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.

Most Americans Finally Blaming The Most Irresponsible President In History

One could conclude – based on rhetoric alone – that George Bush never left office, and Obama never actually ascended to the presidency.

After all, according to the Obama narrative, only one man is responsible for anything these days.  And that man is George Bush.

Obama isn’t “responsible.”  He’s completely irresponsible.

Obama has never once taken the “The Buck Stops With George Bush” sign off of his desk.

Since we all know that the buck stops at the highest political office, and since we all know that Obama keeps passing the buck off to George Bush, we can therefore know that Obama really isn’t our president.  Whether he produces his damn birth certificate or not.  Given the fact that leadership is ultimately about taking responsibility, and Obama refuses to take any responsibility whatsoever, he’s clearly not the POTUS.  And since Bush is apparently STILL responsible for everything, he becomes our defacto president even nearly two years after actually leaving the office.

Well, Barry Hussein may never accept responsibility for the failure of his policies, but at least more Americans are finally saying that this is Barack Obama’s sucky economy, rather than agreeing with Obama that he had nothing to do with anything.

From Rasmussen:

48% Blame Obama for Bad Economy, 47% Blame Bush
Monday, August 02, 2010

For the first time since President Obama took office, voters see his policies as equally to blame with those of President George W. Bush for the country’s current economic problems.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters now think Obama’s policies are to blame for the continuing bad economy, up three points from last month. Forty-seven percent (47%) say the recession that began under Bush is at fault.

With voters across the country expressing stronger belief that the economy is getting worse rather than better, these new findings spell potential bad news for Democratic candidates this fall. The president is already planning to limit his campaign appearances with candidates because of potential voter backlash.

In June and last October, 45% blamed Obama’s policies for the country’s ongoing economic woes, the previous high finding on this question. The number who blame Bush is down from 62% in May 2009 when Rasmussen Reports first began tracking the question regularly. Only 27% faulted Obama at that time.

As is often the case, Mainstream voters and the Political Class have wholly different viewpoints on this question. While 61% of Mainstream voters now blame Obama’s policies, 87% of the Political Class say the bad economy is due to the recession that began under Bush.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of men blame Obama’s policies for the current economic problems, while 52% of women think Bush is the cause.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Obama is now chiefly to blame by a 52% to 44% margin.

That last paragraph is particularly significant.  Independents OVERWHELMINGLY blame Obama over Bush for the worsening economy.

And if that news isn’t revealing enough, Gallup/USA Today just came out with a poll showing Obama at only 41% approval – the lowest of his presidency.  He’s now flirting with being in the 30s.

I don’t really care what Democrats think about Obama vs. Bush.  The Democrat Party can be rightly defined as the party of moral idiocy.  But we are finally seeing rank-and-file Americans who are not involved with political ideology looking at going on two years of failure and false demagoguery and coming to the correct conclusion about whom to hold responsible.

When the economy appeared to be improving, Obama starting talking about his “summer of economic recovery.”

From Politico:

Obama, Biden declare ‘Recovery Summer’
By MIKE ALLEN 6/17/10 5:06 AM EDT

Vice President Joe Biden today will kick off the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drinking water and other public works.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, said: “This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with thousands of highly-visible road, bridge, water and other infrastructure projects breaking ground across the country, giving the American people a first-hand look at the Recovery Act in their own backyards and making it crystal clear what the cost would have been of doing nothing.”

But then we got all kinds of lousy economic news to rain turds all over Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” summer of recovery tour.

We got news like this:

Steep decline in GDP growth raises alarms
By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2010

Reporting from Washington — U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the spring, stoking concerns about a weak job market, a drawn-out struggle for the unemployed and growing financial pressures on millions of American families.

The nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, falling from an upwardly revised 3.7% expansion in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

While many economists had expected growth to moderate, the reported decline was a jolting 35% below the previous quarter. Gross domestic product is the value of all goods and services produced in the economy. […]

In the wake of Friday’s report, a number of economists downgraded their growth forecast for the second half of the year to as low as 1.5%, an anemic rate that would likely push the unemployment rate above June’s 9.5% figure.

Commerce officials also revised downward some prior growth figures for real GDP, which is the inflation-adjusted value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. The government Friday said real GDP grew 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, down from a previously reported 5.6%.

Overall, the new data painted a picture of a deeper recession than previously believed.

Government spending and inventory adjustments have powered the economic recovery that began last summer, and they juiced up the second quarter as well. But economists expect tighter public spending, particularly by budget-strapped state and local governments, to be a drag on the economy in the coming quarters.

Many private economists projected that the unemployment rate would rise to 9.8% or higher by the end of the year.

And today, we learned that housing prices were down, factory orders were down, and consumer spending was down.  As the LA Times put it:

U.S. consumers did not boost their spending in June and their incomes failed to increase, further evidence that the economic recovery slowed in the spring. And Americans saved at the highest rate in nearly a year.

Personal spending was unchanged in June, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. It was the third straight month of lackluster consumer demand. Incomes were also flat, the weakest showing in nine months.

The disappointing report on spending and income was among a raft of data released Tuesday that confirmed the economy ended the April-to-June quarter on a weak note.

Factory orders dropped 1.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted $406.4 billion, the Commerce Department said. It was the second consecutive decline after nine straight months of gains. Lower demand for steel, construction machinery and aircraft dragged down the figure.

And the number of buyers who signed contracts to purchase homes fell in June. The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes dipped 2.6 percent to a reading of 75.7. That was the lowest on records dating back to 2001 and down nearly 19 percent from the same month a year earlier.

Last week the government said economic growth for the second quarter slowed to 2.4 percent. Many analysts believe it will dip further in the second half of the year as high unemployment, shaky consumer confidence and renewed troubles in housing weigh on the year-old economic recovery.

