Friday, May 18, 2012

Change? Obama is still blaming Bush


What’s New Today

Story #1 tells of a leftist’s view of why Obama will lose in the fall.  #2 looks at the continual screed by the left on everything being Bush’s fault.  #3 is a new Republican ad about Obama and how he grades himself as a president (hint, I think he’s grading on the curve).  #4 compares the press to the fawning people in the fable of the emperor’s new clothes.  #5 looks at the Democrats and the Wisconsin recall.  Finally #6 is a call to drop the murder charges against George Zimmerman.

Today’s Thoughts

How many jobs did Obama promise he would bring to America?  Give up?  Seven and he did that on seven different occasions.  

It appears Obama’s press agent declared BHO was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  Where would a press agent get these ideas?  It appears Obama was a birther before anyone else was.  

Hope and Change?  The number of people under the age of 25 without a job now has more college attendees than high school only job seekers.  I don’t think that is the change college kids were counting on in 2008.


1. Why I Think Obama Is Losing

As always Bill Galston and John Cassidy are well worth reading. In interesting new commentaries on the election, both think Obama has the edge, while emphasizing that it might be a close thing and warning Democrats against complacency. I hesitate to put my instincts up against their careful analyses, but if the election were tomorrow and I was forced to put money on one of the candidates, I'd say Romney. I also feel that unless something new and dramatic happens--as it usually does, admittedly--Romney's advantage is more likely to grow than diminish.

Why do I say this?

It's not because the country is sick of Obama. He's still pretty well-liked personally (more so than his policies). Among those who aren't committed to support or oppose him regardless, my feeling is, the country still wants him to succeed. If voters do reject him in November, for many people it will be with regret. It's striking to me that while Obama has approval ratings in the upper 40s, not bad under the circumstances, Congress is viewed by the electorate with naked contempt….

…So what's the answer? Obama's big problem, I think, is that he is no longer the president he said he would be. Above all, he's stopped trying to be that president.

The astonishing enthusiasm for Obama in 2008 rested heavily on his promise to change Washington and unify the country. You can argue about whose fault it is that Washington is even more paralyzed by tribal fighting than before--in my view, it's mostly (though not entirely) the GOP's fault. For whatever reason, Obama failed to bring the change he promised. That would be forgivable, so long as he was determined to keep trying. But he isn't determined to keep trying. His campaign message so far boils down to this: You just can't work with these people. I tried, they're not interested, so it's war. If they want bitter partisan politics, they can have it. 

My instinct tells me this is a losing strategy….

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/why-i-think-obama-is-losing/257285/#comment-531623412

I don’t agree with everything he says, but I do believe Obama will lose some votes for this reason.  But overall his loss will come from the economy and the deficit and his absolute failure to every address these issues. 



2. Who’s to blame for the economy?

In the early days of the Obama administration, a lot of people, including some Republicans, weren't much bothered by the new president's tendency to blame his predecessor for the nation's problems. After all, Barack Obama did inherit a mess from George W. Bush. The voters were inclined to give Obama time to turn things around.

But how much time? Certainly a year was reasonable. And so, as Obama's one-year mark approached in 2010, many political analysts assumed he would stop blaming Bush for the nation's woes. The conversation would change from the problems Obama inherited to the effectiveness of his efforts to fix them.
But a year passed, and Obama and his supporters continued to point the finger at Bush. At that point, nearly everyone assumed that when Obama's two-year mark came, he would certainly have to stop blaming his predecessor.

But no -- Obama kept at it, all the way through the three-year mark. And now, in the president's fourth year in office, with his-re-election campaign under way, some of the president's defenders have come up with something new entirely. They're not only still blaming Bush for the problems of the Obama administration -- they're blaming Bush for anticipated problems in Obama's second term, should he win one.

Specifically, a number of commentators on the Left have come up with a scenario in which they blame Bush for nearly all future federal budget deficits until at least 2019…

…"The economic downturn, President Bush's tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years," writes the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in a report released last week. The major drivers of deficits through 2019, the Center says, are "not of President Obama's making."…

Is that really the case? Is the war in Iraq, which ran from 2003 to 2011, really going to drive the deficit in 2019? And what about Afghanistan, with American forces on schedule to leave? "It's ludicrous," says former Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "We are out of Iraq and nearly out of Afghanistan. And under current law we are scheduled to take another $500 billion out of defense."

