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.

Back Door Man

As the Obama's continue their workingman's holiday at Martha's Vineyard, with Michelle doing her best to the raise the bar on budgets for future First Family vacations, I've been wondering exactly what Obama & Co. have in store for us in what seems more and more likely to be his last 16 months in office.

An easy answer would be "more of the same," but since Obama has given us so much in only three years, that seems to me too vague to be useful.  I think we need to focus on the paradox that the President who was once acclaimed as The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived has actually shown himself to be both incredibly stubborn and willfully ignorant.  These are not good characteristics to see for anyone hoping the President might finally wise up and relent from his failed policies.  I think what we are going to get instead is a President doubling down on his agenda, pushing through as many executive orders and regulatory changes as he can, legal or not, while the Congress is still divided and largely unable to block or reverse his actions.

The past few weeks have given us evidence that the Obama Administration has no intention of letting public opinion, legal authority, or Congressional opposition keep it from enacting its policy agenda by executive order.

The administration announced on the 18th that it intends to forge ahead with enacting part of the Dream Act, which has been roundly defeated in Congress, by announcing that it is suspending the deportations of several hundred thousand illegal immigrants and will be granting work permits to those who don't have criminal records.  Aside from this being a clear abdication of its responsibility to enforce the law of the land, this is obviously an attempt by the administration to gain electoral support for Obama from hispanic voters, whether they are citizens or not.  With Obama's support falling rapidly with just about every electoral group you can think of, this is one of the few ways Obama might be able to gain more support, given how ineffective and unpopular so many of his policies have proven to be.

Last month the EPA rolled out its new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the main intent of which apparently is to shut down as many coal-fired power plants as possible. Obama early on declared his animus towards the coal industry and actually stated that if his policies about coal went into effect, electricity prices would necessarily go up significantly.  The President has said a lot of things that he hasn't followed up on, but he seems to be sticking to his guns here.

Given the massive unpopularity of the Dream Act and the clear harm he will be doing to his own electoral prospects in coal-mining states (e.g., Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia), I'm leaning towards concluding that the White House has decided that Obama has no chance at all of winning re-election based on his record and accomplishments.  I think that instead they're going to be campaigning on the low road, and hard.  In the meantime they'll be jamming down on enacting their agenda by fiat, on the theory that at least some of it will become entrenched enough that it will be too difficult to reverse, even if the White House and Congress do return to Republican hands after the election.

Attack of the Killer Orator

President Obama's current vacation on Martha's Vineyard is going to be not just R&R for our beleaguered Commander-In-Chief and his family, but also a working vacation during which he intends to bring his titanic talents to forging the very thing the citizens of our Republic hope and pray he will be able to produce:  a speech.

Seeking to jolt the economy, President Barack Obama will unveil new ideas to create jobs and help the struggling poor and middle class in a major speech after Labor Day. And then he will try to seize political advantage by spending the fall pressuring Congress to act on his plan.

Obama’s plan is likely to contain a mix of tax cuts, jobs-boosting construction projects and steps to help the long-term unemployed, a senior administration official told the Associated Press. The official emphasized that Obama’s proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for many weeks and still supports, like his idea of an “infrastructure bank” to finance construction jobs.

I'm wondering exactly when the stock markets will have "priced in" the economic impact of the latest evidence of presidential incompetence this speech will no doubt present.  Maybe they already have?

Department of Flounder

The Obama Adminstration is in apparent freak-out mode over the President's diminishing prospects for re-election.  The debt-ceiling deal (and subsequent credit downgrade) is widely unpopular, and combined with the continuing stagnant economy, has quickly brought his approval ratings down below 40 percent in at least one major public opinion poll. A New York Times article over the weekend has detailed some of the debate going on within the White House over how to limit or reverse the political damage to the President over the economy.

The Administration's fears seem to be leading it down the path so many desperate people take:  looking for salvation in stupid ideas.  From the New York Times article:

On Aug. 5, in a move that went virtually unnoticed amid the clamor over a rating agency’s downgrading of United States debt, the administration announced a new jobs program for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama called it a “reverse boot camp,” intended to retrain veterans for civilian jobs. Part of the program would include a “returning hero tax credit” for companies that hire unemployed disabled veterans.

The administration may also merge the Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and some economic divisions at the State Department into a new agency, administration officials said. Possible names include the Department of Jobs or the Department of Competitiveness.

As for the first paragraph:  if the economy wasn't dead in the water, there probably wouldn't be much of a problem with unemployment among recently released service members.  This is a typical liberal solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.

