The Buck Stops

indyfromaz|

One of the best, Thomas Sowell:
President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.
The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.
No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president (January 2007 to be precise). The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.
“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”
These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.
Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.
At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.
When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.
If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.
The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.
Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.
Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.
Amen! And those were Democrats by and large.
The RINOs still have to learn that getting along with Socialist Democrats is not possible and that even if they win Obama will be ideologically opposed to them on everything.
But at least it can’t get any worse and there is some hope, especially from the Tea Party Candidates.
Now that’s real “Hope and Change”.

25 Reasons to “jaws” the Democrats…
But first, I would add #26: “Though the job losses we were experiencing earlier this year have slowed dramatically, we’re still not creating enough new jobs each month to make up for the ones we’re losing,” Obama said last week. “For families and communities across the country, this recession will not end until we completely turn that tide.”
Was this last week?
No.
It was December 2009.
Sounds like last week doesn’t it?
“We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times,” he said, alluding to the concerns about the soaring budget deficit. “But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.”
This week?
No.
November 2009.
“Democrats have to reassure voters we are not being reckless,” said a Democratic official involved in the planning. “The White House knows this and that’s why we’ll be hearing a lot about reducing the deficit early next year. Democrats owned this issue for the past four years and cannot afford to cede it to Republicans now.”

You got it. November 2009!

You be the Judge, Jury and hopefully executioner.

1) Remember the stimulus bill? Republicans strongly opposed it and said it wouldn’t work. Democrats said it would revive the economy and keep unemployment under 8 percent. So, what happened? Democrats shoved through a bill that cost $1.1 trillion when you add in the interest. It cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase (the real one not the Health Care one ), and putting a man on the moon — combined. The result? The economy didn’t take off, the unemployment rate is still at 9.6 percent, and Democrats are calling for…you guessed it, another stimulus bill.
2) Perhaps the biggest problem with the economy right now is that businesses are so afraid of what the government will do that they’re stockpiling cash instead of spending it. Having a pro-market, Republican Congress that will oppose tax hikes, red tape, and damaging new legislation will reduce uncertainty and help give businesses the confidence they need to start hiring and expanding again.
3) While he was campaigning, Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, but in his first 100 days alone, he quadrupled the deficit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his budget blueprint adds more, “debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.” No civilization in human history has spent like America has over the last two years of Democratic rule and unless we can get more Republicans in office, this country’s economic future is going to be deader than King Tut and uglier than a 7 day old chunk of roadkill.
4)The Democrats seem hellbent on taking over as much of the private sector as possible. In a relatively short period of time, our government has taken over much of the banking industry, auto industry, health care industry, and student loans. There are currently no viable plans to get out of any of these industries either. This sort of Sovietization of the American economy can only end badly. After all, look what similar policies did to the Soviet Union.
5) In the middle of a recession, the Democrats in Congress still seem to be on track to enact the largest tax increase in American history by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Here we are with a struggling economy and businesses that are afraid to move because they can’t be sure of what the Democrats will do, and Pelosi, Reid, and Obama still haven’t addressed this massive tax hike. How incompetent. How short-sighted. How foolish.
I would add (#27): In the middle of a recession, with joblessness hovering around the 10% mark, the Obama administration made a deliberate decision to impose a drilling moratorium knowing it would cost at least 23,000 jobs. Why?
Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.
Never mind the fact that an event like this had never happened before in deep water.   Never mind there were hundreds of deepwater wells functioning properly and well.  Never mind that those jobs were well paying jobs  and that through their elimination would cause ripple-effect unemployment down the supply chain.
Instead, deliberately trash the lives of 23,000 workers – and their families – because of unfounded fears.
And a deep seated radical environmentalist “green” agenda. They weren’t the right kind of jobs, after all.
Yeah, that’s leadership, isn’t it?
6) “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” — Joe Biden
7) Our economy is no longer suffering from the recession. At this point, the economy is suffering from the policies the Democrats put in place that were supposed to create a “recovery.”
So how was the “summer of recovery” for you?

I don’t mind a President taking a vacation now and then or playing a little golf, but Barack Obama has taken it to a ridiculous extreme. The man has already played more golf in two years than George W. Bush did in his whole presidency. Is he planning to try out for the PGA after he gets out of office? And what’s with the never ending vacationinh? It’s like the presidency is a distraction from taking time off for this guy. Wait, is that the phone ringing? Oh, it’s Marie Antoinette. She is just calling to say that Obama needs to show more sensitivity to the people during tough economic times.
9) “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” — Democratic Congressman Pete Stark to a constituent at a Townhall.
10) “But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” — Barack Obama explains his views on bipartisanship.
11) The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home… What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact. — President Barack Obama explains that racism was behind the arrest of his friend, Bill Gates
12) “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” — Attorney General Eric Holder
12a) Suing Arizona. Period.

13) Iran, a nation that’s known for supporting terrorism and chanting “Death to America,” is about to get nukes and Barack Obama’s reaction has been…well, pretty much nothing.
14) On the other hand Israel, a nation that’s known for being a bastion of freedom in a backwards region and for supporting America, is just trying to survive and Obama’s reaction has been cold and hostile. Maybe if Benjamin Netanyahu started leading “Death to America” chants in the Knesset, Obama might become a little friendlier.
15) The President of the United States should not bow to foreign leaders.
16) Nancy Pelosi once promised to run the most “ethical and honest Congress in history.” She wasn’t alone. Yet, how have the Democrats been doing on that front? Perhaps we could ask Eric Massa, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Roland Burris, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Alan Mollohan, Laura Richardson, Pete Visclosky, and William Jefferson among others. Sorry that all the charges aren’t laid out, but covering all the Democratic corruption that has occurred would be a double sized article in and of itself.
17) In one of the most corrupt deals in American history, Barack Obama broke existing contracts and tossed away billions in taxpayer dollars to give his union pals an outsized ownership stake in Chrysler and General Motors. Now, every time you buy a car from one of those companies, you’re essentially contributing to the Democratic Party. Calling that sleazy is like calling the ocean “wet.”
18) “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” — Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the public’s lack of concern over greenhouse gasses
19) “How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that? Starting with Michael Steele.” — Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson
19a) By Grayson himself on the floor during the Health care debate: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night, highlighted by a sign reading “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”
Then the apology for this hyper-partisan rhetoric: “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” he said on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.
Now that’s your Obama Post-Partisan Congress for you.

20) “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the (Ground Zero) mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City — Nancy Pelosi
20a) If you disagree with a Democrat you’re a racist, a bigot, or a terrorist. Or all three. Isn’t that enough right there?
21) “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explaining that Democrats no longer view space as one of NASA’s top priorities
22) The Democrats in the House actually managed to pass a cap and trade bill that’s supported by Barack Obama. This bill would impose massive new energy costs on American consumers. Estimates range from $1600 to $4000 in new costs per family. Although the Senate hasn’t passed this legislation yet, in an almost unbelievable show of arrogance, they’re considering trying to push it through during the lame duck session. If they try that, the American people should rise up as one and proclaim that it will be a “cooked duck session” for anybody who tries to shove significant legislation through before the next Congress arrives.
22a) The massive, seismically so, tax increases that the Democrats want to see on 1/01/11  when the Bush Tax Cuts expire. They actually think it’s a good idea to raise taxes on everyone during a recession. But they will be dishonest and say “it’s only the rich” we want to target. This kind of Class Warfare has never worked out in the past and won’t now.

23) How about Obama’s big, oily Katrina? Know what the difference was between the oil spill in the Gulf and the other programs Obama has pushed? With most of the other programs, it’ll take years for people to see how bad they are. With the oil spill, the country could see the complete and utter incompetence of the Obama Administration in real time.
24) It’s bad enough that the federal government ignored the law, isn’t trying to finish the fence, and refuses to secure our southern border. But now, not only are they still talking up amnesty, they’re actually harassing and suing Arizona because that state has decided to do the job that the federal government is refusing to do. If only the trial lawyers, unions, or ACORN were demanding that the border be secured, we might get some action.
25) You’d have to go all the way back to the days when the British were bossing around American colonists at the point of a bayonet to find the sort of government arrogance that led to Obamacare being shoved through in Congress. No matter how loudly the American people said they didn’t want the bill, Democrats insisted that they knew best. So now, the quality of American health care will be destroyed, private health insurance will end, rationing will occur, death panels will be instituted, the deficit will soar, and taxpayer dollars will be used to fund abortion — but on the upside, Democrats think over the long-term, it will be good for their political prospects. However, there is an alternative. The GOP House Leadership has pledged to defund and repeal Obamacare. If we can get them into power, we can start putting the brakes on now and start working on health care reform that will actually improve what we have now instead of destroying it utterly and replacing it with an inferior system. (John Hawkins- Townhall.com)

So when the Democrats trot out their bribes in the next few months, don’t buy it. It’s just more Marxist Snake Oil.
We don’t need anymore Snake Oil. That buck has to stop.

The Quintessential Partisan

More of David Limbaugh (Daily Caller): President Obama is the quintessential partisan, for sure, but he doesn’t reserve his vitriol for Republican politicians. He’ll turn on anyone who stands in his way, and he’ll make it personal through bullying, ridicule, and demonizing. Obama believes he can use his presidential bully pulpit to say whatever he wants about anyone or any group, whether foreign leaders, bankers, or tea party protesters.
Consistent with his narcissistic proclivities, Obama is angrily intolerant of his critics. He dismissed President Bush’s rare criticism by snapping, “We won.” Likewise, he lashed out at Senator John McCain for objecting to his stance on Iran, declaring, “Only I’m the president of the United States . . . and I’ll carry out my responsibilities the way I think is appropriate”—completely ignoring the substance of McCain’s criticism.
This is a hallmark of Obama’s governing style: he takes things personally and keeps score. He exudes a sense of entitlement about his agenda, expecting legislators to vote as he commands, as opposed to, say, their consciences or the wishes of their constituents.
For Obama, it’s more than just a matter of political power. There’s also his egotistical sense that he is absolutely right about everything, that everyone else is wrong, and that if given enough time, he can persuade the rest of the rubes of the superiority of his positions.

It has been my experience, online and in the media (say MSDNC), that the more Progressive Left they are they more that condescending snottiness and absolute Right of God comes out. The more left they are the more they are The Insufferably Superior Left. And thus, they are utterly incapable of being wrong and even if you can prove it, they will just attack you like a rabid raptor.
In their heads there is no such thing as them being wrong. EVER!
An easy test: Ask one of these nuts when will it not be George Bush’s fault?
Get out a wetsuit because the dripping condescending snottiness  and Bush Derangement Syndrome will flow like the flood of the century!
And don’t expect the Mainstream Media, The Ministry of Truth, to be there to protect you they are ideological now and they’re not news reporters. And they are in favor of Obama’s agenda and so they are going to disregard the kind of things he does and will make you (or Bush) the cause not him.
They still love him. Some on the far-far left are mad, it’s true, but that’s because he’s not been to far left ENOUGH  for their tastes!
He didn’t get the Public Option. He didn’t get Cap & Trade in full. He hasn’t redistributed the wealth enough for them. He hasn’t crushed Wall Street and the “rich” enough for them.
Yes, they are that radically out of touch with reality.

We’ve seen how he attributed the public’s repudiation of his agenda via the Massachusetts Senate election to his failure to sufficiently explain his healthcare position—though he had talked ad nauseam on the issue. But it was true of other issues as well—even strong moral issues for which there would never be a consensus, as with his attempt to confront pro-life forces at Notre Dame.
He took the same tack with the issue of homosexuality. At a White House celebration of Gay Pride Month—a controversial act in itself—Obama said he aspired to persuade all Americans to accept homosexuality—as if the issue were simply about “accepting homosexuals,” and that anyone opposing special legal classifications for homosexuality was prejudiced, discriminatory, and as Obama claimed, possessed of “worn arguments and old attitudes.” He added, “There are good and decent people in this country who don’t yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters—not yet.”
As a candidate, Obama usually told voters what he thought they wanted to hear. He told an audience in Las Vegas he wanted to help “not just the folks who own casinos but the folks who are serving in casinos.” But after becoming president he wasn’t quite as solicitous. In one of his many anti-capitalist riffs he took a cheap shot at CEOs at a townhall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana, in February 2009. “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” Obama’s careless statement elicited a strong reaction from Las Vegas businessmen, many pointing out that if their business suffers, the first and hardest hit are the front line workers—the people at the front desk, the bell staff, and the taxi drivers, precisely the people Obama courted during the campaign.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported that more than 400 conventions and business meetings scheduled in the city had been canceled, translating into 111,800 guests and more than 250,000 “room nights,” costing the city’s economy more than $100 million, apart from lost gaming revenue.
And despite British Petroleum’s assurances that it was “absolutely” responsible for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama unleashed on BP a non-stop barrage of verbal abuse. Using language not usually heard from a U.S. president, he told NBC’s Today Show that he consults experts about the spill to find out “whose ass to kick.”
Even Obama’s supporters recognized he was resorting to sheer intimidation. As Democratic strategist James Carville noted, “It looks as if President Obama applied a little old-school Chicago persuasion to the oil executives.” But American presidents, of course, are not supposed to resort to this kind of outright thuggery to get their way. As Conn Carroll remarked on the Heritage Foundation’s blog, “Making ‘offers you can’t refuse’ may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country.”