What’s funniest of all – if anything is funny during a complete failure’s destruction of what had been the greatest nation in the history of the planet – is that Obama was literally still congratulating himself when the bad news came dumping down:

President Obama was in New Jersey yesterday killing time before his appearance on ‘The View’. So he stopped at Tastee Subs and held a small business summit, pushing for legislation to increase funding to the Small Business Administration. In between sound bytes on jobs and bites of Tastee’s super-sub special, more bad economic news came rolling Obama’s way.

And then all of a sudden the Obama administration is all, “Oh, crap! Stop looking at our “success”!  No!  Don’t look at our “recovery summer”!  We don’t want to take responsibility after all!  Start looking at Bush again!  He’s the only one who is actually RESPONSIBLE!”

So now – after Obama patted himself on the back and congratulated himself for his mission accomplished, all of a sudden we’re back to the “Bush recession.”

BIDEN LAMENTS ‘BUSH RECESSION’…. Vice President Biden appeared on NBC’s “Today” show earlier, and used a line I don’t recall leading White House officials using before, at least not lately.

Ann Curry noted that the administration has been blamed for high unemployment rates, and asked, “Has this administration done enough?”

Biden replied, “Let me put it this way: there’s never enough until we restore the 8 million jobs lost in the Bush Recession. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter. I mean, it matters, but it’s not enough.”

Which is to say that, according to the Obama administration, George Bush is to blame for all the jobs HE lost, PLUS all the jobs that OBAMA lost.  After going on two years in office, Obama still isn’t responsible for anything at all.  Oh, except for that brief period when it looked like maybe things were looking up and Obama could suddenly be “responsible”.

When Bush left office, unemployment was 7.6%.  Barry Hussein promised that his massive stimulus would save the day.  He assured the American people that he understood what was wrong, and that he had the solution.  His administration promised that if the stimulus (which started out at $787 billion, then got revised upward to $862 billion, but which will actually cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION) was passed, unemployment would not go over 8%.

From NPR:

President Obama is being forced to wade into a domestic economic debate that just won’t go away: As the unemployment rate rises, there have been calls for a second round of stimulus spending.

Obama is in a difficult position. He has to defend his $787 billion economic stimulus package at a time when there are few visible signs that it has had an effect. Unemployment is at 9.5 percent, even though the White House predicted in January that with the stimulus bill, it would rise to only about 8 percent.

And the LA Times article cites economists as now predicting that unemployment will rise to at least 9.8% – or higher.  Which for the record is a lot higher than 8%.

It’s not enough to say Obama was incompetent.  He lied.  He pitched himself as Mr. Wonderful, and utterly failed to live up to all of his false promises.

In October 2008 I wrote an article which quoted Chief Executive Magazine as follows:

In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.

And I had cause to cite that article again recently, as Obama pursued the incredibly demagogic rhetoric that said we had to go forward with his “change” rather than backward.  Lest you don’t see the obvious flaw, allow me to point out that Germany went forward with Hitler’s “change,” too.  And then there was Stalin’s “change,” and Pol Pot’s “change,” and Castro’s “change,” etc.

To argue that moving forward to “change” is somehow intrinsically good is intrinsically stupid.  It is the very worst kind of moral idiocy.  And that “logic” has repeatedly justified the most evil outcomes in the history of the human race.

The CEOs – whom unlike the Obama administration actually understand something about business – have turned out to be right.  And Obama has turned out to be completely wrong.  Over and over and over again.

Obama pitched his entire campaign for presidency on “hope” to go along with his nebulous “change.”  Sadly, the American people didn’t understand that there isn’t and can be no hope in the progressive agenda of Barack Hussein.  There is only increasing government control over more and more of our lives.

It should terrify you that Obama is well on the way to the three-year plan toward bankruptcy that the CEO’s predicted of an Obama presidency.

The Left Wing Politics of Hurricanes Gustav and Katrina

Do hurricanes have political affiliations?  Is Hurricane Gustav a Democrat?

Some liberals clearly think so.

Take Michael Moore (PLEASE!!!):

“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said. “To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River.”

Michael Moore isn’t just some far-left loon celebrity like Barbara Streisand; liberals and Democrats throw good money away to hear what Moore says about the issues.

And it’s not just left-wing nutjob idiot propagandists.  Former Democratic National Committee Chairman (I think of current DNC chair Howard Dean and ask myself, ‘what do they put in these guys’ Kool-Aid?‘) Don Fowler thought he was ever so witty when he said:

“The timing, at least as it appears now, is that it’ll be there on Monday. That just demonstrates God is on our side.”

He’s right that Hurricane Gustav will reach landfall Monday.  He’s probably wrong about every other thought he ever had in his life, but he’s right about that one.

Hurricane Katrina killed 1600 people.  Ha ha ha.  Pretty damn funny, guys.  You want another massive death toll just to put a damper on the Republican Convention, do you?

Both men apologized when they realized how evil they sounded, saying they sincerely hoped nobody got hurt.  They both failed to make note of the little detail of the $43.625 billion in damage Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005 – and the billions of dollars the storm cost taxpayers since.

Damn.  I hope the joke doesn’t sound so funny now.

You want to know the really despicable thing?  Throughout the Democratic National Convention (you know, that pile of hot air in Denver last week?), Hurricane Katrina was mentioned over and over and over again.

Natural disasters used to be viewed as, well, natural disasters.  But since the Democratic Party warped into the Demagogue Party, they have become political fodder for the herds of liberal swine to gluttonously gulp down.  The shrill, hysterical narrative: It was all Bush – and his terrible failure of leadership – that caused all this.

As usual, Democrats are either wrong, or lying, or wrong and lying.

First of all, as a Wall Street Journal article pointed out: