posted August 31, 2009 01:46 PM         

Since Americans reject O'BomberCare and it's "Death Panel, it's forays into the bank accounts of Americans, it's pre-authorized automatic debit of bank accounts, it's fines for businesses and individuals, it's obvious lies about reducing the deficits while insuring 47-50 million more Americans...and illegal aliens and obvious lies about not rationing health care for the elderly..is it too early to say "failed Presidency"?

Since O'Bomber has promised to skyrocket electric utility rates, bankrupt utility companies and coal producers, raise the price of everything in our economy which moves by truck, plane or rail with his Cap and Tax energy grab...is it too early to say "failed Presidency"?

Since O'Bomber is attempting to shut off free speech and violate the 1st Amendment with his plan to seize control of the Internet...is it too early to say "failed Presidency"?

Since O'Bomber is attempting to force demoscats to march off the cliff with O'BomberCare and it's Death Panel, since Independents and other unaffiliated voters firmly reject O'BomberCare; since these voters are responsible for electing O'Bomber and demoscats in the last election and have now abandoned O'Bomber's signature issues, is it too early to say "failed Presidency"?

Since the so called O'Bomber Porkulus Bill with 9000 pork earmarks when O'Bomber said he would veto any bill with any pork earmarks whatsoever; coupled with the fact the only thing being stimulated is government and not the jobs creating private sector...and economists are predicting unemployment to rise to 10% or higher; since O'Bomber was crowing about 10s of thousands of shovel ready NOW public projects and 8 months later almost none have moved forward an inch..is it too early to say "failed Presidency"?

Or, is "failed Presidency" already writ large on the wall?

August 31, 2009
Another Failed Presidency
By Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.

In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loath them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

posted August 31, 2009 04:22 PM         

53% of all Americans now disapprove of O'Bomber's job performance and a high percentage of those "Strongly" disapprove.

66% of Independents disapprove of O'Bomber's job performance.

"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11 (see trends).

Twenty-nine percent (29%) are confident that Congress knows what it’s doing when it comes to the economy. If Americans could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 57% would throw out all the legislators and start over again. Just 25% would vote to keep the Congress.

posted August 31, 2009 09:18 PM         

so, again, yes. it's too early to tell. because it's not over till its over.

meanwhile people are THINKING about their lives in a way they haven't for years. so success or failure for obama the president, i think WE will end up winners.

seen the iowan bipartisan healthcare ad? what do you think, paid actor like the lady in the canadian warning ad?

posted September 01, 2009 12:52 PM         

George W. Bush has recorded the lowest approval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. And, around the world, the United States has never had a leader who commands so little respect and confidence.

International disaster... An Illegal and Immoral War of Aggression

In initiating a war of aggression, Bush did violate the United Nations Charter, which "prohibits the use of military force" against any nation without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council never approved the American-led military invasion of Iraq. Therefore, Bush and his crew had no international legal basis to invade Iraq. And they cannot pretend that Congress gave them such an authorization, since it is well known in law that no domestic law can override a signed international treaty in good standing.

In a domestic parallel, George W. Bush and his administration have set up what is probably the most widespread war profiteering system in modern history, through which billions and billions of dollars were misappropriated and wasted. At the same time as they were adopting a permanent war posture abroad, they were irresponsibly calling at home for close to 700 billion dollar tax cut for their rich supporters and pushing up the deficits, of which a large proportion was financed by borrowing abroad.

I just might go on....

On the legal front, this is an administration that has shamed the United States with its illegal actions, with its deliberate and dishonest lies, with its war crimes, its disregard for international treaties, and with its overt disregard of constitutional government.

I am sick of hearing Chaney, who is quite chatty of late play spin doctor.

He knows he never will be prosecuted. His arrogance is only superseded by his ego.

And yes I could go on, and on, and on.

posted September 01, 2009 01:09 PM         

john mccain made a statement the other day about how the approach of this government to procuring information actually was used as a recruitment persuasion for the enemy...quite the opposite of what some people think, that it deters people from joining the jihad, and that kindness or at least fairness on our side would send them running over here in droves.

he got his information from an al qaeda operative. when we act like the worst of our enemies, we just create more opposition and desire to destroy us.

more and more it is coming out that the heavy-handed, illegal approach of that administration not only created more opposition, but false confessions and information...

posted September 01, 2009 02:15 PM         

as freeman john says, there are billions of us and comparatively few of them. the power DOES lie with the people, but they have to REALIZE that and act accordingly...

posted September 01, 2009 04:47 PM         

"still i think all this debate is good for us and will ultimately lead to better times whatever programs are put forward right now."

