Now he cares about the deficit?

President Obama is now concerned over deficits in the federal budget? Really? After we have seen, in 11 short months, an expansive government which has spent money on wasted projects such as the $787 billion stimulus, purchased controlling stock in both GM and Chrysler as well as any number of other insurance and banking industries, printed more money than ever before to come up with the cash to pay for this, thus monetizing our debt, extended unemployment benefits (because it is causing the surge in unemployment to 10.2%), subsidized car buyers with "cash for clunkers" which cost taxpayers $24,000 per car sold, devalued the dollar and is pushing for legislation to increase taxes on everything under the sunwhich will not only cause tax wells to run dry and thus hurt government revenue, President Obama now pretends to care about deficits? How is that? In short, Obama has spent more money on new programs in 11 short months than Clinton ever did in eight years! And now, he claims he's a deficit hawk?!

Whatever side of the political spectrum you come from, can you really trust anything this guy says? His actions always repudiate his words. During the campaign, he made himself a centrist, but has governed from the left. But he has now alienated a good part of his leftist basin. He has failed to move on gay rights, frequently reiterating that he believes marriage is a state between one man and one woman and has not yet repealed "Don't ask, don't tell." He has alienated his anti-war leftist buddies with his yet unannounced, but expected, commitment of more troops to the Afghan theatre and has yet to close down GITMO, though his Attorney General, Eric Holder, did announce that those at GITMO would be tried in civilian courts in New York. Notice how he's letting Holder fall on the sword for what will be perceived, by the majority of Americans, as a very ill-considered move. Still, Obama doesn't seem to know what he's doing. He frequently champions the flavor of the week cause and when he sees his poll numbers consistently fall, he reverses course and tries something else. Trying something else doesn't really seem to help him.

But what are we to make out of his sudden caring for the deficit? Could it be that he is now in Asia about to go to China? Very possible. Remember how a few months ago, the US Treasury put up for sale its debt, hoping that China would buy up a lot of it? Well, it turns out that the Chinese didn't go for it and passed. Why? Because the Chinese could see that the dollar was steadily losing value and that all the spending our government was doing with various social plans under our imperious leader were not going to work. Even the communists realized that Obama's plans were not going to work. It's pretty bad when the communists actually make better economic sense than the so-called "leader of the free world." A few months back, Secretary of Treasury "Tiny" Tim Geithner was laughed at by the Chi-coms because they thought his pitch of being fiscally responsible was so disingenous that it was a joke! So, now, to make nice and to convince the Chinese that the dollar is stabilized so that they will buy our debt, Obama's cause of the week is...becoming a fiscal conservative. He's now coming out to support stabilization of the dollar and to combat growing deficits which his administration has caused so that the Chinese will buy American debt again. God forbid, we should actually strengthen our dollar with robust economic growth outside of government spending.

I'm sure this will peter out in about two weeks so he can focus on health care again which, if passed, will (Gasp!) destabilize the dollar and the economy even more. I'm sure the Chi-coms will appreciate that.

When will people wake up to see how economically ignorant this man is? Here's hoping.

Jobs summit?

Another one from the "what the hell are they thinking or not thinking" file. President Obama, in the face of continued unemployment (now at 10.2%) with no growth in the private sector (GDP did increase in the thrid quarter but only because the growth was in government spending without any consumer spending and no business investment; again CIG=GDP) and the looming threat of increased taxes on businesses, both small and large, which will then be passed down to the consumers (i.e. you and me), has announced that he will have a jobs summit at the White House in December.

Of course Mr. Obama while announcing this initiative has already taken credit for saving the economy. He points to "jobs, created and saved" (which is bogus), a slowing of layoffs (but they're still happening), an increased GDP (which is bogus as explained above) as how he has already saved the economy. This jobs summit is just to continue what he has already done to further the recession.