And the President oh-so-political Oil Drilling Moratorium (even now that the leak has been plugged it continues) has cost 10′s of thousands of jobs and continues to hurt the Gulf States, especially Louisiana.
But he doesn’t care. He has the backing of his environmentalist apparatchiks. So what does he care about jobs lost in a recession due directly to his meddling. It’s not his fault!
He’s scoring points for his agenda.

And leaving other apparatchiks to do the job for him also, Like the EPA and there declaration that “that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels poses a threat to human health and welfare, a designation that set the federal government on the path toward regulating of emissions from power plants, factories, automobiles and other major sources.” (see also: http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/stop-breathing-save-the-planet/) statement and now apparently Connecticut’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for the Senate, Richard Blumenthal, is working to get courts to declare “cap and trade” regulations the law of the land. Blumenthal’s suit, Connecticut v. American Electric Power, is the most prominent of a handful of “climate change” lawsuits filed by environmental activists, state attorneys general and trial lawyers. These suits threaten to impose a steep tax on the American economy, with no input from our national elected representatives.
In 2004, Connecticut, along with seven other states, New York City and three environmental groups, filed suit against five companies responsible for “approximately one-quarter of the U.S. electric power sector’s carbon dioxide emissions.”
Their lawsuit sought to hold the companies “jointly and severally liable for contributing to an ongoing public nuisance, global warming” and asked the court to force each company “to abate its contribution to the nuisance by capping its emissions of carbon dioxide and then reducing those emissions by a specified percentage each year.”(IBD)

So Congress doesn’t have the stomach to do it, the Progressives will just use their judicial apparatchiks to force it down your throat!!
The Bully that never gives up.

Based on his behavior as president, it is clear he truly believes his own hype. He behaves and governs as though he has been sheltered all his life, or at least since he was a young adult, living in a bizarre bubble, hearing only positive reinforcement and made to believe in his own supernatural powers. This is a major reason he cannot bear opposition; this is a major reason he is not, in the end, a man of the people and deferential to their will, but a top-down autocrat determined to permanently change America and its place in the world despite intense resistance from the American people themselves.
David Limbaugh:  This is a guy who’s taken over private companies. This is a guy who — contravening the rule of law — allocates and pledges $140 billion to the IMF when Congress specifically said you cannot do that without our authority.
And he said — with an Orwellian argument, I can — this is foreign policy, I can divert $140 billion to the IMF for wealth redistribution in third world countries. Nothing to do with what the IMF was originally been set up for.
He can go after Gerald Walpin who is an IG for AmeriCorps because he uncovered fraud on the part of Obama’s friends and so he fires him without notice in total contravention of the rule of law there.
It’s a means to an end for him. He appoints judges who will rewrite the law. He will circumvent Congress when it comes to environmental policy by having his EPA declare carbon dioxide a toxic pollutant.
He will go out and thwart the secured creditors’ legal rights under the law — their rights under the law and favor the unions who are unsecured creditors, give them 50 percent on the dollar. Give the secured creditors 20 percent and then slam and slander the lawyer and slander them as speculators when they’re just trying to enforce their own rights under the law. (FOX)

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” Obama told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer last year.