Yep....Dialectics

Zane Stein said that could be something that Eris rules. http://www.zanestein.com/Trans-pluto.htm#UB313

USA chart has an almost exact Sun-Eris opposition in Right Ascension and President Obama has Sun trine/contraparallel Eris.

Raymond

------------------
“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.

In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.

“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”

posted September 09, 2009 12:21 AM         

The Marxist Socialist O'Bomber and his Socialist buds in Congress overreached from the beginning. Now, after making Socialist Health Care his signature issue, O'Bomber and demoscats are taking gas.

It didn't help that these arrogant elitist morons attempted to rush this monstrosity health/death bill through Congress before the public had a chance to unravel all the hidden agenda items and it sure didn't help when Sarah Palin nailed O'Bomber and his head medical murderer, Zeke Emaneul with the epithet "Death Panel".

But, most destructive of all were hundreds and thousands of ordinary citizens showing up to rip their demoscat Representatives and Senators to shreds at town hall meetings. Some of these demoscats actually had the sense to get the message. No O'BomberCare, no Socialist Health Care bill.

Even more humorous is the fact Republicans could not stop this bill by themselves. demoscats have enough House and Senate members to pass this bill without a single Republican vote....but, the folks back home sent them a message.

If O'Bomber can't get his signature legislation through Congress...the wet dream of Socialists for the last 60 years, then O'Bomber has lost his luster and isn't likely to get it back.

For those who do not know, Camille Paglia is a liberal Democrat and supporter of O'Bomber.

Too late for Obama to turn it around?
By Camille Paglia
Sept. 9, 2009

What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

posted September 09, 2009 09:32 AM         

In the first three months on the job President Obama produced more legislation than any other incoming President save one, FDR. Out of Necessity, as every area, both domestic and foreign required more than Triage.

The following is from an editorial run in Jan of this year from an upstate NY newspaper. The Kingston Daily Freeman.

Bush's Watch:
.....Bush leaves the nation with two wars, one entirely of his making upon a false premise.

He presided over a disastrous government response to the dire needs of millions of its citizens in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The economy is in crisis, likely the worst shape in 80 years and still declining.

THERE’S NO dodging the responsibility for any of this. It wasn’t just a bad break that it happened on his watch. The American people hire a president to foresee threats, react ably to complex situations, extend aid when it is needed, and otherwise pilot the ship of state through all manner of the unforeseen. When the president fails to do these things, regardless of the circumstances, he has failed to do his job.

There is plenty of evidence that, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Bush did not take the threat of al-Qaida as seriously as did President Bill Clinton.

Transition briefers noted indifference on the part of many incoming officials and, in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a distracted obsession with Iraq that would lead to further trouble down the road.

Domestic counterterrorism was demoted within the White House.

The administration bungled even the bluntest warnings of evidence of terrorist planning in August 2001 — a memo headlined and concluding that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” and even a direct, face-to-face CIA briefing in Crawford, Texas. To that special briefing, Bush allegedly responded, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

That was on Bush’s watch.

From an unsteady beginning on the morning and afternoon of Sept. 11, Bush literally found his voice with firefighters and a bullhorn at Ground Zero, rallying the nation to regain its footing. The Afghanistan War, managed by the Central Intelligence Agency, was an initial, smashing success.

BUT the administration botched its opportunity to trap Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants in the rugged White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

The Iraq War was the result of a long-running, ideological obsession on the part of a determined and influential coterie of neo-conservatives within the administration. The war was sold to Congress and the American people through a combination of misreading intelligence and willful dissembling. The woeful planning for the invasion and occupation of Iraq relied on a series of faulty assumptions, including that Iraqis would welcome Americans with open arms as liberators, rather than invaders. As Iraq teetered at the brink of anarchy, Bush engaged in a public relations stunt, landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier to be photographed against the background of a banner with the patently false assertion, “Mission Accomplished.”

Bush appointed Michael Brown, who lacked the requisite expertise, to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A videotape of Bush being briefed the day before the Hurricane Katrina disaster portrayed a passive chief executive who didn’t ask a single question, even though federal emergency officials had been warning for days that catastrophe was possible. The president was oblivious enough to casually assert in the fateful days immediately following the disaster that Brown was “doing a heck of a job,” while Americans were shocked at the images of their fellow citizens stranded helplessly on rooftops, pleading for help that was slow to arrive.

