Regarding Obama's "like a dog" whine

Victor Davis Hanson:

"Obama in just twenty months has developed a reputation for being petulant, unusually sensitive to the normal run-of-the-mill criticism. His latest pushback was his strangest so far: 'And they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, it’s just — but it’s true.'

Given that Obama has previously called out talk radio critics by name — Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh — attacked everything from limb-lopping surgeons to vacationing at Las Vegas, and in condescending fashion tsk-tsked those who attend Glen Beck rallies, rural Pennsylvanians, and his own 'typical white person' grandmother who raised him, his thin-skin touchiness seems inexplicable.

...But enough speculation over motives for the origins of Obama’s strange and growing petulance. All that matters for the country is that the current president of the United States seems surprised that as our chief executive he is earning scrutiny not previously accorded him — and that he finds that demand for accountability both exasperating and abjectly unfair. Thus this week’s latest “like a dog” whine.

For some reason, Obama believed that those who expected after his campaign promises a real upturn in the economy, or fiscal responsibility, or inspired foreign policy would be satisfied, as they had in the past, merely with soaring rhetoric and superficial reassurance. When they were not, and voiced such displeasure, as ingrates they had supposedly reduced Obama to canine-like status."

Barack Obama is the perpetual campaigner, constantly seeking the ego reinforcement that feeds his undeserved arrogance.

Despite the constant effort, his immense failure, gross malfeasance, and utter incompetency as the President of the United States of America becomes more evident by the minute. the coninuing judgment of the american people is obvious, as is the coming slaughter to be inflicted November 2 on his partisan minions in Congress.

Obama's Stimulus job creation scoreboard

Here's the results so far:

Promised: 2.5 million

Created: 30, 383

Additional Jobs lost on his watch: Untold millions, with more to come

Vincent Reinhart thinks that the Obama administration’s financial reform package hits the trifecta of bad policy making:

"The White House proposal misdiagnoses the problem, fails to recognize the inherent adverse dynamics of regulation, and treats the bulk of the industry unfairly.

....and:

"Our fundamental problem is not that institutions deemed too big to fail do not get sufficient scrutiny. Our problem is that some institutions are deemed too big to fail."

It's not Obama's fault. We "raaaaaaaaaaacists" are sabotaging him, obviously.

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"Now I'm free, I'm free falling "

More:

"Two observations: first, while poll results bounce around from day to day, Obama's trend is obvious. He does not appear to have reached bottom yet. Second, for some time now a plurality of respondents--the largest group by a considerable margin--has strongly disapproved of his performance. In recent weeks, that plurality has been around 40 percent. It continues to grow.

It seems doubtful that many of those who now strongly disapprove of Obama's performance will ever become 'approvers,' even if Obama changes course a bit. So the radical measures that Obama tried to ram through Congress in the early weeks of his administration have likely mobilized a solid core of opposition against which the President will have to contend for the rest of his term."

David Frum: 'Something bad and dangerous is happening in Barack Obama's America'

But we knew that already, didn't we?

Quick fix today, crisis tomorrow in Obama's White House

Noteworthy:

"In barely four months, Barack Obama has nudged the United States toward a future in which government will be bigger and more assertive -- where taxes will be higher and government unions more powerful -- where legal rights are less secure and contracts more uncertain.

In California, he is pushing a state toward the fiscal edge in order to favour a union ally. At Chrysler, he has put at risk the security of every contract in the country to please another union.

Meanwhile, his administration is planning changes to the regulation of finance that are likely to leave the United States less dynamic and less innovative in the years ahead -- at the same time as taxes rise and educational levels decline. (Already the Educational Testing Service-- the people who run America's SAT exam -- predicts a less skilled U. S. workforce in 2030 than today, with literacy rates declining by an average of 5% as unskilled immigration and rising rates of single parenthood take their toll.)

It's easy to lose sight of these wrong and costly choices in the turmoil of the immediate crisis. But it is these decisions of today that are preparing the crisis of tomorrow."

Don't complain that you hadn't been warned......

