows their history lessons and gets them properly.”

Pawlenty just laughed when asked the same question. He proceeded to a fund-raiser.

Well, first of all,we are – to put it in Pawlenty’s accurate term – ” in deep crap” – and the best Axelrod can do is talk about a joke that Obama’s people are going to go after Sarah Palin for an impromptu remark about Paul Revere when their guy is on the record saying he’d visited 57 states with one more yet to go?

And Obama’s going to talk about Pawlenty’s $5 billion deficit?  Seriously?  And just how many TRILLIONS of deficit does he have just so far???  Obama’s budget just for this term would add THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt.  From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.73 trillion budget Monday  for fiscal 2012 that he said will start reining in runaway budget deficits, but  his plan envisions the gross national debt swelling by almost $13 trillion over  a decade.

Obama’s budget sets up a clash with the  Republican-led House of Representatives over how to recover from the deep  recession of recent years and strengthen the economic foundation for the future,  with federal spending the pivotal battleground.

Obama added $3 trillion to the deficit in less than two years.  Another way to put it: In just nineteen months, Obama added more to the debt than every single US president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan – combined.

And this idiot is talking about $5 billion???  Like we’re not supposed to laugh our asses off and then impeach Obama as a clear and present danger to the United States?  Particularly when in fact Pawlenty in fact DID actually leave office with the budget balanced?  If you’re going to talk about devastating developments after the guy was gone – especially when that characterization is being made by the guy’s political enemies – at least have the courtesy to do the same sort of redacting with Bill Clinton’s legacy – who managed to take all the credit for balancing the budget but wasn’t in any way responsible for the disastrous Dotcom crisis that unfolded on his watch.

Which is to say, Democrats should either give Tim Pawlenty plenty of credit for balancing the budget or at least shut the hell up.

Tim Pawlenty as a man has a good, solid life.  And he’s got the background and the bona fides to get behind.  He is a candidate worthy of consideration.

On Cavuto’s Fox News program on Friday, Cavuto pointed out that the White House was questioning whether Tim Pawlenty was being realistic about whether he could create the kind of 5% GDP that he is talking about.  Pawlenty’s response was almost as good as his quip in my title.  I don’t have an exact quote, but basically he said “I’m an optimist, and I have an optimistic view of America’s future.  We’ve been great before, and I believe we can be great again.  And if Barack Obama could say that he was going to provide jobs for the all the jobless, slow the rising oceans, heal the planet, end all the wars and basically remake our nation, I think I can talk about doubling our GDP.”

Touché.

Tim Pawlenty wants to increase our GDP and grow our economy and create jobs by NOT being anti-chicken while claiming to be pro-egg.  In other words, the man actually makes sense.

Obama has spent three years demonizing and attacking businesses while demanding that they create more jobs.  That, by stark contrast, is 100% pure insane, no additives or preservatives.

Pawlenty wants profound tax cuts.  And while liberals want to ignore history and argue that the more you tax, the more you collect in tax revenue, Pawlenty cites the fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have dramatically increased our tax revenues.  See my article “Tax Cut’s INCREASE Revenues; They have ALWAYS Increased Tax Revenues” for that documented history.

Think of it in terms of gas (as I’ve argued before in more detail).  As the price of gas went up and up and up, did people buy the same amount of gas?  No way; they very quickly cut back on their driving.  If you increase the price of something, you sell less of it.  And in the same way, if you increase tax rates, you invariably end up encouraging counter-productive behavior, as the wealthy find it worthwhile to quit investing and instead pursue tax shelters and loopholes to protect their assets.

It is simply a repeatedly documented fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have ended up with increased revenues, as businesses and individuals were encouraged to invest because they were being rewarded with the ability to actually keep more of their own profits.  It comes down to this: if I give you a job, and you work hard, but at the end of the day the tax man comes and takes it all away, you’re not going to bother to take my job.  With total taxes exceeding 50% in a number of states, businesses and individuals are put in a position in which they take all the risks in hiring and investing – and if they lose they lose big – but even if they win they aren’t allowed to keep enough of their money to make the risks worth taking.

Democrats claim that the deficit has increased with lower tax rates.  And that is true.  But that isn’t the fault of the lower tax rates – WHICH AGAIN ACTUALLY INCREASED THE GOVERNMENT REVENUES DRAMATICALLY.  The bizarre argument that Democrats are making is analogous to the argument that the guy who lives in his parent’s basement and makes minimum wage and lives within his modest means actually makes more money than the multi-millionaire who buys multiple mansions, yachts and cars and then finds himself in debt.  It was the reckless spending that put us into the hole, not the tax policies that resulted in the politicians who spent that money having more money to spend.  Pawlenty is arguing that we need to profoundly cut tax rates and simultaneously have a balanced budget amendment and dramatically cut our spending.

