Posted on 12/14/2011 8:50:02 PM PST by Sick of Lefties
It isn't often that Noman agrees with President Obama. So, he wants to acknowledge when their assessments coincide. One such moment occurred at the end of a recent interview with 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft.
[quote] As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. [end quote]
Noman couldn't agree more. In terms of the legislative blitzkrieg and regulatory carpet bombing unleashed on the crisis-panicked public, his early Administration is one of the most accomplished, most opportunistic, ever. Nobody in American history has ever so completely disregarded the expressed concerns of large majorities in order to ramrod an unpopular agenda unilaterally down the nation's throat.
Hats off to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the mainstream media for a big assist.
From the stimulus to ObamaCare to Dodd-Frank to the regulatory imposition of cap-and-trade elements to the end of don't-ask-don't-tell, his first two years were an orgy of progressive willfulness. This is the way that a like-minded blog sees it.
The President certainly is one cocky son-of-a-gun. But, in this instance, he is merely stating facts. That, however, does not exonerate him from charges that he is both arrogant and ignorant--even if intelligent, which has more to do with the possession of grey matter (which he evidently does) than with its application (the issue with ignorance).
His arrogance is evidenced by his lack of reflection, self-doubt or misgivings about the unilateral use of power. His ignorance is demonstrated by the substance of the hackneyed agenda he imposed on a catatonic public and supine opposition.
Economic stagnation, a frightful debt crisis, a ratings downgrade, an Arab winter, evaporated opportunity, national decline, class warfare and extreme polarization are the result of his feckless leadership.
To Noman's mind, President Obama deserves credit for being one of the nation's greatest tyrants, and demagogues, ever. If he is removed from office, public recognition that the description suits him, and not the fact that he is half black, will be the reason.
With respect to the rest of the interview, Noman was struck by how many times the President responded to Kroft's interogatories with prefaces like "As you said yourself, Steve..." It makes Noman wonder why the President was needed at all, since the interviewer was so successfully carrying water for him without any help.
Having given credit where credit is due, Noman feels obliged to contradict President Obama on a couple of points. He'll stick with the last question and answer.
[quote] KROFT: Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments? If this is your last speech. What have you accomplished?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we're not done yet. I've got five more years of stuff to do. But not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we're gonna start lowering health care costs and you're never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we've got millions of kids out here who are able to go to college because we've expanded student loans and made college more affordable. Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America's respect around the world.
The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments... But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it. [end quote]
Noman is impressed with the President's ability to pack so much wind into so few words. One sniggers to compare Croft's deference to Obama's bloviating to the likely response had George Bush wind-bagged thus. Regardless of media complicity in the fraud, Noman begs to differ.
First of all, President Obama does not have "five more years of stuff to do." He has the eternal pinings in Statist bosoms to impose on the American people in his remaining year in office. It will be difficult this time around because the people are watching, know how contemptuous he is of opposing opinions, are weary of his incessant droning about an ill-defined fairness, and are hip to his media enablers. Moreover, the opposition mercifully controls the House. His regulatory incrustations will thus be easier to scrape away than his legislative impositions.
Critically, he sees things in terms of himself, self-referentially. He seems blind to his responsibilities to the actual nation he governs. Rather, he governs the nation in terms of his mentors' imaginations: as an ideal Rousseauian collectivity that needs to be forced to be free.
In the final analysis, Americans are not a sheepish people despite their addictions to comfort and entertainment that propagandizes. And, this will cost him.
He did not save the country from a great depression--something he has been credited for doing in even occasionally hard-headed business publications like the Financial Times. His Statist overreach and antipathy to individual initiative, small business and relatively free enterprise have prolonged the worst effects of the great recession--e.g., moribund real estate prices, tepid economic performance, high unemployment, debilitated financial institutions (despite easy-money interest rate plays)--and threaten the world's recovery.
He did not save the auto industry. He saved the unions of two of the big three domestic auto makers. By doing so, he prevented the industry from working out the problems that vex it in comparison to foreign producers, even those on American soil. He shafted lenders, rewrote the rules of bankruptcy, and imposed his untutored vision of what the industry should be producing on GM and Chrysler in order to perpetuate union prerogatives and favor environmentalist zealots. In short, he hooked the United Auto Workers--a Democratic Party stalwart--onto a new host, the American taxpayer, after it drained its original hosts of life.
Health care costs are heading higher, not lower. It is service that is headed lower. Noman is uncertain as to the wisdom of replacing personal bankruptcy as a consequence of illness with having the plug pulled on life, which is what ObamaCare's myriad panels, commissions and committees will do whether called "death panels" or not. Somewhere, Jack Kevorkian is smiling.
The taxpayer will be forced to bailout financial institutions again, and nothing in Dodd-Frank prohibits it. Taxpayers are already being forced to bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a quarterly basis, neither of which were the subject of financial legislation though both Democratic Party strongholds were primary causes of the financial crisis. The CFPB will provide tens-of-thousands of high-paying government jobs to aspiring bureaucrats, but will not make the system more "stable and secure." Quite the contrary, as banking stocks have been forecasting for months.
We have not made college more affordable. By subsidizing the never-ending demands of educrats and educators for more money, it has been made more expensive. The higher cost is simply being transferred into the future via debt, or onto third parties via loan "forgiveness." Forgiveness, ha.
He has ended don't-ask-don't-tell for homosexuals, not for religious observers or secular thinkers who consider homosexuality to be unnatural as well as abnormal. Those who do not agree with the homosexual lobby will now have impediments thrown in the way of their dying for their country. The burden of living in a closet has merely been shifted from homosexuals onto a much larger class of people who can more rightly claim the mantle of reason than a minority that defines itself by sexual predilection--a highly unreasonable impulse.
Al Qaeda decimated? Please, don't make me laugh.
Bin Laden taken off the field? With whose intelligence, gathered where?
Restoring America's respect around the world. Yes, Noman has noticed how all belligerence against us has magically ceased, how the world looks to us with hopeful eyes, how European and world leaders seek our counsel and opinions.
The President must mean that respect for America has been restored by the mainstream medias' ceasing to act as a hate-mongering cheerleader against its President and policies. If he does, then Noman has found another point on which he can agree with the President.
Noman finds the President's bravado disingenuous, his reading of accomplishments fanciful, and his "keeping at it" menacing. And, that is not because Noman is one of the "Haves," like President Obama and his cronies are. May the nation survive him, justice be done, and ruin befall this most calamitous of Administrations in the end.
Down with the illegitimate Halfrican Kenyan Muslim usurper.
“We’re gonna’’ When you have a president of The United States who say’s ‘’we’re gonna’’, folks we’re in trouble.
[quote] As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. [end quote]
Thanks Sick of Lefties.
Well said, OldSarge.
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