I used to be somewhat impressed with Obama as a politician. But it seems increasingly clear that he’s an empty suit.
For starters, his foreign policy rhetoric and strategy are a mess. He’s recently insulted Britain for no apparent reason. He’s pushing for an expanded campaign in Afghanistan, even though it resembles in every relevant way the bottomless pit that Iraq has turned out to be.
More important than this, he’s following a combination of ad hoc solutions, big government spending, inflation, short term fixes, anti-growth measures, and sheer ignorance in the face of the economic crisis. His treasury secretary still thinks it’s 2007 and wants to punish domestic energy companies. And, worst of all, Obama is talking about stocks and the markets in a way that inspires fear and uncertainty. Yesterday, in a press conference, he encouraged stock buying but confused “price to earnings” ratios with “profits and earnings.” What?!? No one who knows anything about markets would make this mistake. It’s truly amateur night. Literally, everything he has said and done since January 20, 2009 has inspired more fear, uncertainty, and loss in the markets.
It’s not just a gaff. This guy has never shown any serious interest in economics for most of his adult life. This lacuna is doubly blameworthy since he spent so many years at the epicenter of the Law and Economics movement, the University of Chicago Law School. For many years, his chief passion was redistributing the fruits of the economy that until recently had so much wealth to go around. Now he must try to stimulate wealth creation, and he has no clue what to do. He’s never worked in business, for example, and has spent almost all his time around activists, nonprofits, and grubby Chicago politicians. All that “Dreams of My Father” talk is about giving from the rich to the poor in the name of equality and “social justice.” It’s ignorant of the need for stable laws, limited government, low taxes, transparency, and the necessary inequality to actually encourage the creation of wealth. Liberals are ignorant of the past and are surprisingly parochial. They assume the western world’s money just fell out of the sky or, at best, was stolen or ill gotten. They don’t realize how others trying this redistributionist formula in places like Russia, Mexico, and Argentina have ruined otherwise promising societies. One wonders if Obama has ever read Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, or James Madison.
Now we learn that the wunderkind Obama–who could not be bothered to write a single academic article while pretending to be a law professor at the University of Chicago–can’t apparently give a speech without a teleprompter. When he’s off the training wheels, he says things even more stupid than his prepared remarks as evidenced by his confusion about PE Ratios. He’s zigging and zagging through a crisis that nothing in his life experience or education has prepared him to address. It was bad enough that the anti-military academic was taking the reigns in the middle of two complicated wars; at least, in that case he had the good sense to cut our losses. But now the anti-capitalist “community organizer” is charged with establishing policies to stop the bleeding for an economy in free fall, and he’s reaching for the failed big government solutions (and gimmicks) that were so baleful in the 1970s.
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Roach is taking off the gloves, and it’s about stinkin’ time.
Here’s what pisses me off: where is the money? Who’s tracking it?
IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?!!!!
Every week-day-hour, the gloomy news reminds of yet another pot of gold being dumped down the fiscal rabbit hole of hope, prayer and uncertainty. We all know who’s got the keys to the mint. Pelosi, Frank, Dodd and Obama- the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Then we all sit and wait around in anxious expectation, fingers crossed, like so many wistful Cardinals at the Chapel looking for puffs of white smoke.
That analogy hits home. This Obama regime, led by the way-over-his-head cubscout Geithner, who is daily rubbing two sticks together when he’s not cut ‘n pasting his taxes, is beginning to look like smoke and mirrors is all it knows.
As I wrote here, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Obama is capable of accomplishing anything. He’s had the wind at his back his entire adult life, and as far as I can see the only personal hardship he’s ever suffered is paying off his student loans.
I always knew Obama was wrong about almost everything that matters; I am pleased — yes, pleased — to discover that he is incompetent as well. In that sense he has given me, er, hope.
Most of the world’s most successful tyrants have been at least shrewd. They may have had paranoia, treachery, megalomania, and other bad habits, but often overlaid with a certain intelligence and strategic brilliance. If it is true, as it increasingly appears, that Obama is a third-rater in everything but speaking style (and that only when he is reading words from a screen), he cannot hide that for long when he must deal with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis.