That isn’t even mentioning the constant hypocrisy of the Democrats as they fail to live up to their own demagogic rhetoric.

Then there’s the issue of the Bush tax cuts.  Democrats say we’ve had the Bush tax cuts, and look what’s happened.  Two things.

First, consider this: Obama signed the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years on December 17, 2010.  Many experts believed Obama would be forced to do this as a result of the Republican landslide victory that changed the political landscape in early November.  So let’s look at what has happened to the jobless rate since November:

November 2010: 9.8%
December 2010: 9.4%
January  2011: 9.0%
February 2011: 8.9%
March    2011: 8.8%
April    2011: 9.0%
May      2011: 9.1%

Interestingly, Obama initially appeared to be reaching out to the business leaders he had been attacking.  After getting his head handed to him in November 2010, Obama began to reach out to Republicans.  And then in mid December, he began to reach out to business – with his signing of the Bush tax cuts extension a major part of that reaching out.  In early January, he appointed as his new chief-of-staff a man who had a “business-friendly” persona.

And the market, the investors, the businesses, ordinary Americans, liked what they heard.  The public clearly, overwhelmingly wanted to see Obama reach out to the party that had just won massively.  Republicans are the party of business; reach out to business.  Let’s get to work growing this economy rather than attacking the people who grow the economy.

But even as people liked what they heard, there was always a question, as asked in this case by CNN Money:

“So is Obama really changing his tune on big business? Or is the president merely glad-handing big business while plowing ahead with his 2012 goal of making the rich pay more?”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the business and investment community realized that Obama hadn’t changed his spots at all.  It’s either “same lies, different tune,” or “different lies, same tune” with this guy.

Before hardly any time had passed, “William Daley” became an afterthought and Obama was right back to attacking business with the same ferocity as before.

Obama’s senior economist Austan Goolsbee – now the FIFTH senior Obama economist to jump Obama’s HMO Titanic (with “HMO” standing for “His Majesty Obama” had this to say shortly before HE left.  And this according to an obvious liberal:

When Amanpour asked [Goolsbee] what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser:  we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

Goolsbee’s bottom line:  “It’s now up to the private sector.”  That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.

And, of course, that brief flash of clarity was immediately followed by Goolsbee’s resignation.  We won’t be having any anti-Marxist heresies on Comrade Obama’s watch, no sir commissar.

Just in case you’re wondering why the economy seemed to be improving before going back into the toilet, there’s your answer.  The people who actually create jobs began to think that Obama finally had some level of actual awareness about how the economy and business and job-creation works, before Obama slammed the door on that idiotic thesis.  They believed Obama’s lies right after the election, then Obama demonstrated (“dictated” is more like it) that he hates business as much as he ever did, then he renewed his war on business, and it’s right back into the crapper with the U.S. economy.

So there’s the backstory behind the economy appearing to improve before diving headfirst back into the gave.  Obama is right back to being “pro-job” but “anti-chicken.”

Up above, I said there were “two things” about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the economy.  The first point is that the extension of the Bush tax cuts DID work for five months of straight improvement – at least until Obama and the Democrats made sure that businesses and investors knew that they were as hated as ever.

The SECOND point about the Bush tax cuts – or ANY other tax cuts, for that matter – is that they have to be consistent and long-term before they will truly succeed.  This is because businesses need to know their operating environment before they will be willing to take risks such as hiring more workers.  They need to have a clear, long-term picture (most think at least five years) of what their tax liability will be.  And they need the same kind of knowledge about their health care liability and their regulatory liability.  If you start or expand a business, you’ve got one primary question: “Am I going to be able to make this work?”  And in order to answer that fundamental question, you need to know what your costs will be.

Obama signed the Bush tax cut extension for two years – and then very quickly went back on that signature by demagoguing the very thing he’d signed.  Will these tax rates be there for them in two years?  Certainly not, if Obama wins.  And there goes the window to make important investment/growth decisions.  Obama made sure that business owners wouldn’t have a long-term understanding of their taxes.  ObamaCare has thousands of pages being written as we speak; Obama’s regulations are being written as we speak; and nobody knows anything about how any of it will affect them.

