Meth

We finally have an explanation about what they've been smoking in the White House that's helped them dream up their (as yet nonexistent) "American Jobs Act" and $1.5 trillion tax hike, part of which is inspired by Warren Buffet's knuckleheaded complaint about his secretary's tax rate.

Said the President about the "Buffet rule":  This is not class warfare--it's meth.

Well, at least they've finally admitted it.  This is a big step for the administration, and I think we can all lend our prayers and support to everyone in the White House as they struggle to overcome this terrible addiction.

Update:  I'm told that I misquoted the President.  He didn't say "meth," he said "math."  Given what we've seen of Obama's spending habits, I'm wondering if that's an improvement.

All You Need Is Love

"I love you Barack!" one voice cried out in the crowd.

"I love you back," the president replied. "But if you love me, you've got to help me pass this bill!"  (CBS News)

Barack Obama's campaign to degrade the presidency while also annoying the hell out of more Americans every day continues unabated.  The looney tunes president who's been running around the country since his trip to Martha's Vineyard has me wondering what the hell he's been huffing that makes him so happy while so much is going wrong.

Almost no one who hasn't actually hugged Debbie Wasserman Schultz believes Obama's latest "American Jobs Act" is in any way a serious attempt to deal with our deteriorating economic situation, and it's been clear from the beginning that this latest "jobs" scheme was never meant to be anything more than a weapon to be used against Republicans in the coming election, once the bill has failed to pass.  The President's speech before the Congress sounded like a pitch from an obnoxious motivational speaker, made weirder by the fact that he was selling a bill that was at that point unseen and in fact unwritten. That the bill turned out to be nothing more than a half-sized version of Stimulus One has helped convince almost no one but the already faithful, and few enough of them.

Speaking of Stimulus One, the easily predicted corruption resulting from throwing billions of dollars around without any serious purpose is beginning to come to light in the growing scandal over bad investments the government made in "green energy" firms, the most glaring example being $535 million poured down a rat hole called Solyndra.  Other similar failures are emerging, showing an administration that rushed out to invest in companies in spite of evidence the prospects for success were poor.  That this sort of approach is in character with the administration's usual lack of common sense doesn't make it any less outrageous, unfortunately.

In addition to the collapse of the administration's economic and fiscal policies, the Fast & Furious gunrunning scandal continues to pick up steam with the discovery of yet more weapons and murders that can be traced to the ATF's bastard program.  I have trouble imagining that this won't eventually take down Eric Holder and wash up onto the gates of the White House, but the administration at this point is stonewalling in the old tradition, and it looks to me like this will all come to head sometime next year, not a good time for a President up for reelection.

And finally in this week we saw the re-emergence of the Stalinist inclinations of Obamaland with the administration establishing its "AttackWatch.com" website, whereby citizens can report attacks and misinformation about the Obama Administration and receive The Truth.  If you're unaware, AttackWatch.com was paired with a Twitter account (#AttackWatch) that has turned into a playground for dissenting citizens leaving generally humorous messages mocking the administration, at a pace that's become hard to keep up with.  It took less than two days for this new propaganda initiative by the administration to get shoved right back in its face, in a spontaneous and uncoordinated way that doesn't bode well for whatever new campaign strategies the White House has yet to dream up.

So here's where we are now, as I see it:  things are going to hell and the President and his people have no clue whatsoever of what to do.  Instead we see our President in endless campaign mode flitting about like he's been hitting the laughing gas, trying to convince us that his way is still the right way, and never mind that giant asteroid hurling towards the planet at 3,000 miles a second...

Staying The Course

President Obama's speech and unwritten "American Jobs Act" have met with little favorable reaction.  His blend of die-hard amateur Keynesianism, finger-pointing and class warfare just doesn't inspire much confidence at this point, even with two or three actual sensible ideas buried within the mess.  The more realistic reaction as I see it is fear of what the President can yet do in his time left in office, and a resolve to hunker down and defeat him and his minions at the first opportunity.  But the President seems to understand this in his own way, as he said in his speech last night:

The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here — the people who hired us to work for them — they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.

No, we don't have the luxury of waiting 14 months, but since we don't live under a Parliamentary system, it's just going to take that long to throw the President and his gang out on their ears.

Insane

I'm listening to Obama giving his "jobs" speech before the Congress.  Boy, he sure is excited. Apparently he's going to end all our economic difficulties by repairing schools and bridges and giving tax credits to business to hire unemployed people and he's going to make changes to Medicare and he's going to reveal some more details about some more details on Monday and he's going to...

It's all the same failed crap he's ever tried, except now he's piling it together in one speech.  Enough.

President Obama, it's time for you to resign.

Strategy

The White House and its allies in the Congress and labor union leadership are in complete panic about Obama's prospects for reelection, if comments from the past few weeks by members of that coalition are any guide.

The big bomb comes from a sputtering Teamsters President James Hoffa at a Labor Day union rally in Detroit, in which he seems to be advocating something more aggressive than get-out-the-vote drives in support of Obama:

We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war...President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

President Obama cheefully appeared on the same stage just a few minutes after this goony rant from Hoffa, and as of this writing the White House has refused to express any disapproval of Hoffa's remarks.  The Teamster Union's history of ties to organized crime of course is what makes all this sound more ominous than normal political tough talk, a history which Democratic apologists will ignore as they insist that Hoffa simply means "vote out" when he says "take these son of bitches out."