He institutionalized the use of torture by the United States, degrading the nation’s moral standing while quite possibly violating both federal and international law.

FINALLY, Bush was asleep at the switch as the nation’s economic well-being was gambled away on a housing bubble built on bad mortgages. The administration’s response since has been uncertain and ineffective, to say the least.....

Again I assert if you were to define failure, and attach it to a Presidents name you would be factually correct if you used the name George W Bush.

Your yardsick is going to be very tough to beat in this regard.

And this quote in your piece Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people...

posted September 09, 2009 05:17 PM         

You need to stop getting your opinions from Fruit Loops cereal boxes.

September 09, 2009
Barack Ozymandias
By J.R. Dunn

"News is the first draft of history", or so we're told. In truth, the "news" reported by mass media seldom reflects the crucial events of the moment. News reports of the summer of 1914 treated the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as a trivial Balkan matter, of little interest to anyone in the more civilized areas of Europe. Similarly, you'd look long and hard in the late spring of 1950 for any mention of a place called "Korea" in U.S. papers. "News", as the major media describes it, is almost without exception trivia.

Nothing has changed. In the summer of 2009 we're overwhelmed with stories about the death of the most notable trainee since Elagabalus, followed in short order by solemn meditations on the demise of a criminal politician, along with a few sidebars devoted to the imperial vacation at Martha's Vineyard. And oh yeah -- Michelle's shorts. How could I have overlooked them? But none of that, needless to say, will go into the books. The real story this summer, the one that the scholars will be pondering for decades to come, concerns the absolute collapse of the American messiah.

It looks as if Rush can rest easy -- the Big O has failed, and failed completely. You couldn't say the same about an ordinary president at this stage of his first term. At eight months after inauguration, the run-of-the-mill chief exec is still gearing up, getting a feel for things, beginning to put his plans into motion. But Obama, as we have been told time and again, is in no way ordinary. He is a man spoken of in religious terms -- the One, the Messiah, the Lightbringer. On the stage of history, we do not create our roles. We fill them as they have been previously established through repeated human activity across the millennia. Obama's role is one familiar to anyone versed in the history of the ancient world: he is the god-emperor. Obama was elected to do more than was possible for any ordinary president, and to do it more quickly than is possible for the merely human. His apotheosis was to be like nothing else in history, a redemption of promises so deeply pledged as to have become axiomatic. The age of Obama was to be a time of sweeping, an epoch of transformation. When he strode across our horizon, nothing would remain unchanged.

Now, unless I've been paying too much attention the New York Dolls reunion to notice, nothing of the sort has occurred. It's been a dull summer on the messiah front. In fact, Obama's performance so far has been dramatically below average even for the sorry run of mortal presidents. We have, in the past few months, witnessed one of the great anticlimaxes of political history. The god-emperor has failed, and no one can deny it.

Obama's template was the New Deal. The country was in a similar state of crisis, enduring the worst economic slump since the 30s (or the 70s, or the medieval depression, depending on who you talked to). Desperate voters were willing to accept measures that they would have found intolerable at any other time. As in 1933, there existed a brief window for dramatic transformation, one that might not reappear for generations.

The New Deal was intended, if not by FDR himself, then by the Brain Trust, specifically Adolf Berle and Rexford G. Tugwell, as a means of reworking American society from the ground up. Both men believed they could recast the U.S. in the mold of fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, but without such unappealing features as concentration camps, massacres, artificial famines, and the like.

Nothing actually came of this. Both major aspects of the New Deal, the National Recovery Act (NRA) and the Agricultural Assistance Administration (AAA), were already failing when they were shut down by the Supreme Court in 1935 and 1936 respectively (possibly the most effective exercise of separation of powers in American history). The New Deal continued as a kind of national workfare program, with various "alphabet agencies" such as the WPA and PWA providing make-work jobs for millions across the country. Even that failed in 1937 with the second market crash -- the one usually left out of casual histories of the Depression due to the fact that it can be blamed on no one other than Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Despite its failures, the New Deal remains liberalism's peak, one that they have been trying to retrieve for 75 years and more -- that golden moment in 1933 when they had the world in a vise and all things seemed possible. That's what Camelot was actually all about, and the Great Society as well. Every single Democratic president (with the exception of Harry Truman, too practical and cynical to buy into any such "horse manure") was held up as the great hope who would bring the dream to pass. Obama is simply the latest in a long line.