Hence the paralysis.

Tim Pawlenty knows that no nation and no economy has ever had a recession that lasted forever – save when leftists have been allowed to run those nations/economies.  He also knows that economic growth and expansion are there just waiting for Obama to leave us the hell alone and get off our backs so that business owners can build better lives for themselves and their families – and create the jobs that result from those businesses growing – by allowing wealth creators to keep more of their own money.

He knows that if you really want to be pro-job, you had better be pro-business.  And that is something that Barack Obama has now proven he will never be, regardless of what he might say to the contrary.

[Update, 8/13]: Today, Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, versus Pawlenty – who had spent a lot more time and money – coming in a very distant third.

I can’t explain why Iowans basically walked away from Pawlenty, but I can tell you why I’ve been annoyed with him.  It’s simple: his non-stop attack on Michelle Bachmann.

You want to go after people, Tim?  Go after Obama.  Heck, go after Mitt Romney like a lot of people said you should have done during the first debate.  But to go after Michelle Bachmann is just dumb.

To not go after Romney and then go after Bachmann makes you look like a guy who was afraid to fight the star quarterback and then started punching a cheerleader to show you were still “tough.”

You’re trying to present yourself as a true-blue conservative.  Everyone KNOWS Michelle Bachmann is a true conservative.  So why go after her when you could be going after a Mitt Romney who has held whatever position made him look good at the moment?

To continue, some of your attacks against her are just stupid.  Like the one that Michelle Bachmann didn’t stop things like cap and trade and ObamaCare being passed in the House.  As if she was somehow the Imperial Queen of the chamber rather than one minority Republican (at the time) in a chamber with 434 other representatives.  That was just a plain dumb attack.

You finished a distant third, Tim.  Which apparently will allow you to survive.  But if you keep tee-ing off on Bachmann, you won’t be around much longer.

Think Of Obama As Drano, And The Democrat Party As The Nasty Mess Plugging Up The Toilet

Ba-rock Obama that’s the name
And there go Democrats down the drain

I remember not all that long ago when Obama was saying:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

But for all of his incredible personal arrogance and narcissism – and for all of his false promises to transcend and heal the political divide when he would actually become the most polarizing and divisive president in American history (see also here) – that wasn’t what “the moment” actually has come to represent, was it?  Rather, the Obama presidency “was the moment” that the entire Democrat Party began to sink to the bottom of the ocean (which is the definition of “a good start”) pretty much like a brick tied to an anchor.

A Failing Presidency and a Broken Party
Peter Wehner – 09.21.2010 – 2:15 P

This heartfelt comment and question, the first one President Obama received at a CNBC town hall gathering yesterday, may well become emblematic of the first half (at least) of the Obama presidency.

Ms. Velma Hart — middle class, a wife and the mother of two, a veteran, and an African-American Obama supporter — said this:

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted – I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I have been told that I voted for a man who said was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir. I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet. And I thought while it wouldn’t be in great measure, I’d feel it in some small measure.  I have two children in private school and the financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family. My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?

This was a very bad moment for the Obama presidency because it was such an honest and representative one.

Velma Hart is obviously no Tea Party activist. The town hall audience was undoubtedly vetted by the White House in advance of the event. So for Ms. Hart to frame the question she did, in the manner she did, was fairly extraordinary. And she was not the only person who asked searching questions of Mr. Obama. A recent law school graduate, Ted Brassfield, told Mr. Obama that he had hoped to pursue a career in public service, like Obama himself, but said he could barely pay the interest on his student loans, let alone think of getting married or starting a family. “I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought,” Brassfield said, “and that inspiration is dying away. And I really want to know, is the American dream dead for me?”

Having worked in the White House, I can assure you this is not what Obama and his team of advisers wanted to hear — certainly not from a hand-picked audience at an economic town hall forum that is being broadcast on television six weeks before a crucial midterm election.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a contributor to CONTENTIONS wrote this cautionary note regarding the new president-elect:

Sooner than he might imagine, and certainly sooner than he might wish, the responsibility for how America is performing will fall to him and his Democratic colleagues in the House and the Senate. A year from now, it won’t be enough to blame the problems on others. He and other Democrats ran and won on the promise that they would turn things around, and do so quickly. Those promises can’t be reeled back. Obama in particular has set a very high bar. Indeed, the expectations for “change”–in policies, in performance, even in the way we conduct our politics–is as high as I can recall … For understandable reasons, many people are being swept up in this remarkable American moment. But reality will intrude soon enough, and Barack Obama will face the same standards that every other President has faced. Incantations of “hope” and “change” can work in a campaign. They are virtually useless when it comes to governing. Barack Obama is about to enter the crucible. We’ll see how he performs.

