Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
It is with great humility and with great pride that we tonight will make history for our country and progress for the American people. — Nancy Pelosi1
This president seems particularly fixated on doing something for the sake of historical magnanimity. His election was historical, healthcare reform is historical, cap and trade is historical, we’re at a cross roads in history, etc. The list is long and arduous–historical moments are what this government is all about.
And we may very well be approaching some of the most important events of our era, but our identification of them as such should seem dubious. Who are we to say what will be considered important details in one hundred years time. Certainly President Obama’s election would be one moment, but the passage of a flawed set of rules and regulations that do not approach the change they were believing in?
Perhaps. For good or ill, I don’t know.
I’m just a little unnerved by this unhealthy need to create these moments for the books; it is incredibly egotistical and narcissistic of the lot of them.
Should a man seek history’s pen or should history’s pen seek him? Depends on who is in charge when said pen strokes paper, though I suspect telling everyone you’re doing something historic does not equal historicity.
- Pelosi, Nancy. Making History, Making Progress, and Restoring the American Dream. The Gavel Blog. Accessed 4/15/2010. http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=2209
America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making
They address a bit of a straw man here when they criticize the right’s criticism of Obama’s machinations. With me at least, the problem isn’t that Obama is contributing to an ever larger deficit in a way that has been unseen before, it is the plan to start up brand new entitlement programs that will continue to force the government to run a deficit larger than we see now–unless they raise taxes significantly anyway.
I’m not a big fan of the government raising more capital than is necessary to fulfill constitutional obligations, and I would say we’ve gone far beyond our obligation to the federal government.
In spite of our machinations, we continue to lose money, jobs, and inflation is probably about to burst forth with a furry. We should not be shocked to learn then that we are bleeding jobs; we are shedding them in order to reach some new equilibrium while our economy attempts to recover. But, uh…the thing is, I thought the President, and Congress, had a plan for that? You know, the trillion dollar stimulus. Remember how that was supposed to save or create over 3 million jobs?
I’ll tell you, I’m still waiting. I feel as though the numbers used to sell this plan were fudged a bit. No, I don’t just feel it, I know it. Their plan was to print a bunch of money, create a ton of debt and feed it into the economy in order to give it a bit of a kick start, but their plan never really pumped money into anything. As passed, it was more of an entitlement package; and now, everything they do is an effort to get an agenda shoved through. Universal healthcare, take overs of industry and banking, etc. The left is pushing hard, and they claim that all of this is just about turning the economy around, not radically altering the face of our political system.
This video in particular is an apt criticism of the plan’s claims of employment figures if the stimulus passed versus not being passed.
04 Jun, 2009
Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
Obama Revisionism: Adams and Jefferson, Friends of Islam
The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
02 Jun, 2009
Obama’s rhetoric brims with inconsistencies. In the campaign, he claimed he would de-emphasize partisanship — and also enact a highly partisan agenda; both couldn’t be true. He got a pass. Now, he claims he will control health-care spending even though he proposes more government spending. He promotes “fiscal responsibility” when projections show huge and continuous budget deficits. Journalists seem to take his pronouncements at face value even when many are two-faced.
22 May, 2009
Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.
24 Feb, 2009
No one knows the economic effects of all this; estimates vary. But Obama’s political strategy stunts the impact from what it might have been. By using the stimulus for unrelated policy goals, spending will be delayed and diluted. There’s another downside: ‘Temporary’ spending increases for specific programs, as opposed to block grants, will be harder to undo, worsening the long-term budget outlook.
Here we go folks. It’s time for the great experiment in European style social welfare. The ideals of republicanism are long dead, ignored more and more by the major parties for the past 145 years.
What is republicanism? From wikipedia:
As John Adams put it, “They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men.”
As the federal government continues to gather power, it has begun to abuse the rule of law, the constitution, to interpret those laws in a way that justifies the power it has given to itself.
This is not the result of Obama’s election, this is the result of the Civil War and the government that it created. One of centralized power, power not expressly given to it in the constitution.
I will grant that unification of the States and abolition of slavery were important and necessary, but the idea of the sovereignty of the states and their preeminence in all matters of government died in that war simply because the federal government felt it had the authority to usurp power from the states; that is the philosophy that has dominated for the last 145 years and led us to European style social welfare.
Update:12/12/2008 To be honest with you, it looks as if the Obama administration is going to lean to the center for a while, certainly as long as the economy is weak. If he and his team have learned anything from the past, it’s that increasing taxes and spending in an economic downturn, even to create work programs, could inevitably lead to further destabilization and the extension of the problem. At any rate, his first term will be tough, but I’m curious to see how he handles it. Good luck Mr. President, all anybody can hope for is that our government doesn’t try to manage this recessionary period too much.
Update:5/20/2009 Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This guy is a socialist through and through. He’s sure good at pretending to be a centrist though.
This was not an entirely unexpected result. Mr. Obama was a highly touted media darling of a candidate, and extremely popular with the people—considered the vox populi by many.
I’m not as frightened by his election as some conservatives, and he may well not do any of the things most people fear, but it is what he represents that I find to be so dangerous about him. It is the Marxian principles that he touts so energetically; the socialist tendencies his administration, coupled with Democratic control of both houses of Congress, would bring to the table; and the seemingly willful way in which the media has ignored his associations, misspoken words, policy gaffes, and inexperience in an effort to see that he is elected, that bother me so much.
For me, the American ideal can be summarized as rugged individualism, laissez-faire economics, and little Federal involvement in my life. I believe strongly in paying few taxes to the Federal government, and more locally (i.e. the state or municipality one resides in). What should I pay taxes to the Federal government for? Simply put, defense and operating costs. That’s it.
Obama would raise taxes for the rich; while this might not affect me directly, it does not make this redistribution of wealth right. I’ve read, and I’ve heard, leaving my claims without a source for now, that an increase in taxes will often erode your tax base, leaving you with less money in the coffers than if you had left the rate where it was at. Obama ignores this fact.
Obama would increase the rate at which capital gains are taxed. This leaves less incentive for individuals to invest, and puts our already teetering economy in an even worse position. For the economy to grow, and for individuals to prosper from this growth, we need healthy investment. The economy is built on investment from the top, not the bottom’s spending power.
The Democratic party is entertaining a very nasty idea; some in the party have proposed a removal of tax incentives for 401(k) plans; 401(k) plans are one of the single most important retirement investment tools available to individuals and have been a major investment opportunity for the average person. You remove that and the market will drop to levels not seen in twenty years because of the mass exodus induced by this plan. What will they replace the 401(k) with? Social Security 2: it will be a required deduction of 5% from your check to be deposited into a government retirement account. Your money will be invested in government bonds with a meager return rate of 3%. Oh and they’ll even contribute $600 a year to your account. Plus, and here’s where the mass exodus from the market comes from, any 401(k) rolled into this government investment account will not be taxed.
Additionally, Democrats are itching to reduce that defense budget. By as much as 25%. While we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dumb move.
Look, Obama won’t be the end of the country, but the damage the Democratic party can do to my future makes me quite nervous. I’m not looking forward to the next two years, but we’ll see what happens.