Americans will put up with a lot of nonsense from celebrity politicians who have style, from JFK to Bill Clinton to Barry-O, but when a lack of ability becomes too apparent their tolerance quickly melts. This is still a majority can-do country that doesn’t cut obvious can’t-doers a lot of slack.
JFK and Clinton might be cited as counter-arguments, but JFK was cut down before his fumbling had time to register, and of course apotheosis was immediate after his assassination. Clinton lucked out in that he presided over a hothouse economy and a collective sigh of relief post-USSR.
Those who long ago sold their souls to the Left will never change, but many of O’s former celebrants are going to have a harder and harder time reconciling their previous image of him with his ever-more-visible ignorance and indecisiveness. The political allies who grabbed his coat-tails will not be at home to him when they sense that the public mood has turned.
Obama’s lack of business experience doesn’t bother me. After all, Big Business’s idea of how to run an economy is to send the production to China!
My thoughts for a bumper sticker:
Obama – Making even Bush look good
“… as far as I can see the only personal hardship he’s ever suffered is paying off his student loans.” – Sweating Through Fog
I beg to differ. In his book, he revealed that at one point when he was one of only two black students on a sports team, a white man (WHITE!) said he thought it must be a bummer to be one of only two.
CAN YOU IMAGINE THE SUFFERING? I’m amazed Obama even survived with his sanity intact. Naturally, Obama wanted to beat the snot of that pale jerkhead, but he didn’t. Because he is a true gentleman. Actually, he’s the instrument of God, I’m pretty sure.
This is another prove that GOP is ready to do the most harm to the american democracy. It allowed the worst president of the US to do what he pleased (destruction of the globe and america) for the last 8 years and it starts barking at every attempt the new president has to offer to clean up such mess. Republicans need to wake up and start reading to educate themselves that change is most needed at this point. Stop being “conservative”
Empty suit is an understatement. More like an empty puppet suit. Haven’t you noticed how much Obama sounds like Reagan? I.E., he sounds like he is delivering his lines, reading a script. So who is writing the screen play? Emmanuel? The Ballet Dancer. Gaithner? The Asian languages expert. It clearly isn’t anyone with a background in history or economics — otherwise they would know that America didn’t invent the automobile, and they would understand the difference between price and profits. And, how is it that a guy who supposedly taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago has absolutely no interest in the Constitution, not mentioning it even once in his campaign or since?
Look carefully at who Obama has surrounded himself with and the answer should be obvious. It should also be obvious as to why they don’t know much about American history. It’s less clear as to why they don’t appear to have a grasp on economics. That is likely either obfuscation or Obamaisms. Profits, price, they sound so similar. Obama is a recruited, carefully trained and groomed actor. No truly intelligent man could be so careless or have so little natural curiosity about the subjects on which he attempts to speak.
Obana’s weakest point is likely to be national security.
Regardless if Obama wants to wind down “wars” it’s irrelevant, AQ and other groups like them are not going to go away. Not when any Jihadist leader who kilss enough Americans can get an instant exile Army, with money and power and men flowing in. That’s been the goal of Bin Laden (who wanted basically to repeat the anti-Soviet Jihad to create an exile Army to take over Saudi) and Zawahari (who wanted the same with Egypt). Pakistan is just overflowing with those guys, many of whom are convinced they could do a better job of running Pakistan than the thieves in charge now.
So long as they are all afraid of an American response, that will kill them and all their tribe directly, we are safe. They don’t care about non-tribe outsiders, why would they? Nukes to them are a giant carbomb, and they would nuke NYC in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it.
With Obama, whom they suspect is a closet Muslim (and who has been very public in Muslim countries about his Muslim birth, childhood, and relatives) and is in any case weak and anti-Military, they probably see their chance.
Take a depression. Now add at least a nuked NYC, and perhaps a few more when Obama refuses to retaliate on a massive scale to deter further attacks (it would entail wiping out pretty much EVERYONE in a nuclear Pakistan, and Iran when they break out).
Its an ugly world, but one inevitable once Bill Clinton chose not to use military force to stop Pakistan from breaking out, and Bush allowed North Korea to break out to nuclear status.
Only absolute and certain fear down to tribal levels (where the real decisions get made) makes us safe, Bush did poorly there and Obama’s even worse.
Nukes are the great equalizer, and now everyone’s getting them or has them. God help us.