President Obama has, so far at least, performed rather dismally. He set super-human expectations for himself — including his pledge to slow the rise of the oceans and begin to heal the planet, his commitment to resist the temptation to “fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long,” and to “transform” America at what he called a “defining moment.”

In some respects, of course, President Obama has transformed America — but in ways many American find alarming. What we are seeing all across our land is an extraordinary, organic movement rising up against Obamaism. If you go to the heart of this effort, beyond even the policy differences themselves, what you will find is an effort to restore America. It is a direct, energetic, and sometimes rambunctious response to the president’s transformational project, to his effort to remake America in his own liberal image and conforming to his own liberal views and values.

As we saw yesterday, at the economic town hall meeting, the hope and promise of Obama has collided with, and is being shattered by, reality.

Barack Obama is, right now, the architect of a failing presidency and, soon, a broken party.

I guess if termites, fleas, mosquitoes and cockroaches have a place in God’s creation, then so also must Barack Obama.  It appears that Obama is serving the role of the nasty, sticky, corrosive enzyme that dissolves rotting carcasses that would otherwise eternally pollute the system.

Democrats were skilled demagogues who – allied with the equally skilled propagandists of the mainstream media – knew how to propagate a lot of myths that continue to replace the truth a full decade later.

Democrats have had total control of both the House and the Senate since January 2007.  The last time the Republicans passed a budget (the Fiscal Year 2007 budget, passed in 2006), it had a deficit of $160 billion.  The very next year, Democrats passed a budget with a deficit of $459 billion – which was nearly three times the Republican mark they had attacked as “fiscally irresponsible.”  Now we’re looking at $1.6 TRILLION dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and Democrats in Congress aren’t even bothering to pass budgets anymore.

In other words, “What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats.”

And, of course, the other major myth that Democrats and their media propagandist allies have used to great success was that the Republicans were to blame for the economic collapse in 2008.

But Democrats weren’t held to account for any of their previous sins.

They were, rather, rewarded for their policies.  Because they could always blame the results of their disasters on Republicans, or on Bush.  And the media would always report the lies and partial truths as if they were actually true.

They’re still trying to do that now, of course, but, having complete control of the government now, that fecal matter simply isn’t sticking to the wall anymore.

Obama fearmongered a massive stimulus through Congress that is now widely recognize to be just as massive of a failure as it was massively expensive.  It was so wasteful that examples of disaster abound, such as the case in Los Angeles where $111 million in stimulus created a mere 55 jobs.  The Obama administration claimed that the porkulus would prevent unemployment from going above 8%, which is now known to have been a complete load of crap, and Obama turned away from jobs and the economy as though he’d crossed those items of the list.   And then he turned to imposing his even more disastrous and wildly unpopular ObamaCare on an American people who NEVER wanted it.

Jimmy Carter overloaded Congress with legislative proposals his first year in office, and Obama has been nothing if not the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency (and see also here).

Obama said of himself, “I serve as a blank screen, on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

But you’re not able to project whatever people want to hear anymore, Obama.  Unlike before – simply on account of the fact that you had no meaningful experience whatsoever – you’ve got an actual record, and we know who you are.  And we’re rejecting you by the millions.

And you’re taking the Democrat Party right down the drain with you.

Critical Failure Overload: Which Obama Failure Should We Focus On?

There seems to be a genius to Obama’s incompetence.  He is failing on so many levels, in so many ways, all at the same time, that nobody can possibly keep track of them all.

Which means, paradoxically, that the more failures Obama accumulates, the better he looks, as coverage of all the failure is dissipated such that nothing receives the focus it needs to penetrate the American culture of distraction.

A few days ago, the media hailed Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replacement by Gen. David Petraeus as a magnificent act of presidential leadership and decision-making.  Let’s not mention that the same figures on the left who were hailing Petraeus yesterday were demonizing him when Bush appointed him to take control over the Iraq War and the surge strategy that won that war.

Obama is turning to Bush’s general and Bush’s Secretary of Defense in order to overcome the failure created by utterly failed Democrat Party ideas.