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'The government has committed arson'

"Bad Logic", by Brian Wesbury and Bob Stein:

"Both Robert Kuttner, a long-time critic of free markets, and Richard Posner, a long-time supporter of free markets, recently made the same argument. Kuttner said “markets are not self-correcting. If they were, [then] Wall Street would not be lined up for trillions of dollars in government handouts.” Posner, in a recent WSJ Op-Ed said capitalism is “not inherently stable.” He argued that the seriousness of the downturn (he says it is the worst since the 1930s) is proven, “by the dizzying array of programs the government is deploying and the staggering amounts of money it is spending….”

This 'if the government is spending lots of money, then the economy must really be bad and markets don’t work' argument has been made by many analysts in recent months. But just because it is being used does not mean it is right. In fact, these statements of logic are deeply flawed and mistaken.

If fire trucks came roaring up to your house, and the firemen started spraying water, breaking out windows and chopping holes in the roof, one would think the house was on fire. But, it doesn’t have to be. Activity is not proof.

With all due respect to Richard Posner, this is not the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It reminds us more of the banking crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, when bank loans to farms, oil, and Latin America went bad all at once. On a mark-to-market basis, every money center bank was bankrupt in the early 1980s.

But, these bankrupt banks, and savings and loans, did not destroy the economy. Back in the 1980s the government gave banks time to work out their problem loans.

Meanwhile, the Reagan tax cuts lifted growth and the economy eventually grew its way out of most of the problem. The RTC was finally put into place in the late 1980s to clean up the banks that just could not dig themselves out of their problems.

In other words, the Bush and Obama teams are doing things that the Reagan administration would have never done. Mark-to-market accounting rules have significantly increased the size of financial market problems and overestimated losses. Then, the extent of those losses were used by the government to justify a heavy hand of regulation and control. The stress tests were just another chapter in this saga. Government involvement begets more government involvement.

In response to all of this, we propose a different argument, using different logic. If the government had not involved itself so deeply in this crisis, then the US economy would most likely have avoided a recession altogether.

Capitalism is not broken. In fact, allowing the market system to deal with the problems of the last few years would have been much better than having the government do it.

In our view, the government has committed arson and is now claiming that the building owners are liable for the amount it costs to put out the fire."

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'Every Picture Tells A Story, Don't It?'

It's pretty easy to see just who is in denial about the REAL threat of excess Federal government power, and exactly who buys into the nonsense about the "eeeeeeeeevil big business", isn't it?

From Gallop, via Greg Mankiw.

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The current reality of the Obama presidency is grim

Thomas Sowell:"However, time is on our side."

Noteworthy:

"Barack Obama’s vision of America is one in which a president of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell bankers how to bank, control the medical system, and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor most other politicians have any expertise or experience.

The Constitution of the United States gives no president, nor the entire federal government, the authority to do such things. But spending trillions of dollars to bail out all sorts of companies buys the power to tell them how to operate.

Appointing to the federal courts — including the Supreme Court — judges who believe in expanding the powers of the federal government to make arbitrary decisions, choosing who will be winners and losers in the economy and in the society, is perfectly consistent with a vision of the world where self-confident and self-righteous elites rule according to their own notions, instead of merely governing under the restraints of the Constitution.

If all this can be washed down with pious talk about 'empathy,' so much the better for those who want to remake America......

....Given the age and health of some other Supreme Court justices, more replacements are likely during Obama’s time in the White House. Time gives an opportunity to mobilize public opinion and perhaps change the composition of the Senate that will confirm the next judicial nominees.

But time by itself does nothing. It is what we do with time that matters."

It is imperative that those of us who still have a sense of decency and our common good sense about us band together to stifle this Obamanation before it's too late.

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Here's the best thing about the Obama presidency

He gives us LOTS of material to work with.

Andrew McCarthy tells the Obamanation to buzz off

Read the former Federal prosecutor's principled and definitive response to the politicization of the law by the radicals who run the nation's business.