Remember one tenet about liberalism: It's always about feelings and good intentions, not about what works. President Obama is doing his own version of Clinton's "I feel your pain." As long as they show they have compassion and your well-being at the forefront of their pea-sized brains, liberals are successful and thus better than their evil conservative libertarian colleagues who will wail and screech and lament that conservatives and libertarians actually believe that if the government lays off and you work hard enough, then you will be fine. But that's too much.

This jobs summit is all about talk. Even if business leaders do suggest that the new taxes are crushing their means and their incentives to create new jobs, Obama will give in to the labor unions (like when he did when he took over Chrysler and GM) but at least he listened. Good intentions is the hallmark resume item of any liberal politician. It is why Ted Kennedy was hailed as such a great statesman, despite the fact that 94.7% of his agenda was never, ever even brought to a vote! He failed! Good intentions get you in the door, but failure ensures you lifetime membership in the liberal country club.

Bring back this wall

Barack Obama has snubbed Chancellor Angela Merkel's request that he be present at the celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Apparently he is too busy playing some pick up basketball, or maybe finally getting around to a decision to deploy more troops to Afghanistan or, most likely, rewatching the HBO documentary about himself (Disclaimer: He probably didn't do this on election night when his candidates were trounced, but it sounds like it could be true so therefore I'll go ahead and assume it is. Is that a problem? Then why did all the news media report that Rush Limbaugh, in his bid to buy the St. Louis Rams, said racist comments which were never said by him? But they reported it as fact anyway just because it's Rush Limbaugh and he has to be a racist even if there is no supporting evidence). Either way, Obama has other things to do.

Obama really has written off the Europeans in recent months. He essentially said "Screw You" to the Czech Republic and to Poland when he backed out of plans to construct a missile defense shield that would help protect them from nuclear attack from Iran or, more likely, a new aggressive Soviet Union under Putin and Medvedev. And now, he's telling the Germans that the destruction of the symbol which divided Germans for 40 years between the democratic West and the totalitarian East isn't important enough even though it was American tough foreign policy which allowed this to happen. But perhaps, there is another reason. Here is what I would imagine Obama's speech would have been like had he actually gone. Please note: THIS IS SATIRE.[At Berlin Wall] Applause

"Thank me! Thank me, Germany! You fired up? Ready to go? Fired up? Ready to go? [Laughter and coughing]. Thank me for having me here. Before I begin my speech about this momentous anniversary commemorating the reunification of a divided Germany, I'd like to give a personal shout-out to my friend, Mikhail Gorbachev (good to see you) and his body guards who played me and my secret service in a full court game of basketball yesterday. We won but it was only through my unstoppable jump shots, at the end, that allowed us to prevail. I saved the day. It was me.

"This is a momentous occasion, one that should be reflected upon with great solemnity and lamentation. 20 years ago, while I was still young, I heard many stories from my mom who used to read me news from the paper before bedtime about the division between East and West Germany and how the United States was responsible for causing and sowing seeds of distrust between the peaceful eastern Germans and the war mongering capitalist west Germans. It was at that moment that I decided that I should go on to become a United States Senator and then President to ensure that this wall would bring the same level of contentment and prosperity to West Berlin as it did to East Berlin. Unfortunately, I arrived too late and the wall came down. I am very sad that only rubble stands in its place.

"The tearing down of this wall should never have happened. Don't all of you East Berliners long for the days of standing in line for bread and other essentials? Didn't you revel in how equal you were with all of your neighbors save for the communist party officials, who were while working on your behalf to ensure your equality, got preferential treatment in health care? Don't all of you East Berliners prefer a government where your interests are represented by unelected officials? Don't you want a wall patrolled by armed guards who will shoot you on sight for wanting to go over to the west? Don't you want those things again? Those were your glory years.

"Communism failed that day. And its failure should be lamented by all of us because we need more Berlin Walls not just here in Germany but in all of western Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan and especially in the United States. Communism cannot be allowed to fail. Equality, true equality, where you have nothing more than your neighbor, must be strived for at all times. If you have nothing, then there is no reason to be sad since you will treasure your day to day lives for the gifts that they are. Back home in the United States, the American people are learning to be happy with less and less each day, all thanks to me and the great example this wall set.