Chief among those utterly failed Democrat ideas is the timetable for cut-and-run.  Democrats wanted to impose this guaranteed-to-fail strategy for Iraq, but Bush prevailed and won the war.  Now they want to make sure we lose in Afghanistan, as Afghans who want to stay alive realize who will still be there a year from now (i.e., the Taliban), and who won’t (i.e., the United States), and that they’d better not ally themselves with their “timetable for withdrawal” all-too-temporary American allies.

We find that the July 2011 timetable for withdrawal was a purely political decision that had no military justification or support whatsoever.

Of course, the failure in Afghanistan comes as a welcome relief to day 72 of the even bigger failure in the Gulf of Mexico.

The leftwing media is essentially shouting, “Hey, take your eye off that total failure over there on the Gulf Coast.  Look over here!!!  Obama fired a guy that pricked his thin-skin and appointed Bush’s general to save his liberal ass.  And he gave a speech!!!  Don’t waste your time thinking about the fact that BP took the cap off the leaking hole so that 104,000 gallons of oil per hour could pour out of the sea floor.  Don’t look at the possibility that as much as 4.2 million gallons of oil are pouring out of that damn hole Obama can’t plug every single day!!!

Come on!  Obama’s got Bush’s general now!!!  The one whom Obama and every other Democrat demonized three years ago while he was winning in Iraq!!!”

Well, go ahead and take a look at how terribly Obama is failing in Afghanistan.  Look at how Obama doubled Bush’s last body count in 2009, and how he is now on pace to double his own doubling of Bush’s body count this year.  Look at how terrible a job Obama is doing mismanaging the various top-level civilian and military personnel who are clearly not on the same page with one another as personal fiefdoms rather than the mission dominate (see also here).  The divisions – which underscore that Obama’s entire Afghanistan plan is in freefall – aren’t pretty.  And don’t forget to look at the fact that “Those divisions are of Obama’s own making, stemming from his lack of leadership and failure to make a firm commitment to victory in Afghanistan.”

While you’re at it, take a look at the fact that, by the standards Democrats used to attack Bush in 2004, Barack Hussein is the worst president in American history bar none.

The Obama-failure in Afghanistan is a distraction for the Obama-failure in the Gulf of Mexico.  And the Obama-failure in the Gulf of Mexico is a distraction for the Obama-failure in the economy.

Look at the fact that a full year and a half later, jobless claims continue to go up “sharply.” Look at the fact that new home sales have plunged to the lowest level ever recorded.   Look at the fact that that disaster followed the news that Obama’s mortgage modification program had officially imploded.  And look at the fact that bank foreclosures have doubled under Obama’s “wreckovery.”

One in four homeowners are underwater in their mortgages, and are increasingly just bailing out and walking away from their responsibilities in Obama’s God-damn-America.  Consumer confidence is down dramatically.    And oil prices are way down for the very bad reason that our economy is in such bad shape no one can afford to go anywhere.  And, of course, our stock market just took a very cold bath yesterday.

Where are we supposed to look to see an area in which Obama HASN’T failed?

Look at everything, if you have time to contemplate all the failure that Obama has brought.  But don’t be distracted from taking time to watch the spill cam footage every day, or following the latest tracking of Obama’s oil spill and its contamination of the Gulf Coast, or following the Obama-regime-caused inability to clean up the mess.

As you watch the daily disaster unfolding, don’t forget to remember that Obama is the guy running the show.  Or that the show looks like a chicken running around after its head has been cut off

Obama, How Have You Failed America? Let Me Count The Ways

I can’t get away from Obama’s arrogant boast from last year.  It has just been thoroughly destroyed too many times, in too many ways:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Let’s examine this on a clause-by-clause basis and see how Obama has fared:

This was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick? Another way to put it is “This was the moment companies dropped their health care coverage so every sick person could one day lay helplessly in their own filth on Medicaid.”

(Fortune) — The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we’re getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That to go along with ObamaCare now acknowledged to cost FAR more than Democrats falsely said, and along with the fact that this boondoggle has forced businesses to write down billions of profits that could have been used to create jobs.

Good jobs for the jobless? How about any jobs whatsoever for the jobless?  Unemployment was 7.6% when Bush left office.  Obama promised it wouldn’t get over 8% because of his stimulus, but he lied.  And now it’s 9.9% and unlikely to get much lower for a long time to come.

When the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal? Let me just say three words: Gulf of Mexico.  The oceans are rising due to millions and millions of gallons of oil that Obama has done nothing to even slow down.  I mean, my God: it took him like six weeks to even tell us that he was responsible.