How anyone could think the idea floated in the second paragraph even approaches being sound thinking is puzzling, but we've come to expect this kind of frazzle-dazzle from the White House.  The fact that the Administration has let this idea escape to the wider world tells me they're lost in the woods on the issue of the economy, and it's going to be a long time before they find their way home, if ever.

The Drumbeat

The President has had one hell of a week.  He signed the debt ceiling compromise bill after several weeks of battle between the White House and Republicans in Congress, to the approval of something like 20 percent of the country, if polls are to be believed.  Financial markets around the world also appear to be unhappy about it.  Today the Standard & Poor credit rating company may have downgraded the bond rating for the US Government (I'm hearing conflicting reports from the news media at this point).  This week has to count as one of the low points of the Obama Administration.

In the midst of all this, I've decided to add a new feature to this blog:  The Drumbeat.  You can find it just to the right of the top of the right side of the page. Here you'll find links to news stories and other items I come across that mention the possibility of Obama or others in his employ resigning, or other items regarding his future as President.  If you come across any such items please let me know & I'll post it if I think it fits.

Raise the Debt Ceiling or We'll Kill The Kid--And His Puppy Too!

In 1973, the National Lampoon humor magazine put on the cover of its January issue a photo of a dog with a gun held to its head, with the declaration:  "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog!" This send-up of crass marketing tactics is now one of the Lampoon's most remembered covers, and is a perfect example of the vicious satire the magazine excelled at in its heyday.

Some members of the generation that grew up reading the National Lampoon are now advisors to our very own President Obama. After hearing what's came out of Obama's mouth in the last few weeks, I'm wondering if the White House has unconsciously adopted that old magazine cover as a road map for the administration's political strategy between now and the election.

Let's take a quick look at where we are with the Obama Administration. Unemployment is up again, after years of hovering around 9 percent.  Job creation is so minimal that it might help the numbers if the administration counted kiddie lemonade stands as employment.  The heralded "stimulus" has proved to be a bust, with even the great one telling us "shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected."  During Obama's term so far the government has added over $4 trillion to the national debt.  The United States has now almost reached the "debt ceiling," which is the legislated limit that the government is allowed to borrow.  The housing sector is low and looking to go even lower.  Public confidence that anything at all is going right is down below the percentage of people who believe in a living Elvis. 

Obama's laser-like focus of the moment in taking all this on is to demand that the Congress raise the national debt even more.  Obama's remaining member of his economic "brain trust", Tim Geitner, is claiming that not raising the debt ceiling will throw the economy into crisis and bring catastrophes yet unknown to capital markets worldwide, and cause further economic distress in the U.S.  The republicans in Congress have been calling for a dollar cut in spending for every dollar the debt limit is raised, among other things.  As it stands now, the White House line is that the deadline for preventing financial armageddon is August 2. 

In the past few weeks, President Obama has chosen to portray the conflict about spending and the debt ceiling in typical leftist, rich bastard vs. all God's children terms.  In spite of my better judgement, earlier this week I forced myself to listen to Obama's kind of dicky June 29 press conference.  In the first 20 minutes or so the President focused on the unfairness of tax breaks for "corporate jet owners" and the faithfully evil oil companies in his arguments for increasing revenue, aka raising taxes.  The fact that he and the Democrat dominated Congress have given us three years of $1.5 trillion budget deficits was left unmentioned, as was the fact that the corporate jet tax break was introduced by the administration in 2009. 

This past week Obama has let go a few more zingers.  We need to "eat our peas"; average Americans aren't worried about things like the national debt, government spending and tax policy, because we leave that to professional politicians who have a better understanding of these things; and the republicans are holding "a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners."  In an interview with 60 Minutes to be shown on Sunday, the President has said that if the debt ceiling isn't raised by August 2nd, he can't guarantee that the government will be able to send out the social security checks, veteran's benefits, and other payments on which so many Americans depend.

Lately the negotiations between the White House and congressional republicans have become a bit heated, to the point where the President actually abruptly walked out of a meeting with congressional leaders he had called yesterday afternoon.  During his term so far this president has relied on a couple of techniques to get what he wants--first, portraying every problem as a crisis which must dealt with in haste and with little deliberation, and second, the Alinskyite tactic of focusing on opponents and smearing them with inflammatory accusations, whether they are true or not.  In this latest episode the White House is clearly trying to manufacture yet another crisis, and the way the administration has been portraying its opponents is more of the same smearing tactics they have used so often before. 

This administration is proving daily that it is incompetent in nearly every aspect of governing.  I would like to think otherwise, but as things stand now I have to conclude that as far as the government (and everything it affects) is concerned, prospects for improvement are going to be dim as long as Barack Obama is President.