So the new Messiah has ascended to the highest office in the land after his coronation on January 21, 2009. He’s had a very busy few weeks.
Let’s check in and see how he’s doing so far…
In just three short weeks Barack Obama has managed to beat the retreat on national defense, set a new low for Washington corruption, and grease the skids for a new era of American socialism. If you liked Jimmy Carter, you’re going to love King Barack.
APPEASEMENT
In his first televised interview, the Messiah went on Arab TV and prostrated himself before America hating Islamists. Writing in the New York Post, Iranian dissident Amir Taheri calls his performance “pathetic”…
From the New York Post: PATHETIC ‘MESSAGE’ - OBAMA’S ODD ISLAMIC OUTREACH. “IN his ‘first message to the Muslim world’ Tuesday, President Obama on Al-Arabiya TV invited the Islamic Republic in Iran to ‘unclench its fist’ and accept his offer of ‘un conditional talks.’
A few hours later, after Obama had appeared on the Saudi-owned satellite-TV channel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a crowd of militants that no talks are possible unless the United States met a set of conditions.
There you go. Now Ahmadinejad is setting the terms. Way to go Barack.
Next, he decided to announce the closure of Guantanamo. We can’t have terrorists sworn to kill us getting sunburns apparently.
Then he decided it would be a good idea to sell airplane parts to Syria, one of the chief sponsors of terror against the U.S. (US Will Sell Syria Plane Parts).
SOCIALISM
Not to be outdone by George Bush, the Messiah has been busy ramming his own “stimulus” bill through Congress. Even though the first $350 billion spent from TARP I has done nothing to help the economy (and nobody knows where most of the money went), Mr. Obama claims that unless another $800 billion is spent RIGHT NOW, there will be a “catastrophe.” So much for eschewing the “politics of fear.”
The only catastrophe that would happen would be on his side — his socialist coup would have been temporarily averted. As any free market economist will tell you, this is not a stimulus bill. The only thing it will stimulate is the growth of government and the burden on our children. This has been more accurately described as “The Generational Theft Act of 2009.”
But it gets even worse, because the true cost of this boondoggle is not just $800 billion, it’s far more. Here’s a link outlining the true cost of the stimulus being passed this week: $3.27 trillion.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/12/true-cost-of-stimulus-327-trillion/
And that doesn’t include the bank bailout that Timothy Geithner announced this week, which will be another $2 - $4 trillion. So we’re talking about an additional $6 - $7 trillion all told on top of what they did in the fall.
Had the Bush Administration not gone of the cliff last October and thrown us over to the dark side of socialism with bailouts and nationalizations of private firms, the markets would already be correcting the mess caused by the government-created housing bubble.
Throwing good money after bad will only make matters worse. As Economist Walter Williams argues in this article, the so-called stimulus is not only entirely unconstitutional, it’s a repeat of FDR’s disastrous policies of the 1930’s. Even if most Americans say “to hell with the Constitution” these days, Williams asks, “Do we want a repeat of measures that failed dismally during the 1930s?”
Obama says “economists are in agreement” about this stimulus (right, just like scientists are in agreement about global warming). Apparently the Messiah doesn’t know many economists, given the long list of distinguished economists registering their dissent.
“If lawmakers really want to trigger a recovery, they’ll shelve their massive ’stimulus’ bill — a trillion-dollar debt plan that would actually weaken the economy. They’d do much better to take a simple but powerful step: reduce the corporate income tax rate to zero. Our nation’s convoluted tax code (so confusing that even a high percentage of President Barack Obama’s nominees apparently can’t understand it) keeps a small army of accountants and tax lawyers employed. A simplified code might put them out of work. But that would be a small price to pay for a fairer system, one that helps create many more jobs for ordinary Americans. And creating jobs is what a federal stimulus is supposed to be all about. Lawmakers should think carefully before they borrow hundreds of billions of dollars, digging a deeper debt hole and expanding the size and scope of government. Far better to eliminate corporate taxes — and unleash the job-creation power of our nation’s entrepreneurs.” –Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, free enterprise economist.
But the Obama administration is not truly interested in helping “the economy,” they are interested in consolidating power. They don’t want to “waste a crisis” as Rahm Emanuel put it. Which brings us to the corruption…
CORRUPTION
One would think that in such an emergency, with “catastrophe” and the “end of the world” right around the corner, Mr. Obama and our wise elected officials in Congress would only spend a trillion dollars of taxpayer money on things that would actually help us immediately. Wouldn’t you?
Here’s what’s really going on…
According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, “Both bills [Senate and House versions] use the idea of economic stimulus as a Trojan horse to conceal massive, permanent increases in the US welfare system.” “None of these programs,” he said, “deals with the fundamentals of poverty, which are low levels of work and lower levels of marriage. They just say, ‘Give me more.’”
In other words, permanent programs with recurring costs are being snuck into this “emergency” bill.
You might also be surprised to find the following items inside this giant piece of horse manure…
From Investor’s Business Daily…
• It overflows with pork — $2 billion to ACORN, an anti-capitalist “community” group that’s been accused of voter registration fraud; $30 million to restore wetlands and save the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse in the San Francisco Bay Area (a Nancy Pelosi project); another $1 billion for a Prevention and Wellness Fund for education programs on sexually transmitted diseases. Tens of billions will be spent on high-speed rail lines, which will be of little practical use but of great political service, and projects to expand high-speed Internet access in rural areas.
There’s so much special-interest spending in the bill, says House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner’s office, that the dollars left over for direct small-business tax relief amount to only “about one-third of 1% of the total bill,” a mere $3 billion out of a $789 billion package. Yet small businesses do most of the hiring in this country.
• The bulk of the spending comes not right away when the economy needs a boost, but in future years. This is typical. Legislative attempts to rescue the economy have been late in the last eight recessions going back to October 1949, when Congress passed an anti-recession bill just as the country was emerging from a 12-month downturn.
• By releasing $800 billion in new welfare spending over the next decade and undermining current work requirements, it will largely undo the successful 1996 welfare reform. Once again, Washington will be paying bonuses to states that expand their welfare rolls. In what world is increasing dependency on government a stimulus for the private economy?
• States that have spent recklessly for years will get bailouts when they should instead suffer the consequences of their actions. The compromise bill includes $54 billion to hand out to state and local governments, a perverse reward for elected officials who can’t control their spending.
What’s missing from the legislation is just as significant as what’s included.
There are no tax cuts to boost investment, just a trifling $13 in tax relief per week that will appear on paychecks in the spring.
There’s no real effort to boost energy production.
There’s no meaningful defense spending.
Tax cuts initiated at the White House gave life to struggling economies in the 1960s, 1980s and earlier in this decade.”
That’s right, the “salt marsh harvest mouse.”
And despite the fact that Obama said in his campaign that there would be a “new era of transparency” so the American people could examine legislation before it was voted on, they are rushing this bill through before anyone in Congress has even read it. It was posted Thursday night at midnight and both houses voted on it Friday.
Everything Obama has done so far (and will try to do in the future) is entirely predictable given his world view: socialism for Americans; appeasement for our enemies. All of which will be hidden under his dishonest rhetoric and obfuscated by his slobbering followers in the mainstream media.
If our children were not going to suffer greatly from this nonsense, corruption, and ineptitude, it would almost be amusing. But I don’t find it amusing at all.
Do you?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.