This was the moment when we ended a war? How about this was the moment when we tried to take credit for George Bush ending a war? Just what war has Obama ended?  The general in command in Afghanistan says its a “bleeding ulcer” over there, and that “nobody’s winning.”  So it’s probably not that war.  And it’s hard to imagine he’s talking about North and South Korea, given the fact that those countries are on the verge of total war in a situation that has gone to hell during his misrule.  Nor is it likely he’s talking about Iran, given the fact that his fool policy that even his own Secretary of State once openly mocked as “irresponsible and frankly naive” has completely fallen apart, and now Iran can build nuclear weapons any time it wants to.

And secured our nation? Oh, yeah.  You’ve done a hell of a good job on that one, Barry Hussein:

Washington (CNN) — For the first time in nearly four years, a majority of Americans think that a terrorist attack is likely to occur somewhere in the United States in the next few weeks, according to a new national poll. . . .

Fifty-five percent of people questioned say an act of terrorism in the U.S. over the next few weeks is likely, up 21 points from last August. Forty-three percent said such an attack is not likely, down 21 points from August. . . .

The survey’s release comes one day after the Obama administration released its first National Security Strategy, a 52-page outline of the president’s strategic approach and priorities on battling terrorism.

And now here’s the very last one, tumbling into the toilet like the turd-in-chief is tumbling in the polls:

And restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.  Here’s what Obama’s “restoration of America’s image” actually looks like:

Japan’s prime minister resigns over Okinawa base
By Mari Yamaguchi The Associated Press
Posted: 06/01/2010 07:52:12 PM PDT

TOKYO – Embattled Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he was resigning over his broken campaign promise to move a U.S. Marine base off the southern island of Okinawa.

The prime minister had faced growing pressure from within his own party to resign ahead of July’s upper house elections. His approval ratings had plummeted over his bungled handling of the relocation of the Marine Air Station Futenma, reinforcing his public image as an indecisive leader.

Or let me put it this way: “You have restored America’s image, Mister President Obama-san.  We now revere your country as never before due to your most wonderful greatness.  Now will you please take all your American crap and your American prestige and get the hell out of our country?  It is only because we honor YOU so much, Obama-san, that we want America the hell out of Okinawa after being here for 65 years.”

“We had so much contempt for Bush – you see, we don’t even call him Bush-san – that we allowed America to remain during his presidency.  It is only because of our profound and deep admiration of you that we are kicking your ass to the curb now, Obama-san.  You are last, best, greatest hope on earth, Obama-san.  Now please not to let door hit your skinny ass on way out.”

So let’s tally up: fail until we die of socialist health care, fail big time until our unemployment benefits run out, fail all over the Gulf of Mexico and likely all over Florida and then the East Coast, fail until we cut and run, fail while getting ready for the next massive terrorist attack, and, finally, fail ingloriously all over the world.

I know, I know: I didn’t tell the truth.  I’m nowhere NEAR through with the list of all the ways that Obama has completely failed America.  Obama has failed to control spending as our deficit soars like a rocket ship.  Obama has failed to secure our financial system as our banks have closed at MORE THAN DOUBLE THE RATE OF LAST YEAR.  Obama has failed to act on illegal immigration.  Etcetera.  Etcetera.  Obama has failed his own rhetoric.  Obama has just failed, period.  Obama has even failed to kick his smoking habit.

Let me try to paraphrase Obama’s speech above in a way that properly corrects the record:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to realize that we had the absolute suckiest president in our nation’s entire history at the very time we needed a good one the most.

.

Turd-in-Chief Sinking To Bottom Of Toilet In Latest Poll

The Tennessee Valley just experienced its worst flood in 500 years.  At least 31 people were killed, and over $1.5 billion in damage was done to the region.

And Barack Hussein Obama never bothered to even show up and tell desperate victims, “I feel your pain,” before jetting back to the White House.

I mean, lest we forget, George Bush at least flew over the Hurricane Katrina devastation.

Now, maybe Obama has an excuse for not showing up in Nashville.  Maybe he’s too occupied in doing absolutely nothing to deal with the massive disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

From Politico:

The gulf oil spill catastrophe has entered a new phase, as Washington looks increasingly weak and unable to control the disaster or the political narrative.

Congress will do what Congress does best: hold hearings, express outrage and threaten subpoenas. The White House will continue to do what it’s doing – send out long, detailed memos to the media outlining “the ongoing response” to the oil spill. But BP and the Obama administration are married on this disaster – Coast Guard chief Thad Allen admitted that the federal government can’t take over the cleanup because it doesn’t have the expertise to take over.