Obama was supposed to redeem the promises of the New Deal and then some. He could make it work. He had the mojo. He was the One. A god-emperor for the new millennium, the Yankee Augustus who would set down the new pattern for American society for centuries to come.

Well... maybe not this millennium. There's a list floating around the Net, comprised of Obama's achievements thus far, all the "major legislation" overseen by the messiah. It's intended to demonstrate that the new age is too coming to pass, that the Great Work is unfolding right on schedule. This list looks like this:

Cash for Clunkers Extension

Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009

Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act

Helping Families Save Their Homes Act

Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Omnibus Public Lands Management Act

Small Business Act Temporary Extension

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

DTV Delay Act

Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Now, the first thought that comes to mind is the word "boilerplate". Tobacco control? Public lands management? What other word is there? Throw in the standard Democratic "fair pay" effort, the customary spank-the-Pentagon bill, the "Serve America" bill (not, considering the name attached to it, one devoted to Washington, D.C. waitresses), and we're almost halfway through the list. Adding the "DTV Delay Act", which reset the date for introducing digital TV signals -- it took me a minute, too -- and the credit card act and we're there. This is the lamest, dumbest, most useless list of "major legislation" since the heyday of Warren G. Harding. World-changing political revolution, it is not.

The only two acts of any interest are Cash for Clunkers and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, AKA the "stimulus." Cash for Clunkers has been widely hailed as a success, with auto sales rising across the board (except, interestingly enough, for Obama trophies GM and Chrysler, which slid 20% and 15% respectively). But falling auto sales over the past week have revealed that the program merely "pulled ahead" sales that would have occurred later in the fall in any case. Clunkers will simply go on record as a novel application of that ancient Democratic doctrine of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As for the stimulus... the revelation that it's going to cost somebody another 2 trillion ten years from now has smoothly dovetailed with news that national unemployment is edging the 10% mark, the very outcome the stimulus was supposed to prevent. As a payoff to Democratic supporters the stimulus is a grand success. As a national rescue effort, it is worse than useless, with the rescuees themselves being the ones left holding the bag. In this case, Peter is being robbed to pay Peter. Nicely done.

But where are all the blockbusters, the bills that were going to send the evil GOP, polluters, reactionaries, and AT writers running for high ground? Where is FOCA? The climate-change bill? Nationalization of health care?

We know where they are -- they're in limbo.

Obama's revolution was divided into three major parts -- government takeover of large industrial sectors, the imposition of a Green ideology to justify government intervention on any scale, and federal takeover of the health-care industry. Once these steps were taken, the result would be state control of American society on an unprecedented scale, along with a state-approved ideological superstructure (environmentalism) to act as the framework for the new system. All this was supposed to be carried out with military swiftness, within weeks or months of Obama's inauguration, before any questions could be asked or opposition mounted.

Thanks to the recession, the takeover of the auto and financial industries went relatively smoothly. The problem lay in the follow-through. GM, the jewel in the government's crown, has staked its fortunes on an economy model car that, since it is powered by battery, happens to cost $40,000, twice as much as any other economy car (it also requires a total battery replacement halfway through its operating lifespan amounting to at least another $16,000. So let's round it off to $60,000 -- three times what any other economy car costs.) Since the Volt can be marketed only to the extremely wealthy clinically insane -- not an enormous market -- it's obvious that GM can be kept afloat only by subsidies, which will end at the same time that Democratic hegemony does. (We'll skip over as irrelevant GM's $4,000 minicar that cannot be sold in the U.S. -- India has been marketing such a car for even less.)

As for the financial industry, much as Treasury Department officials have amused themselves with the fantasy that they are "in control", the bankers have proceeded to do exactly what they please, including paying each other extravagant bonuses, refusing to release funds for the loan markets, and soaking up government subsidies to pay off past losses. Stalin would have had them shot, an alternative currently not open to the Obamiate. I think we can write off industrial centralization.

Cap & Trade, AKA the Waxman-Markey Act, was to be the Trojan horse for Green ideology, an attempt to make environmentalism the basis of most domestic government activity. It was considered an easy sell, with "global warming" having become as key an element of liberalism as gun control and abortion. But when the provisions of Waxman-Markey became known, particularly those implying the shutdown of most American industry to leave the populace living in holes dug in hillsides and chewing bark off trees, the bloom was suddenly off the Green rose. Rising in their mighty fury, the Blue Dogs forced the bill to be set aside. It'll be passed eventually though. Next year, maybe. Or after the glaciers recede. We'll see.

