econarchy

…. He would be a junior Senator from Illinois, that’s what. This is an Op-Ed piece from the Washington Times that is a must-read. Here is an excerpt:

Imagine that last fall before being elected, Barack Obama had outlined the positions he has embraced since being inaugurated as president. An honest campaign speech could have gone something like this —

”As we approach Election Day, the American people should not waste the crisis we find ourselves in.

“Consequently, if elected, I promise to get us over the Bush financial meltdown with a stimulus program that will borrow $787 billion - which, of course, will add to the already sizable budget deficit (nearly $500 billion) projected in the Bush administration’s last budget.

“By March of next year, my new $3.6 trillion budget will include a spending bill with more than 8,500 budget earmarks to target in-need constituents.

“In addition to the stimulus/borrowing plan, I intend to devote $634 billion to fund a new supplementary national health-care system. But that is not all. Unfortunately, the initial Bush bank bailout of some $700 billion also may well have to be augmented by an additional $750 billion.

“Although my new spending proposals may raise the federal deficit in my first year to $1.75 trillion, I promise the American people that by the end of my first term, I will halve the federal deficit - albeit adding another $3 trillion to $5 trillion to the national debt.

This article is a must read. Check it out.

Michael Goodwin writes in the NY Daily News that Obama has a serious problem - a competence problem. And its not just him, but the entire Administration.

Not long ago, after a string of especially bad days for the Obama administration, a veteran Democratic pol approached me with a pained look on his face and asked, “Do you think they know what they’re doing?”

The question caught me off guard because the man is a well-known Obama supporter. As we talked, I quickly realized his asking suggested his own considerable doubts.

Yes, it’s early, but an eerily familiar feeling is spreading across party lines and seeping into the national conversation. It’s a nagging doubt about the competency of the White House.

I am sorry, but this is simple common sense to me. How can someone with no work experience be expected to be competent at the hardest job in the world? Why anyone is surprised about Obama’s incompetence to run this country is simply beyond understanding. I highly doubt that any Board of Directors of any Fortune 500 company would hire Obama to be their CEO, yet we elected him to run the nation?

Obama is incompetent; both in the objective meaning of the word as measured by his experience (or lack thereof) and the subjective meaning of the word as demonstrated by his absolute and abject failure to lead in a time of crisis.

The hypocrisy and downright stupidity coming out of Washington is deafening. After the story broke about AIG paying $165 Million in bonuses to various Managers, all hell broke lose among the general public. And when the general public gets upset, frothing Washington bureaucrats cannot be far behind. Now the Obama Administration is seething with rage over the audacity of a business paying bonuses which a) they are legally obligated to pay, and which b) may incent top talent to actually stay at the dying company.

Here is a funny thought - maybe if the politicians that were so anxious to give our taxpayer dollars to these suffering companies would have actually, oh I don’t know, put some stipulations on the money before giving it out, they would have room to talk. But when you just give out free money with no strings attached to a company obligated to pay bonuses, you have no room for complaint.

Here is a brief overview of what is going on.

• AIG received $173 Billion in Federal bailout money.
• AIG is struggling to keep their good people from leaving the company.
• AIG has a legal commitment to pay $160 Million in bonuses promised to certain Managers long before ever receiving any bailout money.
• Washington wants them to ignore this commitment to their people, and not pay the bonuses. Apparently the politicians think that people work for free. Gee, I wonder why….

Here is my analysis on this issue. If Washington doesn’t want these private companies acting like private companies, they should stop giving them money and let them fail. But now that all taxpayers are invested (heavily) in the bailed out companies like AIG, we should want them to succeed. Washington should want them to succeed. If they don’t succeed, we lose the $173 Billion that we gave. Now here is what liberals never, ever, ever understand - no company will succeed without good people, and good people are expensive.

So when the liberals froth at the mouth and go into convulsions over these companies paying bonuses, then insist that bonuses be cut back or cut out altogether, they are essentially signing the company’s death certificate. If AIG cannot pay to keep their top talent, the top talent will leave. The top people can ALWAYS find jobs, even in this economy. This goes not just for AIG, but for Bank of America, Citi, and all the others. Every week there is a news story about Washington’s anger over a bailed-out company giving bonuses, or going on a business trip, or advertising, or all of the other basic needs of any company hoping to succeed in a competitive and challenging market. No advertising? No bonuses? No corporate meetings? This is beginning to sound like a government office rather than a private business! Oh, wait….. maybe thats the point? To turn the US into Venezuela?

Kill the bonuses, lose the good people. Lose the good people, kill the company. Perhaps if Obama had any actual work experience in the business world he would understand this. Or maybe he understands and doesn’t care. When you appeal to the bottom rung of society, you are going to do what appeals to the bottom rung of society - and class warfare/hating the rich is the hot ticket right now.