Noteworthy:

Yet President Obama’s antiwar base is in a froth — so much so that he has unleashed his Justice Department to criminalize political disputes after claiming for weeks that he did not want to do this. And the president is being a bully about it. He obviously doesn’t want to incur the wrath of leaking spooks, so he has said CIA agents won’t be investigated (the right result reached for self-interested reasons). He hasn’t worked up the nerve to go after his predecessor, who ordered the policy, and Tenet — a Democrat and one of Bush’s Clinton-holdovers — is another politically inconvenient target. That leaves the lawyers — relatively unknown and thus easily demonized — as the feast for the piranhas.

Any experienced prosecutor would know there is no criminal case here. And let’s assume you think the lawyers gave bad advice — as many say they do, particularly if they haven’t read the memos. Bad legal advice given in good faith is not an ethical violation. There’s not a lawyer in America who hasn’t given bad legal advice at some point — certainly not in the government. It is disgraceful to target these lawyers for this kind of persecution, to force them to retain counsel to defend their wartime service to the country, and to put them in fear of criminal, professional, and financial repercussions. It should be offensive to all people of good will, regardless of their politics or of where they come out on the explosive issue of coercive interrogation. We can arrive at a sound policy, or not, without demonizing our adversaries as crooks and cads

And:

"As I told the attorney general in my letter, 'I am powerless to stop the president, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade.' "

The Plan

Via American Digest.

And yes, it WILL come

Backlash against the Obamanation WILL occur. He won't be able to supress the rising discontent that's already underway. It's just a question of how soon the the thin facade wears through, and the rotten foundation is exposed for all to see.

Noteworthy:

"By the time the bloom comes off this fanciful presidency, will conservatives have found their voice? Will Obama then reinvent himself with some Bill Clinton-style triangulation plan? Probably not. More likely, he has already shown us his best act and will slowly morph into a finger-pointing demagogue as his polls fade. If anyone else were president and deceptively trying to enact his programs, a full-scale revolt would already be underway."

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Democrat Irresponsibility Illustrated

Power Line says we need to add "greed" to the description.

I would also include the word "theft".

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It's a plumbing problem that ails us

The problems with "Barry's Plumbing Service" are just beginning.

Excerpt:

"Our first plumber was selected by chance, just someone in the phone book. He seemed competent enough but he always did something that never sat well with me. Whenever he repaired something, he always seemed to have something bad to say about the previous craftsman. He might tell me, 'This wouldn't have happened if the stupid guy used Kohler faucets,' 'Whoever did this didn't properly caulk inside the wall,' or, 'I can't believe he installed the wrong main shutoff valves.'

One nightmarish day sewage backed up through the drain in the utility room and our toilets overran when flushed. In a panic, we called our plumber. He began by rodding out the utility floor drain. Eventually, he managed to fix the problem, we thought, but then he had to come back two days later for the same thing. This time the sewer rod snake, he explained, 'hit a wall,' could not penetrate any farther, and then he convinced me the sewer tile was broken. He never did rod out the main sewer line behind the clothes dryer.

The replacement of a sewer tile is a quite an ordeal. Permits have to be obtained, sidewalks broken up and eventually replaced, a digging crew hired (including two men who just stand above the trench in case it collapses), and a small Caterpillar tractor utilized. The digging began in my front yard. The problem was I live on a corner lot and the sewer line does nut run through the front of my house but through the side of the house.

By the time the job was finished, I was out thousands of dollars and I had two huge rectangles of parkway that required sod, one on the side of the house and one in the front of the house. To make things worse, my plumber never thought to install an outside access clean out. To this day, I am convinced I never needed a new sewer tile.

Today's President reminds me of my former plumber. He tells us we are going to have to pay up because nobody, other than himself, is competent. Our President has a unique aptitude for trashing. He trashes Wall Street, AIG, the credit card companies, the automobile industry, CEO's, the banks, the lenders, and, the economy. Unlike any other sitting President, he trashes his predecessor, and, when he is abroad, he loves to trash his country.

For a homeowner, nothing seems worse than a backed up sewer and overrunning toilet. Across our nation, metaphorically speaking, there is a plumbing problem. Our sewers are backing up. Rather than our cups, it is our toilets that runneth over. This plumbing problem now starts and ends with the White House."