"Mr. Gorbachev, I'm glad you are here. I want to personally take this time to call you out for being soft towards capitalism and freedom. You had nothing to fear from that old, alzheimer's ridden President Reagan. You were my hero back then and you let me down. Thanks to you, I had to learn to emulate other world leaders who espoused the revolutionary spirit I wished to inflict in America. Thank me, I found Mao Tse-Tung.

"I promise you, people of a united Germany, that on this day in which you celebrate, I will do everything in my power to make sure that America is weak so that you can be dominated once again and have your Berlin Wall back. I know that is what you want and I will work for it as I am working for the same back in the United States.

"I want to thank me for coming to this event. Without me, this event would have had no legitimacy and would have spent too much time celebration really when the participants should be in mourning, singinging funeral dirges for the glory that is communism. I also want to thank my wife, Michelle, for suggesting that I wear this read tie as well as this hammer and sickle lapel pin. Thanks, honey, they look great. So, thank me, thank me, thank me. Good night."

Must we find racism in everything?

Kanye West is infamous for shooting his mouth off. I don't care much for his "music" and that's a generous appraisal. Over the years, Mr. West has compared himself to Jesus (I keep overlooking that part in the Gospels where Jesus is driving in his pimped out ride with his posse of the 12 looking for hos!) and has even declared that, in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush must hate black people since many blacks perished. (Note to Kanye: Look at the stats. More white people died in Katrina than blacks!) And yesterday at the VMAs, Kanye West wrestled the microphone away from Taylor Swift who won the award for Best Female Song to say that singer Beyonce, who is black (well, half-black anyway), was more deserving of it. Taylor was stunned and after the microphone was returned to her, she could barely say anything. To her credit, even Beyonce was stunned! Now I can read between the lines of Kanye's little rant: Beyonce's race was the factor that denied her the award.

Is everything racist now? For months now, legitimate opposition to Obama's policies has been decried as racist. Apparently, even not liking the Chicago White Sox can be construed as a racist attack because Obama is a fan of them. But it doesn't stop there. Charlie Rangel, the representative under numerous ethical probes by the House Ethics committee is crying that it is an underlying racism that is causing this investigation. The governor of New York, Patterson, who is performing abysmally at his job with near record low approval ratings is also starting to play the race card. Now a Newsweek article, which is part of a series that the news magazine is running as a dialogue on race, suggests that children are born racist from a study conducted. The testing sample was limited to white families only. I assume that one of the "variables held constant" in this study was the assumption that racism is endemic only to white families! And Maureen Dowd, the persistently irrelevant New York Times Op-ed columnist, declared that Joe Wilson's (inappropriate) outburst of "You lie" should have been heard as "You lie, boy!" This weekend, Serena Williams was called for a foot fault and immediately started to threaten the judge, cursing at her which resulted in Serena forfeiting her match point. And though the call was a terrible one (and it was!), there were numerous insinuations that racism was behind the call.

And the examples are too myriad to list.

We were told that when Obama ascended to the highest political office in the land, that racism would be on its deathbed. Such is not the case. In fact, it has been exascerbated! Too much is being thought in terms of race when that was never the case prior. Mr. Holder, Obama's Attorney General, called the United States a nation of cowards because we don't engage in racial discussions. Perhaps we don't, because the great vast majority of Americans are NOT racist nor harbor racist tendencies.
We're too busy treating our neighbor like ourselves. Are there racists in this country? Only a naive person would say no! But to see racism in every facet of ordinary life by polticians, news pundits, entertainers, etc. is ridiculous. They will never admit it, but it is they who are exascerbating the race issue, not ordinary Americans.

On a positive note, despite the ridiculous platitudes contained in the "I Pledge" video that ran on Youtube, there was a good part of this video. Michael Strahan, former defensive end for the New York Giants said (parphrasing) that he pledged to see himself as an American and not an African American! If only more would heed that.