And in his mind, and The Ministry of Truth, he is really good. Look at all the “legislative victories” he’s had!!
So what if 60+% of the people hate them. He won! That’s all that matters.
Like he cares.  As long as he’s right and the Ministry of Truth tell him he’s right and cover up any gaffes or “misquotes” he’s perfectly fine with doing whatever he wants.
After all, as he told Sen. McCain during the Health Care roundtable, He won the election! Get over it


But there’s also the fact that he’s tone-deaf. In addition to not caring what we think, he’s also tone-deaf because he has no clue after he passed – - he crammed Obamacare through he says, I’m going to continue to fight for the American people.
Oh, you are? So 24 percent of the people support what you’re doing and you’re fighting for us? How oblivious.

And how many times has he said that he will focus on jobs, then a shiny object like Health Care or Oil or some other Liberal fantasy distracts him and he just wanders off on vacation…
We either go full blown toward socialism, Marxism, Statism or we turn back and restore our founding principles. This upcoming election in November will tell the tale.
Freedom matters.

It's all about Me!

Today is primary day in Arizona. But as a registered Independent I have become used to the way of things. I am not allowed to vote today because I am not a partisan of either main party.
I have no voice.
But our President has a voice. And boy does he love the sound of it.

From David Limbaugh’s new book Crimes Against Liberty: Who is Barack Obama? To say that he has an enormous ego is an understatement. Many commentators, including psychological analysts and foreign leaders, have described him as a narcissist.
Obama’s patent self-confidence is not just posturing. It’s evident he truly believes he is special. He did, after all, pen two largely autobiographical books before he had accomplished much of anything. He once told campaign aide Patrick Gaspard, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Obama’s belief that he is a gift to the world is a theme he would carry forward into his presidency. He truly believes he alone has the power to reverse the mess America has allegedly made of world affairs, and that only he can restore America’s supposedly tattered reputation.
Indeed, it often seems that for our president, American policy is not about the United States, but about him personally. At the Summit of the Americas, Obama sat through a 50-minute harangue against the United States by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who eviscerated the United States for a century of “terroristic” aggression in Central America. When it was Obama’s turn, he did not defend the United States, but made himself the issue: “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Obama’s numerous self-references soon became legendary. Obama referred to himself 114 times in his first State of the Union. By September 23, 2009, Obama had given forty-one speeches so far that year, referring to himself 1,198 times.  At his West Point speech in December, he referred to himself forty-four times. In a speech in Ohio in January, Obama referred to himself no fewer than 132 times and, in the same speech, had the audacity to proclaim, “This is not about me.”
That phrase, “This is not about me,” cropped up in many of Obama’s speeches, signaling that whatever “this” is, it’s precisely about him—his ego, his ideology, his agenda, his legacy, or his unbending ambition to have his way. The rhetorical device, “It’s not about me,” is a long established pattern in which he self-servingly pretends to project an air of humility to leave the impression that he is modest about accomplishing great things—thereby shamelessly seeking credit both for his modesty and his greatness.
Yet Obama continues to tell us—either as a brazen practitioner of Orwellian deception or as a poster child for political tone-deafness, “I won’t stop fighting for you.” If he were truly fighting for the people, he wouldn’t have mocked the tea partiers or closed his own counterfeit public forums on health care to all but union and other special interest supporters of ObamaCare.
Candidate Obama overtly cultivated a messianic image, from the grandiose pomp accompanying his campaign speech in Berlin to the Greek columns that adorned his acceptance speech at Chicago’s Invesco Field. His advisers fully bought into the façade, especially to the idea that Obama possessed a superior intellect—so far above the masses that it was difficult to convey his ideas in terms simple enough for the people to understand.
At a forum at the Kennedy School of Government, one participant suggested to Obama’s adviser and long-time confidant, Valerie Jarrett, that Obama’s ideas were so complex that the administration should consider writing simple booklets to explain them to ordinary people, just like the computer industry originally wrote DOS For Dummies. Jarrett said it was an excellent idea. “Everyone understood hope and change” because “they were simple . . . part of our challenge is to find a very simple way of communicating. . . . When I first got here people kept talking about ‘cloture’ and ‘reconciliation’ and ‘people don’t know what that’s talking about.’” Then it really got thick as Jarrett proclaimed, “There’s nobody more self-critical than President Obama. Part of the burden of being so bright is that he sees his error immediately.”
Obama didn’t exactly discourage this quasi-deification. In noting Obama’s “pathological self-regard,” former George W. Bush aide Pete Wehner reported that Obama surrounded himself by aides who referred to him as a “Black Jesus.” Wehner noted, “Obama didn’t appear to object.”
Surrounding himself with sycophants and egged on by an adoring media, Obama assumed the presidency with the arrogant ambition of transforming America. He believed he was The One—a visionary whose great deeds would be remembered generations from now. But while his charisma was a great asset on the campaign trail, as president he quickly found that his trademark oratory could not convince a skeptical nation of the wisdom of his extravagant plans.(Daily Caller)