Holtz-Eakin also notes that the Center blames the 2009 deficit on Bush even though that year includes the $821 billion stimulus bill. "There was a LOT of activity in the final nine months [of fiscal 2009] that had nothing to do with Bush," he says. In addition, the 2009 deficit included two massive one-time-only expenditures: the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But spending did not plunge after that. "The fact that spending remains as high as [2009's] means that Obama has replaced temporary spending with persistent spending," says Holtz-Eakin….


The last paragraph certainly is something I find compelling.  There were a lot of onetime expenses, yet the spending didn’t come down after those expenses.  Obama goosed up social spending and now when we talk about cuttings to that spending the Democrats cry Republicans are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.  What if we go back to 2007 spending rates and then increase those rates for inflation?  That would take cut spending by $506 billion and reduce the deficit to $395 billion


3. New Ad:  Obama grading himself


A fun look at the ONE and the delusional world he lives in.  Do you remember where he graded himself compared to the other presidents?  Watch and remember. 


4. Obama’s New Clothes

Each week, the Obama administration (which has become indistinguishable from the Obama campaign) becomes more reminiscent of the old children's story, "The Emperor's New Clothes," with the national media elites playing the members of the king's fawning court, pretending that the president is not naked, that he is, in fact, resplendent in the best finery, and that his ever more absurd pronouncements are somehow credible. The latest issue is same-sex marriage…

As a committed leftist, Barack Obama should be proud of his record. He has done some very profound things in his three-and-a-half years as president. He should be proud of his multi-billion dollar government bailout of the United Auto Workers, his trillion dollar "stimulus package" (which seems to have stimulated nothing other than his friends and campaign bundlers in the nation's public sector unions and the industry known laughingly as "solar energy"), and, of course, his crowning achievement, Obamacare.  But after all this radical tinkering, Obama cannot and will not run on his record. His promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," which caused mindless, starry-eyed crowds to cheer him on five days before the 2008 election, has now become a haunting threat to the freedoms of many voters who will not be fooled in 2012. 

So let's not kid ourselves, as so many of the nation's media elites have been doing, that Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage for any reasons other than political ones. There are two reasons he made this calculated decision now (and neither of them have to do with Joe Biden, whom I believe was sent out to do exactly what he did on Meet the Press). First, despite his incessant fundraising, he is insatiably desperate for more campaign money. When a president has no discernible governing leadership skills, and nothing to which he can point as an example of the positive things he has done for his nation's economy, he must spend all his time campaigning and fundraising. He needs lots of cash with which smear his opponents, and boatloads of it are now sailing into Port Obama from wealthy leftwing Hollywood loons and other radical advocates of homosexual marriage….

http://www2.hernandotoday.com/news/hernando-news/2012/may/17/weapons-of-mass-distraction-barack-obama-has-no-cl-ar-404729/ 

Desperate is a word you are going to hear in this election cycle when talking about the Democrats. 


5. Wisconsin Update

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is investing in Wisconsin’s June 5 gubernatorial recall election. The DCCC confirmed to Roll Call today that the committee has shifted its Badger State operation, in place to aid Democratic Congressional candidates in the fall elections, to boost the party’s effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) and replace him with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Today, the DCCC today sent an email fundraising appeal asking its supporters to help underwrite its participation in the recall campaign.”


This is the equivalent of taking money out of the kid’s college fund to try your luck at the track.  If you are a Democrat congressional candidate, you probably should be upset.


6. Drop the murder charge on George Zimmerman

A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.

There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey , will do the right thing. Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.

She was aware when she submitted an affidavit that it did not contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She deliberately withheld evidence that supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. The New York Times has reported that the police had “a full face picture” of Zimmerman, before paramedics treated him that showed “a bloodied nose.” The prosecutor also had photographic evidence of bruises to the back of his head.

But none of this was included in any affidavit.

Now there is much more extensive medical evidence that would tend to support Zimmerman’s version of events. This version, if true, would establish self-defense even if Zimmerman had improperly followed, harassed and provoked Martin….

I believe you have the equivalent of a legal lynching going on by this special prosecutor.  What was it that George Roy Bean used to say?  First we give him a fair trial and then we hang him. 


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