Maybe Obama should have, you know, actually hired someone with some real Economics knowledge rather than Geithner. Those who actually know what they are doing have rated Obama and Geithner as pathetic, miserable failures on the economy. Ironically, being intellectual/academic types, most of these goons probably voted for Obama. Yea, not so smart now, are ya?!

In striking contrast to President Obama’s popularity with the public, a new Wall Street Journal survey of economists gives the president and his treasury secretary failing grades. WSJ’s Phil Izzo and Kelly Evans discuss.

The economists’ assessment stands in stark contrast with Mr. Obama’s popularity with the public, with a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll giving him a 60% approval rating. A majority of the 49 economists polled said they were dissatisfied with the administration’s economic policies.

On average, they gave the president a grade of 59 out of 100, and although there was a broad range of marks, 42% of respondents rated Mr. Obama below 60. Mr. Geithner received an average grade of 51. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scored better, with an average 71.

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The best part of the article is when they say that this survey stands in “stark contrast” to Obama’s popularity with the “public.” Yea! That’s because the public is STUPID!!!! If the American public weren’t a bunch of brooding morons with their hands out and mouths open, they never would have elected that know-nothing fool in the first place.

I keep reading story after story in the Mainstream media that is critical of Obama. I am not referring to right-wing web sites, or even FoxNews, but left-leaning Liberal news outlets like the Washington Post and Newsweek. Salon.com, a very liberal website, has an article criticizing Obama’s “clumsy” and “smirky” staff for “sinking him.” No arguments there. Here is an excerpt:

Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama’s first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)

First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery. Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration’s weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?

Read more from Salon

Newsweek is also especially critical. The headline of the article is very telling:

Obama still has the approval of the people, but the establishment is beginning to mumble that the president may not have what it takes.

I don’t think there is any doubt that wise Democrats are starting to question their Manchurian Candidate. Obama’s long series of mistakes, blunders, and outright lies and hypocrisy have cast a shadow on who was built up to be the New Messiah. Rather than save the world, he has cost us countless trillions in the stock market and trillions more in wasteful, pork-laden government spending under the guise of “stimulus.” When Newsweek criticizes Obama, something has changed. Here is an excerpt:

Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls, including NEWSWEEK’s. But, in ways both large and small, what’s left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.

They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president’s character: he’s not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He’d have made a fine judge. But we don’t need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.

Perhaps electing an unproven, inexperienced Socialist during the biggest economic crisis in 8 decades was not a wise decision.

Read More from Newsweek

Wow. Kevin Hassett writes an article for Bloomberg that really hits the nail on the head. Want to know why the markets are imploding? It is because we have a President who has declared a War on Business.

March 9 (Bloomberg) — Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.

There are two steps to accomplish that.

Discourage Innovation

First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Read more to see how Obama really is trying to finish off the country, or so it seems.

Green programs don’t save economies. Light rails in dying cities don’t save economies. Researching frogs don’t save economies. Promoting the “arts” does not save economies.

Obama’s spending program, the largest non-war spending bill ever, is simply a gift to the liberals and little more. It is a gift to the eco-hippies, the artsy crowd, and the social welfare supporters. I don’t even think that is up for debate; just look at where the money is going.

What really frustrates me is Obama’s outright disdain and disrespect for the stock markets. They have clearly shown their disgust of this administration (the market is down 31% since election day - a truly shocking figure in just 4 months.) What liberals fail to realize is that the stock market is the home of the retirement investments of millions of Americans. So when policy destroys businesses in this country, it subsequently destroys the retirements of American citizens. But what am I thinking…. Obama only cares about the irresponsible, poor, and unemployed Americans. He surely doesn’t care about people who, you know, actually saved money for retirement.

If you want to really learn about how Obama is ushering in a new Depression, just read the WSJ Op-Ed pages. Here is an excerpt from a recent article:

 The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 281 points yesterday, or 4%, while President Obama began his political push for nationalizing health care and Barney Frank called upon state, local and federal officials to prosecute “those people whose irresponsible and, in some cases, criminal actions helped bring about this crisis.” (In what must have been an oversight, Mr. Frank left himself off the target list.) Citigroup — subject of three federal “rescues” so far — closed at $1.02 a share.

The larger point is that economies don’t spiral down forever without a reason and without policy encouragement. What’s worrying about the plunge in equities since January 2, and especially in the last week since Mr. Obama released his radical budget, is that it has come amid the unveiling of the President’s policy agenda. Equity prices have reacted to those proposals by signaling that they expect a much deeper and longer recession.

The optimistic message in Mr. Cogan’s comparisons is that recessions eventually end. How long they last, and how severe they get, depends in part on the choices our leaders make. The choices that Mr. Obama and Congress are making so far are not contributing to confidence, much less to recovery.