Let’s see.  Obama took the most political contributions from BP over a twenty year period, despite having less than a three year career in national politics.  His administration approved of the BP project that blew up and started gushing oil.  His administration issued an environmental waver to the BP platform only eleven days before it went boom.  His administration did absolutely nothing for NINE DAYS while the crisis turned into a national disaster.  And as we speak, the Obama administration doesn’t have so much as a freaking clue about what to do for what is turning into the world’s worst oil disaster.

And let’s not forget that, only three weeks before this disaster exploded and spewed millions of gallons of oil all over us, that it was OBAMA saying “Drill, baby, drill.”

From ABC:

President Obama: Drill, Baby, Drill
March 31, 2010 6:01 AM

On Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Washington, DC, President Obama will announce that his administration will allow the lease sale to go forward for oil and gas exploration 50 miles off of the Virginia coast — the first new sales of offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic in more than two decades.

The Department of Interior will also allow seismic exploration for oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf from Delaware all the way South to the middle of Florida, to assess the quantity and location of potential oil and gas resources.  A White House official says that the president will also approve a lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, while canceling another lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay because of environmental concerns. (Lease sales in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are essentially being suspended pending further scientific review.)

The official says that “To set America on a path to energy independence, the President believes we must leverage our diverse domestic resources by pursuing a comprehensive energy strategy.”

So much for “blame Bush.”  Blame OBAMA.  His paws are all over this baby.

James Carville, a lifelong Democrat strategist, pretty much says Obama has failed in just about every possible way he could have failed.

CARVILLE: “The President of the United States could have come down here. He could have been involved with the families of these 11 people. He could have commandeered the things. We could have sent the Woods Hole people. He could have sent the Scripps on research vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. He could have implemented a plan in anticipation of this. You know, right, he can’t exactly fill the hole up. Last night I was on Larry King, the CEO, the former CEO of the Shell. They said they got 85 percent of the stuff cleaned up in the Gulf of Saudi Arabia. He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could the deploying people to the coast right now. He could be deploying people to the coast. He could be with the corps of engineers and the Coast Guard with these people in Plaquemines Parish, doing something about these regulations. These people are crying. They’re begging for something down here. And it just looks like he’s not involved in this! Man, you have got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this and get this thing moving! We’re about to die down here!”

I guess you weren’t doing anything that would have kept you from going to Tennessee, after all.

Just imagine if Karl Rove had said that about George Bush’s failure in Katrina.  Man, journalists would have been all over that the way Great White sharks get all over bloody meat.

According to the news, Obama has golfed every single weekend since the BP-Gulf disaster hit some 36 days ago.  At least he’s doing something, I suppose.

Meanwhile, North Korea is going rabid and escalating saber-rattling war tensions to a level that we haven’t seen in fifty years.  And, oh, yeah, Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons to go along with their being a terrorist state bent on international jihad.

And Obama’s policies in Afghanistan are bogging down, and only cut-and-run is looming ahead.  General Stanley McChrystal says Marjah “is a bleeding ulcer right now.”  And the access McChrystal granted to reporters “drove home the fact that President Barack Obama’s plan to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 is colliding with the realities of the war.”

Like virtually every conservative and every human being with a functioning brain cell was saying would happen six months ago.  Liberals have been arguing for years that we needed to have a withdrawal date so our enemies could know we were going to cut and run, and our friends would be made aware that we weren’t a reliable ally.  And whowouldathunk such a brain-dead strategy wouldn’t work???

The McClatchy article which has the above quotes goes on to say:

There aren’t enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that’s needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn’t dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.

“This is a bleeding ulcer right now,” McChrystal told a group of Afghan officials, international commanders in southern Afghanistan and civilian strategists who are leading the effort to oust the Taliban fighters from Helmand.

In other words, Obama, who demonized Bush up one side and down the other, and demonized Bush’s successful strategy that ultimately won the war in Iraq, is failing.  And hanging on his own petard.

What’s it like to be such a terrible president that you make George Bush look magnificent in comparison, Barry Hussein???

The disaster isn’t the troops’ fault; it’s the Commander-in-Chief’s.  Abraham Lincoln fired general after general until he found Ulysses S. Grant; the problem here is that Obama needs to shitcan Obama, only we all know he won’t.

Weakness is as weakness does.  Or, to put it another way, Obama’s foreign policy is “weakness through weakness.”

