Thursday, April 22, 2010

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

It has been fifteen months since President Obama pledged to “change America.” He has. Ten years from now, ex-President Obama will look back on this time and recognize the opportunities he missed. He should have been a great President. He would have been a great President if he represented the people of America and not a small minority of those people. He could have changed America for the good of America and not the good of his personal ambitions. He isn’t. He didn’t. We will pay the price!

If there is a single thing that Mr. Obama has proved to the American people - beyond any reasonable doubt - it is that he is not smart. And neither are those so-called brilliant folks surrounding him, aiding him, advising him, and egging him on against the will of the people.

Barack Obama is charismatic. Or at least he was until mainstream Americans figured out he was a habitual liar and stopped listening to him. He lied again this week in addressing Wall Street. It seems he cannot speak without lying. This is truly a problem.

From his whoppers about small things on the campaign trail (his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz; his parents married because of Selma; his father got a scholarship to America from the Kennedy’s) to his lies about very big things (his health care plan will reduce employer insurance premiums by 3000 percent, or $3,000 whichever is larger- it is still a lie). This president is now only allowed in polite company because he is the president. In any real-world company, inveterate liars are shunned as utterly untrustworthy, unreliable, unwelcome guests. (Unless their last name is “Clinton,” we shouldn’t forget.)

The still-blind sucker crowd that elected this charlatan to the most powerful CEO position in the world, on the strength of his skin color and a resume fit for the back of a postage stamp; cling to the hollow claim that their guy is just too smart for the rest of us . . . commoners to understand him. And that whopper is just as believable to any sentient person as the president’s 3000 percent rate-reduction claim about his health care bill.

The proof that Barack Obama is not smart lies in his actions over the past year.

Never has so much goodwill been so thoroughly wasted and abused. He should have been a great president. He isn’t and will never be.

President Obama came into office riding a wave of well-wishes that was truly unprecedented. He also faced grave problems. He did not face unprecedented problems, as he so likes to pretend. They were simply problems that he and his administration grew to disasters.

If President Obama were really the smartest guy of his generation, then he would have done the following:

  • He would have, first and foremost, surrounded himself with unimpeachable, morally sound, and experienced cabinet members. Instead he filled his cabinet with Clinton retreads, tax cheats, polarizing ideologues, and unfit-for-the-real-world academics -- dumb. Really dumb.
     
  • Second, President Obama - if he were really smart - would have told his Chicago intimates, especially Desiree Rogers and his wife, Michelle, that until the economy was in full - very full - rebound, there would be no expensive, vulgar partying in the people’s house. Knowing full well that he had come into the presidency on his own rhetoric that we were facing the worst “economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Barack Obama would have known better - if he were really smart - than to order up gala parties with imported Wagu beef at $100 per pound, while he was speaking out the other side of his mouth about the disgusting nature of executive retreats to Las Vegas. A smart man would have known the people would see him as a hypocrite.

    Instead, the Obamas partied hardily to the thralls of every society page in the country, quickly making themselves the butt of jokes from coast to coast. Tying up air traffic while he flits off for an evening with the wife in the Big Apple – please!
     
  • Third, President Obama - if he were really smart - would have turned serious executive instead of media addict. He would not have appeared on a late-night comedy show. He would not have spent more time in front of a camera’s glow than he spent at his desk. He would have rolled up his sleeves and gotten down to the hard work of governing instead of hamming it up in public 24/7, which any truly smart person knows is not only bound to get old very fast, but also sends out the message loud and clear that no one is actually acting as president.
     
  • And if Obama were really intelligent, he would have hired a speech coach for the express purpose of weaning him from those confounded teleprompters. A man, who had just captured the presidency as the intellectual elite from Harvard, should have been smart enough to know that teleprompters malfunction and that camera phones take pictures of teleprompters and that when the people think they’ve elected a smart man, they should not be so easily disabused of that notion. It’s not good for the image one has worked so tirelessly to create.
That brings us to the matter of foreign policy. A man who, apparently, confuses “smart diplomacy” with kicking all our friends in the shins and sucking up to our enemies, in the belief that this will make us new friends, is nothing short of mentally challenged - direly so. (Rahm would use the word “retarded,” but this is too kind, certainly.)

