Lest We Forget: OBAMA Is America’s Sputnik Moment

Obama talked about America facing a “Sputnik moment” last night.  For the record, “Sputnik” was a Soviet successful satellite that stunned America out of its complacency.  America entered the space race with a vengeance, and won it by a knockout.  Obama exploited that moment,  pointed out that America is watching the world go past us, and says we need to be competitive by pursuing massive government spending oops I mean “investment.”

A write up from Slate:

But he did evoke a huge defense issue from a half-century ago—the signal wake-up security call that marked the years of transition from Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy, the single word that has symbolized ever since the fear of slipping behind in a dangerous world: Sputnik.

“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” Obama said. As a result, we need to fund “a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the space race.”

Well, at the heart of Obama’s State of the Union speech were many contradictions.  And I’ll get to them.  But his “Sputnik moment” thing was the worst one of all.

Allow me to cite a couple of my own articles to document just how stunningly pathetic Obama’s analogy truly is:

Space Program: Obama’s Strategy To Turn America Into Banana Republic Moving Like Clockwork

When American Greatness Is Gone, And When NASA = ‘National Aeronautics and Sharia Administration’

The first article above documents how Obama has been GUTTING the space program, and in fact RETURNING AMERICA to the pre-Sputnik vulnerability.  To the disgust and open contempt of former NASA heroes.  And the second documents how Obama has turned the now disgraced NASA into yet another tool for political correctness.

And to make sure you realize how pathetically laughable Obama’s analogy is, let’s make sure we understand that Sputnik was a Russian threat, and then let’s make sure we understand how Obama has helped undermine American interests to advance the Russians with yet another title:

Obama’s Treasonous Lies Help Russia Punk America

That one documents how Obama has undermined America’s missile defense program.  And the actual Sputnik moment was all about dealing with Russian missiles.

This guy’s talking about our Sputnik moment?  Seriously?

Conservatives had already debunked many of Obama’s lies last night before he even told them.  I’ve debunked those lies right here.

This is why Senator Jim DeMint said after Obama’s latest speech, “It’s hard to take the president seriously.”

But sadly we must take Obama seriously.  Because Obama’s real political genius comes down to one simple thing: he realized that the people who support him are stupid and ignorant, don’t know a damn thing that the incredibly biased media machine doesn’t tell them, and that he can therefore spit out anything and not get caught by much of America in his deceit.

Obama is our Sputnik moment.  By which I mean, this turd-in-chief and his policies are the reason that we are failing and falling behind while other nations around us rise up and overtake us.

One of the other major contradictions of Obama’s speech are that he is essentially acting as if the previous two years didn’t happen.  “Nothing to see over there, folks, now if you don’t mind looking this way.” Obama is saying that we need a major new “investment” (which is a tidy euphemism for yet more government pork), when in fact he has already “invested” well over a trillion dollars with absolutely nothing to show for it but more debt and more deficits than this nation has ever seen before.

Which is why DeMint said:

When asked about President Obama’s statements about government investments, DeMint said, “Now the president is promising more spending, which he calls investments, when the time is to cut spending in Washington.. The president needs to tell the American people the truth.. That its time for the federal government to do less.”

Let’s look at Obama’s trillions in “investment” and see what effect it has had on our “competitiveness”:

Why Is American Unemployment Under Obama Rising Faster Than In Other Countries?

The Dirty Secret About Our Unemployment Rate

Obama Stimulus Is Reason Why Our Unemployment So Much Higher Than Others

In other words, there is an inversely proportional comparison to Obama’s stimulus and American “competitiveness.”

And US government spending has little or nothing to such competitiveness.  Take a look at our education spending:

U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States spends more public and private money on education than other major countries, but its performance doesn’t measure up in areas ranging from high-school graduation rates to test scores in math, reading and science, a new report shows.

That dates back to 2003.  Look before that, look after that, and the results are the same.  We spend and spend and spend while our kids get dumber and dumber and dumber.  To the extent that right now only a third of our kids are considered proficient in major subjects.

Here’s the problem: liberals call for more and more and more spending, but liberals make sure that all the largess goes to them, and goes to their politically connected interests.  Like the liberal teachers unions that are the REAL reason our country is falling behind in education.  And to the extent we spend more, we only feed the beast that is the REAL source of our dilemma and help build it into an even BIGGER problem as it uses its vast resources to protect the status quo.

Obama wants to spend billions on “green energy.”  What that means is that he wants to subsidize incredibly expensive and NON-Competitive energy sources while our rivals continue to run circles around us with cheap and efficient oil and coal.  And the more and the faster we spend, the more and the faster we fall behind.

The real sputnik moment, epitomized in the person of Obama himself, is this: America is spending itself into extinction.  It is not wise spending, because we are sucking money out of the efficient private sector, giving to an incredibly inefficient and wasteful federal government, and then doling it out on the basis of political patronage rather than common sense.