Scratch the new American ideology.

We now turn to health care. The Mary Jo Kopechne Health Care Reform Act of 2009 would have made Obama into a benevolent god-emperor on the most titanic scale. The bill appeared to be evolving into an Obama version of the NRA, with federal control extended into new areas on all levels of society and every Americans subject to some measure of bureaucratic interference from womb to tomb. It would be the closest that a third-millennial American leader could come to the absolute life-and-death rule of the pre-modern ruler, the act that would turn Barack Obama into an American Caesar. (Would all presidents coming after him have to add "Barack" to their names following their inauguration? Just wondering...)

Then came the town halls, and Sarah Palin's revelation that the bill as written would open the door to euthanasia, and the death of Ms. Kopechne's chauffeur, which together served to send the entire effort crashing. The other week none other than Russ Feingold, who yearns for such a bill the way that Gilgamesh yearned for immortality, announced to his constituents that it will not come up for a vote until the end of the year, if then. Delays involving such efforts usually mean that they're finished, at least as they stand. There may be a health-care bill passed somewhere down the line, but it won't be Obama's bill, and it will lack most of the provisions that a Caesar demands -- the euthanasia counseling provisions, the "public option", control of insurance rates, and so on. The Imperator will have to find another means of attaining demigodhood. I suggest an expedition to conquer the Picts.

(But what's this "FOCA", you ask? Well you may. FOCA, or the "Freedom of Choice Act" is a bill that would enshrine abortion as a basic civil right with even greater protection than those given the rights of free speech, worship, or assembly, while also overturning every previous court decision and law dealing with the subject. Obama enjoyed waving it around as a senator, and promised that signing it would be his "first act" in the oval office. That is, until the Catholic bishops threatened him with stern consequences, beginning with the closure of the Catholic hospital network, fully a third of the U.S. health-care system. So FOCA went by the board, along with the promise to overturn the "conscience clause" protecting medical personnel who refuse to assist in abortions. Obama intended to put an end to that by March. It's been a long time since then.)

To cap the redeemer's woes, we have a world-class case of buyer's remorse on the part of the voters, with presidential approval ratings dropping to 50% across the board. Rasmussen has Obama at 46%, a drop of some 30% in little more than six months. Zogby, among the most dependable of pollsters, reveals that Obama is losing support even among his core constituency.

So there it is -- a political agenda in ruins. Massive ruins, awe-inspiring ruins, ruins unprecedented in their size and majesty. For an epitaph we can turn to Shelley:

Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

So what does he do now? Deliverers cannot simply fail. Jesus cannot shrug and become a Jerusalem rabbi. Moses cannot return to Egypt and open a travel agency for Sinai tours. A fallen messiah does not become half a messiah or a third of a messiah, his original power and influence shrinking to match. He becomes a joke.

Obama will not tolerate becoming a joke. Not with his personality, smug, self-involved, and egotistical as it is. Particularly after being exposed to adulation given to no man since the heyday of Rome (not even Louis XIVth, the Sun King, who embodied the divine right of monarchy, was ever hailed as a "god"). So what are his alternatives?

(And let's hear no more nonsense about "internment camps" or ACORN goofs being issued brown shirts and truncheons such as I've seen from people who really ought to know better. Obama simply doesn't have that in him -- neither the daring and dynamism of the tyrant, nor the brutality and cruelty. Like most Democrats, Obama will take advantage of violence; he will not instigate violence himself.

And besides, have you ever seen any ACORN twits?)

Obama could, and probably will, attempt to sneak aspects of his agenda through riders to unrelated bills and unfunded mandates. But this won't be enough. It would be politically unsatisfying, and would fail to match his bold image of himself. Obama is a man who needs a mission, who must believe he has been touched by fire, reaching for goals beyond those open to ordinary men. The squalid day in/day out of politics so appealing to an FDR or a Lyndon B. Johnson means little to him. So he will search for other possibilities, spectacular, historic tasks that match his self-image.

More Green involvement would be an obvious choice. Al Gore has clearly demonstrated what a salve it can be to the wounded political ego. What better way of offsetting a ruined agenda than by taking up the pose of world savior and servant of Gaia? It's also relatively risk-free. Of the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of public figures who have lied and manipulated on behalf of environmentalism, not a single one -- not Carson, not Ruckelshaus, not Ehrlich, not Streep -- have ever paid a price for it. On the contrary, most have done very well for themselves. Obama could do worse than to continue pushing the warming button -- or whatever may replace it after another couple of bad winters.