“We were told we were getting a cool, calm, steady leader who could rise above emotional impulses to deliver classic statesmanship and prudent governance. But all too often we witness in him a petulant and vindictive bully who doesn’t seem to understand why anyone would challenge his omniscience,” Limbaugh writes.

Leftist Comedian Bill Maher in 2008: “New Rule: Republicans need to stop saying Barack Obama is an elitist, or looks down on rural people, and just admit you don’t like him because of something he can’t help, something that’s a result of the way he was born. Admit it, you’re not voting for him because he’s smarter than you. Barack Obama can’t help it if he’s a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you’re a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That’s why George Bush is president.”


One of the questions a lot of pundits are speculating on is whether Barack Obama will make the great pivot after 2010, the way Bill Clinton did after 1994. Remember, Clinton made a big pivot to the right. Privately, a number of Democratic pollsters and others tell me they fundamentally believe Barack Obama is ideologically incapable of such a pivot. Limbaugh’s book provides the first real evidence that this is true. After 2010, there will be no moderation or pivot right. Obama is wedded to the failed liberal policies of the past hundred years that again and again the American public has repudiated.
But Obama holds that repudiation in contempt. As Limbaugh writes, “Obama’s disingenuousness is not just a matter of stretching the truth once in a while or engaging in a little old-fashioned hyperbole. His outright, habitual lies are a fundamental aspect of his governance…Inside a few months, he showed himself to be deeply racial, aggressively partisan, grossly incompetent, often verbally awkward apart from his teleprompter, an inflexible liberal ideologue, secretive, dishonest, undemocratic, dogmatic and dictatorial, and intolerant and dismissive of his opposition.”
“Based on his behavior as president, it is clear he truly believes his own hype, for we have discovered that instead of messianic, Obama is acutely, perhaps clinically, narcissistic…. Unless stopped, and reversed, the casualties of Obama’s systematic assault on this nation will be our prosperity, our security, and ultimately, our liberty.”(Red State.com)

On Fox Last Night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSBnzFtN6tk&feature=player_embedded
But don’t worry, he’s on vacation, AGAIN.
“It’s really inspiring, this vision they have for the future,” The president said at an event for Sen. Patty Murray. “Gives you a little pep in your step when you hear it.” referring to his new slogan for the GOP, “No We Can’t”.
Now that’s not petulant and childish now is it folks!


The net result of Obama’s failed policies is that consumers are reluctant to spend, entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest, and employers are reluctant to hire to the degree necessary to spur economic growth.–Doug Schoen, Democrat Strategist

But there’s always spin from the Ministry of Truth, In this case, CBS:
“President Obama’s approval ratings are certainly lower than they have been in the past, but it is worth noting they’re higher than President Clinton’s approval ratings were in 1994 at the same time and even higher than President Reagan’s approval ratings were in 1982 at this same time. I think the Reagan and Obama situation are sort of good comparisons because Reagan also had inherited a very difficult economy,” Jennifer Palmieri, of the liberal thinktank Center for American Progress, told the “Early Show.”
“The president’s had a lot of legislative victories but the White House understands very clearly that you don’t get points with the American people for legislative victories. They want to see results. The uncomfortable truth the white house is wrestling with [is] a lot of these policies they’ve enacted take time for people to see results in their everyday lives … that’s just going to take some time.” 

Be patient. He’s genius takes a long to appreciate, if you’re smart enough that is.
Reach for that Hope!
Anyone got Sisyphus on speed dial?

Trust in Me

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property. –Thomas Jefferson
Trust, but verify. –Ronald Reagan
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost. –Senator Barack Obama August 2006

25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17. (Rasmussen)
For the past year, those giving Congress good or excellent marks have remained in the narrow range of nine percent (9%) to 16%, while 53% to 71% have rated its performance as poor. (Rasmussen)
Guess when the 71% was. Health Care “deem and pass” cram down talk in February. Right before they did cram it down your throat!