Over on the racism beat, some members of the House of Representatives have been tossing red meat to the faithful.  The always reliable Maxine Waters vowed that the "Tea Party can go straight to hell...and I'm going to help it get there" and later threatened to tax banks out of existence, an interesting idea considering the back-burner scandal going on about her own family's ownership of failed bank.  A lesser known Congressman, Indiana's Andre Carson, opined that the Tea Party wants a return of Jim Crow and that “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree.”  Obviously, if someone wants to see you hanging on a tree, you're justified in using any means necessary to stop that from happening...

Also at a Labor Day rally, Vice President Biden gave an unconvincing try at sounding righteously indignant, though he managed to come up with this gem:

This is a different kind of fight. This is a fight for the existence of organized labor. You are the only folks keeping the barbarians at the gate. That’s why they want you so bad.

Again, the villain spoken of here is the Tea Party and any others who object to bankrupting cities, states, and the nation in order to feather the nest of our supposed public servants.  Why he thinks that describing a likely majority of voters as "barbarians" is going to help his cause is beyond me, but when you're Joe Biden, you opens your mouth and you takes your chances.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of this sort of Democrat/leftist martial talk in light of President Obama's call in Tucson for a "new era of civility" is at this point almost too easy, true as it might be.  Maxine Waters and Joe Biden aren't physically going to lead any charge against their adversaries, but I have to wonder how aware these people are that this language is sounding more and more like an incitement of violence, and if this trend isn't actually a part of the White House's increasingly desperate campaign strategy. Given the rioting we've seen in Europe over the collapse of their welfare states, I think there's a justifiable worry here that the American left may turn from mere violent rhetoric to actual violence as it sees its influence and ideals falling like so many statues of Lenin after the tanks have rolled out of town.

The Case of United States v. America

The modern struggle of Americans trying to lead their lives in decent fashion without being harassed by ever-expanding government authority has been going on at least since the 1930s and the rise of the New Deal, but since the election of Barack Obama government has been taking the upper hand in a rapid and alarming way.  From the spectacle of crotch-grabbing TSA agents to the passage and implementation of massive, unexamined regulatory laws like Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, it's hard for people to not feel at some point under the thumb of somebody in some government office somewhere. Even a trip to the home toilet can be a reminder that there are few places the government won't gladly stick its nose.

Many of the intrusions are by nature hidden from the view of most people and would probably be difficult for them to understand in any case, such as financial and industrial regulations, yet these can often have the effect of making what people want more difficult to get--like bank loans and mortgages, for instance.  But sometimes the government's buttinski act strides right into every day life, as in the incandescent light bulb ban or our fabulous modern three-flush toilets.

My own version of this has happened in watching the news about the Justice Deparment's raid on the Gibson guitar factories in Memphis and Nashville, in which the government seized something like a million dollar's worth of tone woods, guitars and equipment, under the claim that the Gibson company had violated something called the Lacey Act, which apparently has to do with rules about importation of foreign goods.  In all the fuss over this it has come out that Gibson's longtime competitor, C.F. Martin & Co., imports the same woods for use in their instruments, yet Martin hasn't received any attention from the feds.  Another fact that's come to light is that Gibson's CEO is politically anti-Obama, while Martin's head (C.F. Martin IV) has given money to Democrats, including Obama.  So could it be that the Justice Department is selectively harassing companies and CEO's who have opposed Obama, whether financially or in other ways?  Would the Great Uniter and his troops actually do something like that?

Given the incredible part both Gibson and Martin musical instruments have played in American culture over the past 100+ years, I personally (as a Martin guitar owner) find it very disturbing that the government pig rooting around has thrown up shit not only onto the Gibson company but also onto the Martin company as well.  These aren't big companies like General Electric or Monsanto that have staffs of lawyers following the vagaries of regulatory minutiae, and I'm sure there's plenty the heads of both of these companies would rather be doing than worrying about keeping the government off their backs--like, um, making guitars.

I don't have any developed opinion so far about Rick Perry's career or his presidential campaign, but he started off his campaign by saying he intends to "work to try to make DC as inconsequential in your life as I can."  However Perry's campaign goes, I hope we'll see that idea become a theme of the coming election to defeat Obama.

Joint Session

President Obama's inner Machiavelli seems to be failing him in his latest attempt to roll over the Congress.  His last minute request/demand that he be allowed to address a joint session of Congress the same night as a long-scheduled Republican Presidential debate has worked out badly after Speaker Boehner politely declined the invitation and suggested, uh, how about the next night?  Boehner's reasonableness in this has left the White House little alternative but to back down, and now it is reduced to trying to reassure Americans that the President's rescheduled speech won't get in the way of coverage of the concurrent first game of the NFL season.

What the hell is going on here?  This attempt by the White House to steal attention from the Republican debate is downright weird, and it reminds me of nothing more than the kind of thing a jealous teenager might try in hopes of ruining a party where he or she hasn't been invited.  The idea that a speech about his latest ridiculous plan for reviving the economy needs the backdrop of an assembled Congress is insulting to the Congress, which is a co-equal branch of our government and not just scenery, and to the people of the nation, since that same Congress does represent us, whether we like it or not.

Expecting the White House to display any respect for the nation or its institutions is probably futile at this point.  Fortunately, the White House is meeting little but derision in the media and from the public in this latest episode, even if the derision on the left amounts to being angry that Obama has managed to make himself look childish and the Republicans reasonable and adult.  I think that Obama deserves nothing but praise for continuing to lose support just about everywhere in the electorate, no matter how or why he does it.

Addendum:  Apparently the White House's reaction is even more silly than I thought.