I’ll end with this: Obama is using a “mangled multiplier” as his basis for the need for more government spending.  On Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s distorted view, for every dollar the federal government spends, we get a $1.55 “bang for our buck.”  But it isn’t true.  Unless you really think building tunnels for turtles, bridges to nowhere and studying cow flatulence is going to make America great.  On the International Monetary Fund model, which just makes more sense in addition to being less ideologically biased, we only get back 70 cents for every dollar spent.  See this article for the documentation on that, and check out this graph:

In his SOTU speech, Obama provided an airplane metaphor that went:

“Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact.”

On Obama’s metaphor, government is the engine that flies our economy.  And if you reduce government spending, you eliminate the engine and the plane crashes.  But that simply isn’t true; it is PRIVATE spending that flies our economy.  And sucking money out of the private sector to create more government bureaucracy and more pork-barrel spending is foolhardy.  It is actually OBAMA who is actually removing the engine from our economy.

If we really want to experience a “Sputnik moment” and surge back to greatness, what we need to do is wake up and vote out Obama and the Democrat Party.

Space Program: Obama’s Strategy To Turn America Into Banana Republic Moving Like Clockwork

It’s official.  The only nation ever to put a man on the moon will become a third world country in the modern space race under the Obama administration.

You can’t deny, however, that such a reality WOULD in fact be “fundamentally transforming America.”  There.  See, Obama DID keep at least one campaign promise!

Obama laid out his policy for future space exploration the other day.  Some feedback from men who – unlike Obama – are actual patriots with an actual clue:

Obama, being sensitive to criticism, scheduled his trip to Florida today to not only shore up support for his NASA cuts but to shine the spotlight away from thousands of Tea Party protests all over the country on this tax day. NASA is one of the many non-entitlement programs that Obama is cutting to finance his socialistic dream.

I interviewed Dick Gordon, command module pilot of Apollo 12 today after the President’s speech. When asked what he thought of the speech he answered, “Not much. The President was long on rhetoric but short on specifics. Wait until the Russians are the only game in town. Their $50 million fee to the space station will escalate.”

Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon was interviewed today by Neil Cavuto after the speech. Cernan stated, “I have concerns about the future of this country. I’m not on board with Obama’s transformation of America. The President’s vision is a vision to nowhere. Nothing has changed today after I heard the President. You can take parts of his glib presentation today and add them up and there is no defiinition, no detail, there’s no real destination, no focus.”

Let’s see: “The President was long on rhetoric but short on specifics.”  Why do the utterly vacuous Obama campaign slogan, “Hope and Change” come to mind?

And: “You can take parts of his glib presentation today and add them up and there is no definition, no detail, there’s no real destination, no focus.”  Well, okay.  No definition.  No detail.  No real destination.  No focus.  But smile, pump your fist, and holler, “Yes, we can!” when you say that.

In Barry Hussein, America decided that it wanted a self-deluded tool whose arrogance was outmatched only by his inexperience.  Yes, we did, and now no, we can’t.

Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, and Jim Lovell pretty much summed up the entire Obama presidency in the words, “the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”

Hope and change!  Yes, we can!

A few details about Obama’s “Dumb now, disaster later” policy:

Armstrong and his colleagues complained that the cancellation would amount to wasting the roughly $10 billion that has been allocated to Constellation over the past five years. “Equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to re-create the equivalent of what we will have discarded,” they wrote.

Someone said of the result of Obama’s policy for NASA something that is very much like the result of Obama’s tenure in the White House: “the agency of pipe dreams and fairy tales.”

And just in case you think that Obama’s a terrible president, correct yourself: Obama’s a HISTORICALLY terrible president.

Dr Mike Griffin, a former head of NASA, put it this way:

“Only once previously has a US president recommended to the Congress that this nation take a backward step in space. On that occasion, President Nixon cancelled the Apollo programme, a decision which will come to be regarded as one of the most strategically bankrupt decisions in human history. If such a thing is possible, this decision is even worse.”

Let me end by quoting Barack Obama’s handpicked science czar.  Surely Obama’s SCIENCE czar can put Obama’s NASA policy into perspective for us.

“We can’t expect to be number one in everything indefinitely.”

YES WE CAN … Oooooops… not.

We certainly can’t expect to be number one in anything for very long under this failure of a president.

From the generation that looked up at the sky and then did the impossible by putting a human being on the moon and bringing him safely home, to the generation that hung their heads down in shame as their president apologized for their country’s former greatness.

Shocking Obama Spending Digging America Into Great Depression

We are beginning to learn that $12.8 trillion doesn’t last very long when it is being spent by corrupt politicians and idiot bureaucrats.  It doesn’t seem to matter how much Obama has already spent or committed; he just has to keep spending more and more and more.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department said Monday it will need to borrow $361 billion in the current April-June quarter, a record amount for that period.

It’s the third straight quarter the government’s borrowing needs have set records for those periods.

Treasury also estimated it will need to borrow $515 billion in the July-September quarter, down slightly from the $530 billion borrowed during the year-ago period. The all-time high of $569 billion was set in the October-December period.

The huge borrowing needs reflect the soaring costs of the $700 billion financial rescue program and the recession, which is nearing a record as the longest in the post World War II period.