30% of Likely Voters say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, August 8.
Confidence in the nation’s current course has ranged from 27% to 35% since last July.

Pew Research Center:

Distrust

Thomas Sowell–Democracy: It’s an awful thing in a country when its people no longer believe the government protects them and their rights. Yet, a new poll shows that’s exactly where Americans are headed right now.
In a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 adults taken last Friday and Saturday, nearly half, or 48%, said they see government today as a threat to their rights. Just 37% disagreed. The poll also found that only one in five (21%) believe current government has the consent of the governed.
In other words, people think much of what our government does today is illegitimate — possibly even illegal.
For a democratic republic such as our own, this is extraordinarily dangerous. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were created explicitly to protect Americans’ rights by limiting the scope, reach and power of the federal government.
The Declaration promises “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and goes on to say that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
In short, our government was designed to protect our rights — not to serve as an all-embracing nanny state that slowly, silently strips us of our ability to act as free individuals.
Bailouts, TARP, the takeover of the auto industry, nationalization of health care, the micromanagement of Wall Street and the banks, the expected $12 trillion explosion in U.S. publicly held debt over the next decade — all this and more adds up to a feeling of loss of control by the American people over their lives, both public and private, and a diminution of their rights.
The Founding Fathers understood this could happen. “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence,” George Washington presciently warned. “It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
His generation understood it would be up to us, the citizens, to ensure government wouldn’t trample our rights. That’s what the Constitution was — an agreement to limit government to certain, carefully prescribed duties. And that’s why we vote.
Today, Americans feel their rights are threatened by a government that has grown beyond its constitutional bounds. Once merely a dangerous servant, our federal government is on its way to becoming a fearful master. The only question is, will we let it?
How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?
Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.
Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by that Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitution Convention were creating, he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
In other words, a Constitutional government does not depend on the Constitution but on us. To the extent that we allow clever people to circumvent the Constitution, while dazzling us with rhetoric, the Constitution will become just a meaningless piece of paper, as our freedoms are stolen from us, much as a pick-pocket would steal our wallet while we are distracted by other things.
It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have their own agendas that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom.
Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias of “social justice.”
Those who construct moral melodramas– starring themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil– are ready to disregard the Constitution rights of those they demonize, and to overstep the limits put on the powers of the federal government set by the Constitution.
The outcries of protest in the media, in academia and in politics, when the Supreme Court ruled this year that people in corporations have the same free speech rights as other Americans, are a painful reminder of how vulnerable even the most basic rights are to the attacks of ideological zealots. President Barack Obama said that the Court’s decision “will open the floodgates for special interests”– as if all you have to do to take away people’s free speech rights is call them a special interest.
It is not just particular segments of the population who are under attack. What is more fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of “race, class and gender.” Television and the movies often do the same.
When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of “our society.” But American achievements get far less attention– and sometimes none at all.
Our “educators,” who cannot educate our children to the level of math or science achieved in most other comparable countries, have time to poison their minds against America.
Why? Partly, if not mostly, it is because that is the vogue. It shows you are “with it” when you reject your own country and exalt other countries.
Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country, because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.
Those with such hubris– in the media and in education, as well as in politics– have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today’s dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

“To those who claim omnipotence for the Legislature, and who in the plentitude of their assumed powers, are disposed to disregard the Constitution, law, good faith, moral right, and every thing else,” Lincoln declared in an early speech to the Illinois legislature, “I have nothing to say.”

In Lincoln, we have a glimpse of prudence in a liberal democracy; but it is also our best glimpse of it, and perhaps our best hope for understanding and recovering it, and our best hope for the possibility of statesmanship in an age of the partisan absolute, where ignorant armies clash by night. (Heritage.org)
Or on the Internet and the 24/7 News cycle…:)

Trust:
reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.confident expectation of something; hope.the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed: a position of trust.charge, custody, or care: to leave valuables in someone’s trust.something committed or entrusted to one’s care for use or safekeeping, as an office, duty, or the like; responsibility; charge.
The new “reach for hope” should be a renewal of trust. But Verify