Let's just smile and be happy. After all, Obama is President

The cheeriness of the far left in these desperate economic ties doesn't surprise or amaze me. On the one hand, they claim sympathy for those who are out of work and struggling and at the same time they can do nothing but fawn when it comes to the President and his policies, which, obviously, do not work and will not work. The midterm elections next year should prove that, though I'm no fan of Republicans being in charge of Congress because they have done, during their tenure, exactly what they blame Obama and the Democrats for. Such, though, is the problem with the left, rather than actually come up solutions to problems, especially market solutions which are known to work, they simply go out to the major media outlets and go on for hours about how much they care and sympathize. Their intentions are good, but then they go ahead and do everything not to solve the problem.

Consider the forecasts of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) of further economic stagnation and contraction. According to them we will hit 10.2% unemployment next year and run deficits in excess of $1.5 trillion. Of course, the reason for this further deepening of the recession will be blamed on the previous administration. Now, I will grant that, economically, the last administration did its part. But, once you throw facts into the matrix, the leftist arguments bear no teeth. Again, their arguments are built around sympathy and caring--emotions, not facts! During global recessions and depressions, the world has reacted far more negatively to the fallouts than the United States. In many ways we are buttressed to prevent long term stagnation and negative growth that the Europeans, for instance, are not. Also, one should note that in this current global recession, other major economic powers such as France and Germany, in Europe and Japan, in Asia have pulled themselves out and are showing positive growth (a 1.3% expansion in France and Germany--nothing great, but it's a start) while here in the U.S. our economy contracted by the same percentage points. So, why the difference?

Very simply. The governments of France, Germany and Japan are center-right governments who know very damn well that you don't spend yourself out of a tight fix. They avoided all the stimulus packages, the cap-and-trade bills and the overhaul of healthcare that are being considered or have passed here. These three things have sent shockwaves in the market and into businesses, big and and large in the states because they will do nothing but increase the cost of doing business. And the left wonders why there are protests and revolts against such policies. But, they say, we care, we feel your pain. You should love us because we care. There is an old adage that to help someone heal from pain, you leave them alone. Maybe the left should take that into consideration. But they won't because in order for them to show they care, they need someone to care about. So, they need people in destitute conditions, in poverty, in depression so that they can continue their love fest for the down-trodden.

In the Soviet Union, the glorious revolution was supposed to ensure equality for all. The government officials and military high ups always identified with their plight with the people and sympathized, but did they have to stand in line for bread and other necessities? Of course not. By virtue of their position (and their careing) the higher echelon of society got to shop at stores that were stocked full of all manners of items, even non-essentials which was impossible to obtain for the regular joe to get. A little side note, my brother's friend's dad, Mr. Jarvis, went over to the Soviet Union many years ago for his work (can't remember what it was) and he was just giving out pens from his company to ordinary people in the street. Most of these people didn't have pens in their own homes. A house without a pen! You've got to be kidding! No, Mr. Jarvis found that these people were trading for them because having such a simple item (which you can get here for so cheaply) was not possible. A soldier gave his soviet belt buckle, a very expensive item, to Mr. Jarvis in exchange.

Here in this country, we are told how much the government, particularly the left cares about those of us who are not doing well. And, of course, that's easy for people like Kennedy, Markey, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Hoyer and others to say because they will never have to endure this plight considering how wealthy they have made themselves (Well, Kennedy inherited his from his bootlegging father, Joseph, during prohibition days, but we can't talk about that!). They need us impoverished and destitute so that way they can show they care and their intentions are good. Solutions to that would mean that they would lose them. Their whole modus operandi for winning elections is showing they care for the unfortunate. Once people are no longer that unfortunate, they don't need elected representatives whose intentions only are good.

So, let's be glad because Obama is president and because he cares. Let's support him no matter what because though his policies will do absolutely NOTHING to get us out of this, it's more important that he cares and his intentions are good. Let us always remember that the road to hell is paved with those good intentions.