 Read More from the WSJ

 Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters,

 

We’ve stuck together since the late 1950s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know that we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and just will not ever agree on what’s right. So let’s just end it right now while we can do it on friendly terms. We can smile, shake hands, chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and each go our own way.

So here’s a model separation agreement.

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by land mass, each taking a portion. That’s going to be the difficult part, but I’m sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy. Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate taste. We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can have those. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. And since you hate guns and you hate war, we’ll take the firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. But you are going to be responsible for finding a biodiesel vehicle big enough to haul them around.

We’ll keep the capitalism, the greedy corporations, the pharmaceutical companies; we will keep Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have the homeless, the homeboys, the hippies and illegal aliens. We will keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, the greedy CEOS and all of the rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and we’ll let you have NBC and Hollywood.

You can be nice to Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer anybody that threatens us. You can have the peaceniks and the war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we will provide them with security. You won’t have to worry about it. We will keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley Maclaine. You can also have the UN, but we will no longer pay the bill.

We will keep the SUVs, the pickup trucks and the oversize luxury cars. You can have the compacts, the subcompacts and every Subaru station wagon you can find. You can give everybody healthcare, if you can find any practicing doctors. We will continue to believe that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. We will keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the national anthem, and I am sure you will be happy to substitute in their place “Imagine.” I’d like to teach the world to sing “Kumbaya” or “We are the world.” We will practice trickle-down economics and you can give trickle-up poverty your best shot. And since it so offends you, we will keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots. And if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the friendly spirit of parting, I’ll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in about 15 years.

Sincerely,

John J Wall

Law student and an American

P.S. You can also have Barbara Streisand and Jane Fonda

From Neal Boortz

C’mon, Obama. Just own up to it. You are a big government President. Why the spin? You believe that the government exists to solve every problem in the world, and you are doing everything you can to live out your dream. For some reason you believe that where others fail (USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, France, Germany, etc, etc….) you will succeed. Of course you will. After all, you are the Messiah. The Chosen One. The rock star. Your name be praised.

We already know you are a hypocrite (where to even begin). You support a Spending Bill with such an absolutely embarassing amount of earmarks that I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could live with themselves for writing, supporting or (gasp) signing this insult to America. But hey, “equal protection under the law” only applies during good times, right?

But it’s not just the earmarks. You are bound and determined to make sure that the top 2% of wage earners (who don’t have enough votes for you to care), fund the every fantasy of your lower-class, lazy, overweight, whiny, populist voter base. You obviously have no shame. You are willing to force a minority of taxpayers that you don’t care about to pay for such insane things that you cannot possibly posess an ounce of shame. Or integrity for that matter. I see you want the goverment to pay for home improvements now.  But unlike your voter base, I am smart enough to know that the government doesn’t actually pay for anything. The taxpayers do. And under your Master Plan, only 2% of the taxpayers do. What a great way to buy votes! Again, that darn “equal protection under the law” stuff doesn’t apply to taxes. We all know that.

To top it all off, we are all soon going to be under the “Obamacare” health plan.  Again, the government that still puts my neighbor’s mail in my box and operates the ever-so-efficient Bureau of Motor Vehicles and IRS is somehow qualified to manage my health care. Yea. Right. Anything to make the government bigger, right Mr. Obama? But hey, I understand that when you rely on the votes of the botton rung of society, you do what you can to buy their support. That is all this is - buying votes. No sane person really thinks government health care is the answer to anything other than bigger government.

But the real icing on the cake is that you elect to increase taxes on the group that keeps this economy affloat during  the biggest economic crisis in 80 years. What are you thinking? Oh, I remember. You are thinking that a bad economy makes more people dependent on the government, which in turn benefits the Liberals. So perhaps you like this whole “bad economy” thing. It sure is ussuring in the era of Socialism that you and your do-gooder elitist clan have been peddling since the 60s.

Just remember one thing, Mr. President. If it wasn’t for the top 5% of the population, the bottom 95% would starve to death.

That’s right. Now the Obamassiah can have you fired if you aren’t willing to perform an abortion. Bush had put protections in place so that Doctors and Nurses cannot be fired if they choose not to perform abortions on moral grounds. Now Obama wants to reverse that policy which would require doctors and nurses to perform abortions, whether they want to or not. Refusal would mean being fired.

The government forcing you to do abortions? Darn right! This is the Obamassiah and the “change” he promised.

President Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.

A Health and Human Services official said Friday the administration will publish notice of its intentions early next week, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates, medical groups and the public. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the notice has not been completed.

The Bush administration instituted the rule in its last days, and it was quickly challenged in federal court by several states and medical organizations. As a candidate, Obama criticized the regulation and campaign aides promised that if elected, he would review it.

The news that he was doing so drew praise from abortion-rights supporters and condemnation from groups opposed to abortion.

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