On the domestic front, our economy is circling the toilet.  Unemployment is up, mortgage delinquencies are up, and market leading indicators are mostly down.

Obama shoved his health care by way of an immoral and undemocratic process that has a whopping 63% of likely voters wanting repealed before it grows into an even bigger monster.

Then Obama demonized Arizona over its attempt to finally do something to stop the tsunami of illegal immigration which Obama clearly has no serious interest in tackling.  In spite of the fact that a massive 69% of Americans say the Arizona law is either “about right” or that it “doesn’t go far enough.”

That didn’t stop Obama from appearing with the President of Mexico – in spite of that countries’ incredibly harsh immigration policies – and join him in demonizing Arizona:

Well, at least Obama didn’t bow down to Calderone.  At least I don’t think he did.  He’s bowed down before so many other leaders, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track.

Obama couldn’t care less what the American people think.  We’re gnats to him.  Insects.  He’s “the president of the world,” after all.

Incompetent, arrogant, and detached.  You’d think that would be a winning combination.

But it’s not.

From Rasmussen, May 25, 2010:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% 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 -20 (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. That is the lowest level of approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of his performance.

Have you ever noticed how turds tend to sink to the bottom of the toilet bowl before you flush them?

There’s your metaphor for Obama: a turd sinking to the bottom of the bowl.

Obama Administration A Fifth Column Destroying American Competitiveness From Within

Obama has a plan to make American business as competitive in the world economy as the proverbial Dodo bird for the sake of “economic justice.”

Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead: Kevin Hassett

June 8 (Bloomberg) — I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.

I know, it sounds like an exaggeration. But look at it this way. If there were a power ranking of U.S. companies, like the ones compiled by football writers for National Football League teams, Microsoft would surely be first or second to Google. But last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?

At issue is Obama’s policy to end the deferral of multinational taxation.

The U.S. now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan among industrialized countries. That rate is so high that U.S. firms have an enormous disadvantage versus competitors. The average corporate tax rate for the major developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was about 27 percent, more than 10 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.

Tax Burden

U.S. firms have nonetheless prospered because our tax code allows a business to set up a subsidiary in a low-tax country. When that subsidiary earns profits, they are taxed at the rate of that country, and don’t face U.S. tax until the money is mailed home.

The economically illiterate partisan Democratic view is that this practice is unpatriotic and bleeds jobs from the U.S. The economic reality is that American companies use this approach to acquire market share overseas. The alternative is losing the business to foreign competitors.

Don’t just take my word for it. A recent paper by Harvard economists Mihir Desai and C. Fritz Foley and Berkeley economist James Hines and published in the distinguished American Economic Review, gathered data on American multinationals to explore the impact of foreign investments on domestic U.S. activity.

Encourage Overseas Sales

Their conclusion was striking. The authors found that “10 percent greater foreign capital investment is associated with 2.2 percent greater domestic investment, and that 10 percent greater foreign employee compensation is associated with 4 percent greater domestic employee compensation. Changes in foreign and domestic sales, assets, and numbers of employees are likewise positively associated; the evidence also indicates that greater foreign investment is associated with additional domestic exports and R&D spending.”

So when firms expand their operations abroad, taking advantage of the lower foreign tax rates, it helps their workers in the U.S. Higher sales abroad (surprise, surprise) are good for domestic workers.

It is worth noting that this study, which is confirmed by a boatload of evidence elsewhere, was coauthored by the same James Hines who recently wrote a sweeping review of international tax policy with Obama’s top economist, Larry Summers. Summers has to know what the literature says.

Inexplicable Stance

So the question is, why does Obama advocate a policy that so flies in the face of everything that economists have learned? How could Obama possibly say, as he did last month, that he wants “to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world. But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens?” Further, how could Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner call a practice that top scholarship has shown increases wages and employment in the U.S. “indefensible?”

I have to admit I am at a loss. Maybe it is good politics to bash American corporations, and Obama isn’t really serious about making this change happen. But if the change is enacted, and domestic corporate taxes aren’t reduced to offset the big tax hike, the result will be a flight from the U.S. that rivals in scale the greatest avian arctic migrations.

If that occurs, the firms that stay in the U.S. will be at such a huge tax disadvantage that they will absolutely need a “rescue.”

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Is the destruction of America deliberate?

It’s certainly possible.

Another possibility is that Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner have never actually had to make a payroll, or run an actual business.  It’s all just monopoly money for these guys.  They live in a world of theory, and their theories are all crap.