At every step, since taking office, Barack Obama has kicked our allies to the curb and emboldened our enemies, and he doesn’t even have a foreign chum to his name. Weren’t we supposed to be more popular with Obama as president? Well, yes, we were. Instead, Israeli-American relations are at their worst in 35 years, Iran is chomping at the A-bomb bit, China is sitting threateningly in the creditor’s driving seat, Russia is quickly becoming re-Sovietized, and Eric Holder unintelligibly prattles on about the civil rights of foreign terrorists to a shocked and confounded public. Anyone who can find this foreign policy “smart” has to be fit for the Tiger Woods’ mistress lineup.

Ask yourself this: What smart man goes on international TV backing his Attorney General’s half-witted plan to hold civilian trials for 9/11 foreign terrorists a few blocks from the WTC ruins, before getting everyone involved fully on board? Any man with an ounce of real sense knows he had better get the 100% backing of every New York politician and steadfast agreements from Congress check-writers before he makes such an announcement. Did anyone in this “smart” administration even bother looking at New York’s budget problems before stamping approval on this cockamamie scheme? Did anyone in this “smart” administration even bother to poll how the public would react? This is the kind of stuff pure idiots try to do, or dictators.

That brings us to the real cake-taker in Obama’s growing realm of stupid stuff. The crisis-that-isn’t-a-crisis governing plan.

Anyone - and I mean, anyone - with an ounce of real sense knows that if Obama had simply rolled up his sleeves and put everyone in his administration to work on the economy, ignoring all other domestic agenda items until we were humming back to prosperity, then this man would be on his way to becoming the hero of American hearts. Instead, due only to stupid lunges aimed at pushing through the long-stalled leftist agenda of bringing back the era of big government, this president is becoming an embarrassing laughingstock. It is painful to watch, even for those of us who hate big government. Seeing a grown man make this big a fool of himself - especially the one who carries the banner for the entire American citizenry - is no pleasure. It is pure pain.

The health care reforms, if they had been put on the back burner, patiently awaiting a strongly recovering economy, would have been far more guaranteed to see fruition. Of course, the bill is so horrible that we must now be happy for this administration’s lack of smarts. Even though the bill narrowly passed - via the Chicago way of bribing, threatening and cheating - it has served to rally opposition to big government in a way that nothing else could have. Tea, anyone?

Yes, we have a highly educated, Ivy League president. Yes, we have a whole flock of back-patting, self-congratulating, fully credentialed staff. Yes, we have an army of special interest “advisors” living on “K” street. They work extremely hard.

But smart?

Oh, please.

So what will the campaign slogan of the other party be for 2012?

I’ll have a whack at it:

Obama lied; hope died.

The Iranians got the A-bomb, the Russians got their jive back, and the Chinese own everything.

Vote for the un-cool, work-experienced, good-without-a-teleprompter guy or gal who knows a friend from a foe and can add 2 + 2 and get 4 every single time.

He would have been a great president if he represented all Americans. He didn’t and he will never be.

The final question that must be asked and answered is:

Since when is American common sense radical?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the Tea Partiers and Town Hall protesters "un-American." Former President Bill Clinton says the Tea Parties could lead to another Oklahoma City bombing. Our President makes jokes about the Tea Partiers as if they were stupid.

Really? Are they so terrified by the uprising of common sense coming from the growing throngs of decent law abiding Americans that they have to resort to such extreme nonsense?

Here's the Tea Party Contract FROM America. Someone tell me which part incites violence:

The Contract from America 

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

Visit the Contract's web page to view the groups affiliated with this effort and to sign the contract yourself (warning, you will be forever on their email list).

Instead of attacking the Tea Party, Democrats and the President should be embracing their ideas. The fact that they are not tells us whose side they are on and it's clearly not on the side of common sense American ideals. If anyone is "un-American" it's the Democrats who attack their fellow countrymen for daring to disagree with their plans for a socialist makeover of America!

He could have been a great president if he only led America. Gandhi once said, “I must leave for there go my people and I am their leader.” Gandhi recognized the roll of a true leader – to listen to his people. This president does not listen, does not lead, and will never be a great leader and, thus, a great president.

Let us not be the “shoulda, woulda, coulda” people one year from now. It is time to move this country back to greatness. It is time to vote for America -- for his people have left him and he has no clue!

I may not be able to fix stupid, but I don't have to reelect it!

Remember November!

1 comment:

  1. A Pew Poll tracking trust in government was released a few weeks ago and found that American's trust in govt. is at an all time low.

    Lower than under both Clinton and Carter who were the previous low points.

    You cite many of the reasons for this in your post.

    ReplyDelete