He could instead choose to push the race button. Elected as a conciliator, Obama has since demonstrated himself to be anything but. The questions aroused by his twenty-year adherence to Jeremiah Wright have been answered by the appointment of the compulsive Eric Holder and the thuggish Van Jones, now departed. Obama's inept handling of the Gates incident suggests that as a man born in Hawaii and raised in large part overseas, he lacks a truly visceral understanding of American racial matters, instead relying on the kind of empty-headed clichés often seen in European media stories regarding American race relations. Whatever the case, any president who manipulates race for political purposes is putting far more than his reputation on the line. As a liberal, Obama lacks the power to benefit American society. But he can do much to damage it.

No more so than as involves the failure not yet mentioned, that of national security. Here Obama appears to be serving two constituencies: foreign governments and his leftist base. The foreign states wanted a return to an America that doesn't bother them, and that's what they've got. The Move On/DU crowd wants a defeated and chastened country. The decision by Witchfinder General Eric Holder to investigate and prosecute CIA officers, the court-ordered release of terrorist Muhammed Jawad, and the administration's near-silence in response to Scotland's release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi are events that will create their own response. Nothing is easier to foresee, and nothing more need be said. In his willingness, if not eagerness, to acquiesce to the see-no-evil security policy of the Clinton administration, Obama is sliding inexorably toward the greatest presidential failure of all: the failure to protect the American people. Such a failure will be viewed as the act of pure negligence that it is.

Obama could easily prevail by setting aside his status as god-emperor, dropping the effort to leave his imprint on the age and ignoring the cries of his more fanatical followers. In other words, by acting as a president. But this is unlikely on any number of cultural, political, and personal grounds. He is on the descending escalator, and is doomed to take it all the way to the bottom. It is our business to see that he doesn't drag the country down with him. Fortunately, his failures have a flip side. The past few months have shown us that Obama is extremely vulnerable to public pressure, as clearly shown by the town halls. We will have plenty of opportunity to put those tactics into effect in the months and years to come. When would-be imperators appear, the people have to step in. But that's why they call it democracy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/barack_ozymandias.html

posted September 09, 2009 06:27 PM         

The American Stinker Again Quoting Rush no less.

And no, I am not going to bother and post all of the good legislation, and stop gaps to the fast and furious desk signing that W did before the door slammed on his butt.

posted September 09, 2009 07:08 PM         

This is the same type of mentality that is pervasive in politics.

all this division in our country annoys the crap out of me.

what do you expect when USA was formed during an almost exact Sun-Eris opposition in Right Ascension (the equatorial longitude coordinates that astronomers regularly use to locate objects)?
The nation was pretty much founded on discord imho....when you think of the disagreements that American colonialists had with the British monarchy. They didn't like the way the British did things. American colonialists thought they were in the right and the British were in the wrong. They challenged the status quo. They stirred stuff up. However,they were always divisive. They didn't fight for liberty and justice for all Americans. There was a lot of hypocrisy behind the American Revolution.

heck...slavery was abolished in Great Britain in 1833 before it was abolished in USA in 1865.

A matter of fact, the great abolutionist Frederick Douglas was an American fugitive ex-slave who fled to Great Britain to avoid capture to be brought back to his master. He lived in Great Britain for a few years. His British friends bought his freedom,and that allowed him to return to the USA as a freed man who didn't have to worry about being captured.

I didn't see anything wrong with Wright. He was just controversial because he said things that many people didn't want to hear. I was very angry with all the self righteousness against him. Race relations issues get me fired up. I don't agree with the AIDS stuff though. I also don't agree with the Whites and Blacks have different types of brains. I do agree with racism is still a problem here in USA. He was no different from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his last 2 years either. Dr. King was disillusioned about race relations later on.

former President Bush admitted to the NAACP that racism still lingers here in USA. He said that laws are easier to change than the human heart is.

don't get me started about American Civil Liberties Union that called out USA on its racism,discrimination and sweeping it under the rug.

I can't stand people who act like their crap doesn't stink when it does stink. I think Eris has something to do with matters dealing with self righteous hypocrisy but also calling others on it. Like in the myth, Eris was considered the trouble maker but the other deities were troublemakers in their own way. Eris' golden apple revealed the petty vanities of the goddesses.

I also can't see how Van is thuggish. He is worked for civil rights. so what. he helped with green jobs. so what.