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Barry O sets the record straight about the pirate crisis

Regarding Obama's recent 'American Apology' tour

"Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?"

"If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

'Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks,' he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers...

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?"

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There will be some changes under Obamacare

Hat tip: Dr. Sanity, who also quotes Thomas Sowell on the subject:

"Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care.

The bottom line is medical care. But the rhetoric and the talking points are about insurance. Many people who could afford health insurance do not choose to have it because they know that medical care will be available at the nearest emergency room, whether they have insurance or not.

This is especially true for young people, who do not anticipate long-term medical problems and who can always get a broken leg or an allergy attack taken care of at an emergency room -- and spend their money on a more upscale lifestyle.

This may not be a wise decision but it is their decision, and there is no reason why other people should lose the right to make decisions for themselves because some people make questionable decisions.

If you don't think government bureaucrats can make questionable decisions, then you haven't dealt with many government bureaucrats."

Rasmussen Poll: Obama's release of CIA memos endangers America's national security

But we (those with their heads screwed on straight) knew that already, didn't we?

Michelle Malkin has some details.

Related:

"Oh, well.....um, I....uhhhh.....where's the teleprompter?......oh, never mind....":

" 'The president said that given all that’s on the agenda and the pressing issues facing the country, that a backward-looking investigation would not be productive,' a White House official who attended the session said. 'The president was very clear…that he believes it’s important that there’s not a witch hunt.' "

Yeah, right.

How magnanimous

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Transparency? Accountability?

From the Obamanation?

Don't make me laugh.

ABC's Jake Tapper has shredded that phoney meme in his consistent grilling of Obamanation Press Clown Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Here's the latest, via Jennifer Rubin.

Key point:

"On the transparency and accountability front, we have so far perhaps the most under-achieving administration ever. The promise to have legislation on line for five days before a vote? Nope. A list of ethics waivers? Never provided. Oversight for trillions in spending? Not remotely.

And Congress, which is only too anxious to begin investigating the last administration, shows no interest in fulfilling its oversight role. So unlike the Bush administration, which after 2006 had to face aggressive Democratic-controlled committees and explain itself on everything from firing U.S. attorneys to the Walter Reed scandal, this administration is neither inclined to, nor forced to, explain much of anything. And with Gibbs at the podium no member of the media is going to get any intelligible answers either."

No doubt.

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More Birds of a Feather

Looks like the former Mr. Madonna's enjoying himself, doesn't it?

Get this:

"I know President Chavez well. Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, what is certainly true of Chavez is that he is a warm and friendly man with a robust sense of humor (who daily risks his own life for his country in ways Dick Cheney could never imagine).

To treat such a man coldly is akin to spitting on him. As a country we've done enough of that. Say what you will, but it has only resulted in the self-celebration of our smirking spitters, while costing us international respect, American lives, and left wounds in the hands of our children's future.

The Cheneys, down to the O'Reillys and Hannitys and Limbaughs, effectively hate the principles upon which we were founded. They are among the greatest cowards in all of American history. I applaud an American President who's tough enough...to smile."

WAAAAAAY too funny for further comment.....

Once again, there is no way you can make stuff like this up.

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Putting the 'torture' nonsense, and the Obamanation's attempt to criminalize political differences into perspective

Cliff May:

"Terrorists are not criminal defendants with a 'right to remain silent.' They are not prisoners of war obligated only to recite only name, rank, and serial number. They are 'not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.' Those are the words of Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general (on CNN, January 2002) who added that had Mohamed Atta 'survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

...and:

"......But let’s not sacrifice a single American life to score public-relations points in the cafés of Europe. Nor should we delude ourselves into believing that kinder, gentler American interrogations will prevent otherwise peace-loving Muslims from signing up to suicide-bomb kindergartens and saw off the heads of captured infidels.

We should fight this war in as civilized a manner as possible — understanding that this is a war against an enemy who is utterly ruthless and unscrupulous and who should not be permitted to prevail anytime, anywhere."