The slump has cut sharply into tax revenue and boosted government spending for benefit programs such as unemployment insurance and food stamps.

The administration is projecting the federal deficit for the entire budget year ending Sept. 30, will total a record $1.75 trillion. A deficit at that level would nearly quadruple the previous record of $454.8 billion set last year.

To cover the government’s heavy borrowing needs, Congress in February boosted the limit for the national debt to $12.1 trillion as part of the legislation that enacted President Barack Obama‘s $787 billion economic stimulus program. The national debt now stands at $11.1 trillion.

Not the first time we’ve seen insane spending, as a 1934 Chicago Tribune cartoon would illustrate:

But FDR never dreamed of the MEGO numbers (“My Eyes Glaze Over”) that we are facing today.

What is it those little notes on the out-of-control wagon say?

“Depleting the resources of the soundest government in the world.”

“Spend! Spend! Spend – Under the guise of recovery.  Bust the government – blame the capitalists for the failure – junk the Constitution and decree a dictatorship. “

And the figure of Stalin says, “How red the sunrise is getting,” to denote the communist mindset that such levels of government spending and control over the economy entails.

Which is EXACTLY the Obama mindset today – right down to the “Young Punkies from Colombia and Harvard” Brain Trust.  And even the Russians and the Chinese have been urging us to stop this insane government spending binge.

The Tribune cartoon was drawn in 1934.  The Great Depression – in testament to the folly the artist was pointing out – would continue to drag on for years afterward.  FDR’s “solutions” didn’t solve the crisis; they prolonged the suffering.

Michael Boskin described the radical extent of the Obama socialist spending in The Wall Street Journal (the newspaper people are actually willing to buy):

It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents — John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance — President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter’s higher taxes and Mr. Clinton’s draconian defense drawdown.

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

The argument that we need either massive government spending as a bulwark against a depression during periods of grave economic distress presents an entirely false dilemma. Reagan proved that positively, and FDR – who substantially prolonged the Great Depression with failed policies (and see here and here for more) – proved it negatively.

Many liberals stubbornly cling to the thesis that FDR’s policies brought America out of the Great Depression. And they can cite a boatload of leftist historians who have come to precisely that conclusion.

But I would submit that anyone taking that position must refute Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s VERY OWN TREASURY SECRETARY.

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 9, 1939

The unemployment rate for April of 1939 – the full month before Morgenthau spoke these words before the House Ways and Means Committee – was at 20.7% And while other nations had similarly gone through severe economic depressions during the 1930s, they recovered in less than half the time of the U.S. under FDR. “In most countries of the world recovery from the Great Depression began between late 1931 and early 1933.” But the American depression dragged on and on.

We are spending FAR TOO MUCH MONEY, and we’re spending it on the wrong things.  We are repeating the worst mistakes of the Great Depression, and are very likely doomed to repeat the consequences of our failure to learn the lessons of history.

Michael Boskin speaks of Obama’s shocking abandonment of defense spending.  I shall say this:

The fact of the matter is that ignoring defense spending was a hallmark of FDR, too.  In spite of the growing and building threat of both the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists for YEARS, FDR spent massively on virtually everything BUT defense spending.  Which is why we were so woefully unprepared for hostilities following the Pearl Harbor sneak attack that inexcusably caught us completely off guard.

Getting back to Reagan, one is forced to only imagine how many American lives would have been saved if we’d had a Reagan rather than a socialist-spending FDR serving as President; and we’d gone into World War II with the mightiest military machine in the world rather than with the 2nd rate joke we were forced to begin with.

And thanks to Obama’s massive defense cuts one may be forced to wonder about how many lives we could have saved all over again as he slashes our military rather

In many ways, FDR and BHO are images of one another.  Both men were skilled politicians with great oratorical skills (providing Obama has a teleprompter, anyway).  Both men had never had a single success of their own in business.  And both had the completely wrong idea of what was wrong with the national economy, and what needed to be done to get it back on track.

The one difference is this: FDR foolishly caused America to REMAIN in the Great Depression by zealously pursuing failed policies; BHO will foolishly force America INTO the next Great Depression by zealously pursuing the SAME failed policies that never worked for FDR.

Russians And Liberals Have Always Been Like Peas In A Pod

Looking at the Russians as they tear the democracy out of a previously Democratic nation, it’s kind of hard to tell them apart from our liberals back home.

– They both love big governments.

– They are both the happiest amidst totalitarianism and socialism.

– They both pretty much want the government to either manage or benefit from everything.

– They both offer ostentatious and grandiose pretensions for whatever they are doing.

– They both lie like crazy the whole time they’re doing whatever they’re doing.

– They both want total control of the media under the guise of “fairness.”

– They both don’t think very highly of allowing things to be voted on.

I think they would come rolling in with tanks (after all, both communism and fascism derive from the left) if it weren’t for the fact that Barack Obama would look like a total dweeb in a helmet, and Nancy Pelosi would muss up her hair-do. American liberals probably decided to avoid tanks after the Dukakis fiasco.