ACORN is an activist organization that help low income people with housing and wages.

as for mishandling the Gates fiasco, well.....I don't think that people should be arrested in their own home. I do think that Gates overreacted though. However, I'd be ****** off too if was me. Racial profiling is a big problem here in USA. There can be no denial about that.

Raymond

------------------
"Nothing matters absolutely;
the truth is it only matters relatively"

posted September 09, 2009 07:19 PM         

all this division in our country annoys the crap out of me

Agreed

The premise of Bipartisanship is a hookah. Reaching across the asile...mere words.

All we can do is pay attention, and VOTE!

posted September 09, 2009 09:31 PM         

but you can't judge a "presidency" until it's over, and this one is a LONG way from done.

isn't it about time people started trying to work out what will work instead of bitching about something that doesn't exist? healthcare reform has been on the table for decades (apparently teddy roosevelt was the first to put it on the table!) and healthcare reform was one of the chief items that won this presidency.

so relax, jwhop, no one is trying to takeover your insurance plan - i assume you don't use medicare since you're so against government programs - and in fact it might be more affordable when this is all done.

there's an email address you can send suggestions to you know

i have faith that the stupid and credulous in this country will get bored with this soon, and in any case they are in a large MINORITY. most of us USE the space between our ears.

posted September 12, 2009 07:47 AM         

quote:

---

most of us USE the space between our ears...katatonic

---

posted September 12, 2009 01:15 PM         

Eisenhower Questioned

West Point was very conscious of any ' Non-White' candidates. It was obvious from Eisenhower's appearance that he was carrying another race's blood. The headmaster quizzed him and he admitted he had Jewish ancestors. His father was a Swedish Jew who married a Swedish gentile woman.

* * * *

Bakhufu, in his previously mentioned out of print book, lists Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President, as the sixth black president. He was the WWII commanding officer, and saw the Afrikan general Hannibal as his favorite war hero. "According to research found in Wikipedia, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration confirms Eisenhower, the 34th president, also had black ancestors. His mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower, an anti-war advocate, was part black. This is also verified by Answers.com and several other web sites." (Aysha Hussain. "Eisenhower, Too? Were There More Than 5 'Black' Presidents?")

"Many of Eisenhower’s ancestors, from his mother’s side of the family, carried African names – names that were heard in and around the pyramids and temples in ancient times. Two female ancestors’ names were Hypatia, i.e., Hypatia Link and Hypatia McGhee. Hypatia was an African mathematician and teacher." (Bakhufu

During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas McArthur in the South Pacific, McArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff. In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.

seems whoever is president, there is someone to stir up disrespect in whatever way they can. now eisenhower was extremely popular and didn't rock the boat very much, but still he had his enemies.

and apparently either jewish or black ancestry! the picture of his parents is interesting too
http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/Black_presidents.htm

posted September 29, 2009 03:12 PM         

Nope

September 29, 2009
Are We Witnessing the Collapse of Liberalism?
By J. Robert Smith
Less than a year into his presidency, Barack Obama's world grows bleaker. Liberalism's world is bleaker. At home and abroad, liberalism, as advanced by the President, is failing. Are we witnessing the beginnings of another historic event, loosely comparable to the fall of communism twenty years ago? Now the fall of liberalism?

Remember, at the beginning of the 1980s, no one would have predicted that by the decade's close the Berlin Wall would fall, communism would be discredited and the Soviet Union would be less than a couple of years away from dissolution.

Though no conservative worth his salt is surprised by liberalism's shortcomings, the rapidity of its failure is surprising. More importantly, it's alarming, for though the effects of liberalism's failure are damaging to us at home, they may prove terrible to us abroad.

Step back to consider. What's working for Mr. Obama and the Democrats?

Despite the Democrats' interventions, an anemic economy promises nothing more than a tepid recovery, if that. Democrats are indebting the nation to the tune of trillions of dollars. The greenback has been debased. Serious inflation is coming, and that inflation will trigger another economic downturn, one that might be sharper and deeper than we're now experiencing.

What commonsense American believes that mountains of debt and looming inflation are good for a struggling economy? More to the point, if a party has a sober worldview and a solid grasp of recent history, how can it possibly legislate policies and spending that must have disastrous consequences?

Well, it can't. But Democrats can. They long ago raised liberalism to dogma. Reality is off-limits to the faithful.

The economic policies of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter were disasters, culminating in bitter years of stagflation. Rather than learning from those calamitous years, and from the subsequent Reagan years, when the damage was undone and the economy righted, liberals stubbornly insist on another go, as if their earlier failures were simply a matter of flawed execution.

Today, President Obama flirts with protectionism. He recently slapped sanctions on Chinese tires to appease union bosses. Free trade agreements with Colombia and other nations shamefully languish in Congress. Protectionism not only hurts consumers and producers, but could spark conflict abroad.

Evidently, currying favor with a key constituency -- unions -- is of greater importance to Mr. Obama than the economic and national security ramifications of protectionism. The Smoot-Hawley Act, which built the economic equivalent of the Berlin Wall around the American economy, is increasingly understood as the trigger for the Great Depression.

History points to the advantages of open trade, not a closed economy. Oddly, on this score, liberals are embracing Herbert Hoover.

The President's advocacy of government-controlled healthcare is another testament to belief over reality. In Canada and Great Britain, socialized medicine has proven to be expensive, inefficient, deficient (rationing) and, at best, mediocre. Proposals for it here are proving to be broadly and intensely unpopular. Yet, the President forges ahead.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid threatens to invoke an arcane budget resolution rule to pass healthcare reform if he can't round up sixty votes to end debate to move the matter to a final vote. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who authored the budget resolution rule, has flatly stated that using it to pass healthcare reform would be a gross misapplication and a disturbing precedent.

But this is what liberals are down to: ignoring the will of the majority and bending rules to impose a takeover of healthcare on Americans.

A political party with principles and ideas that resonate with voters doesn't need to ignore the people, nor does it need to resort to parliamentary chicanery to win a result. It speaks tellingly of the weakness, not the strength, of modern liberals that they're willing to end-run the popular will.

But it's overseas where liberalism, as expressed through Mr. Obama's foreign policy, poses great dangers to the Republic. In truth, the question now isn't will the United States pay a terrible price for the President's policies, but when.

Mr. Obama took to the world stage in January sporting sackcloth and ashes. His public confessions for alleged American misdeeds and arrogance were designed to win the absolution of offended allies and enemies alike.

The United States will no longer lead, Mr. Obama all but declared. Instead, it will step down to join the crowd. Good will and fellowship, dialogue and negotiation, accommodation and consensus, shall bring civility and peace to a fractious world.

But reality, that cruel lover, has other ideas. The President's bended knee and olive branches are being met with sneers and cold contempt by rogues. His measure has been taken, and he's deemed weak. And, by extension, so is liberalism, which governs his actions.

The President unilaterally withdrew elements of missile defense from the Poles and Czechs. His gesture was met immediately by the Russians with cool disdain. The Russians, historically a brutal people with a taste for domination, see the President's action as craven; it will embolden them to push for more concessions, perhaps concerning Georgia or even the Ukraine. The Chinese are no less likely to test the President's mettle. Taiwan could be in China's crosshairs.

Mr. Obama's pledge to shut down Gitmo -- someday -- met with plenty of applause from leftists here and overseas. Yet the nation's enemies were unmoved. To their eyes, Gitmo was already Club Med. Their enemies don't get kid-glove treatment. Yet another sure sign to them of presidential timidity.

And this past week, President Obama managed a two-fer. He waffled on his commitment to fight the "necessary war" in Afghanistan and, after his gauzy U.N. speech, was greeted with brazen defiance by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose nation, we've learned, has a secret second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom. Still more evidence that the Iranians plan on building unholy nuclear bombs.

In response, all the President could do was retreat into legalism. He said this:

"The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law."

What any fair-minded observer sees is that the Iranians are demonstrating through deeds their intention to create nuclear weapons. Their missile test over the weekend has nothing to do with "Atoms for Peace." Given their persistence, they don't seem greatly deterred by the threat of slaps on the wrist in international courts or U.N. censure. The mullahs are playing a tough game of chicken, one Mr. Obama and liberals are ill-equipped to play and win.

In less than nine months time, the time of Mr. Obama's tenure, a bad economy remains bad, with the prospect of getting worse. Overseas, the nation's enemies, who only a short time ago feared us, now scheme to overtly or surreptitiously challenge us. Our allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, some of whom resent our power, must confront an ugly question: What happens in a world absent sufficient projections of American power?

But make no mistake. This is not only the faults and failings of a man, Barack Obama, but of the worldview and philosophy he embodies. Liberalism in action is again proving to be a dismal and dangerous failure. This time, though, its margin for error is greatly diminished. Hence, the nation faces greater risks.

The only way for liberalism to work is if it stops being liberalism. What are the odds of that happening?