Posted on 02/12/2010 9:43:52 AM PST by reaganaut1
There is, I think, an amazing political fact right now that is hiding in plain sight and is rich with implications. It was there in President Obama's Jan. 25, pre-State of the Union interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, who was pressing him about his political predicaments. "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," he said. "And I—and I believe that."
Now this is the sort of thing presidents say, and often believe they believe, but at the end of the day they all want two terms. Except that Mr. Obama shows every sign of meaning it, and if he does, it explains a lot about his recent decisions and actions.
A week after the Sawyer interview, the president had a stunning and revealing exchange with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat likely to lose her 2010 re-election campaign. He was meeting with Senate Democrats to urge them to continue with his legislative agenda. Mrs. Lincoln took the opportunity to beseech him to change it. She urged him to distance his administration from "people who want extremes," and to find "common ground" with Republicans in producing legislation that would give those in business the "certainty" they need to create jobs.
While answering, Mr. Obama raised his voice slightly and quickened his cadence. "If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression . . . the result is going to be the same. I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us in this fix in the first place."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Arguably the government should get out of the home mortgage business altogether, including guarantees of "prime" mortgages.
The ONLY way Obummer will get a second term is if some sort of war is declared and he stays in under martial law. He KNOWS he can’t have a second term because some states are already getting paperwork in place declaring any candidates for President MUST show their birth certificate to prove their eligibility before their state will certify they can run. He’s trying to do as much damage as he can before he either gets thrown out, or voted out. And I agree, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be stopped now.
I used to read P Noonan regularly, but she lost me in ‘08 with her “Obama good, Palin bad” columns
I’am sick and tired of the intellectuals constantly insulting my intelligence, and that of the American people. Enough already. They seem to think that they can sway the masses, with flowery speech and adoration. Maybe they should take a cue from William of Ockham. Even those of us who fail to travel the halls of the Ivy league, can grasp simple truths. Simple difference between us and them; WE DO.
I frankly never liked Peggy Noonan’s writing. Her style is way too flowery for me and I can’t stand a news writer or political commentator who makes himself part of the story. Noonan’s opinions are always so self-centered that she makes herself irrelevant.
I still think her problems with W goes back to him not making her his chief speech writer....catty maybe, but that’s what I think!
As much as I disdain Noonan’s crappy writing, her performance on the tube is worse. She appears to be the crazy old spinster drunk with 20 cats and an apartment full of catshitte.
I think we have a mediocre one term President.
Foreigners never do.
IF ACORN manages to steal the 2012 election for 0bama, we may not have a United States of America by 2016.
You nailed it! This entire mess goes back to Frannie and Freddie and Congress, as well as Clinton and W. I'm a recently retired banker - viewed all of this from the inside - in fact, sold a house in AZ to a guy that financed the entire purchase of $900,000 and lost the house just two years later - it sold again recently for $550,000. The entire mortgage food chain signed up when the feds lowered the lending standards - tons of money made - land values skyrocketed, housing lots went through the roof as well as the price on finished houses. Practically all of the financing went through Fannie and Freddie - in the old days, that would not have happened due to tight lending standards.
I saw this whole thing coming and got out of the stock market and home ownership around 5 years ago. My savings has generated practically nothing, but I still have every dollar.
It's as if someone yelled 'fire' in the mortgage industry from somewhere in DC - but in this case it involved a 'fire sale' of financing - no down, no cost, payments anticipated but not expected.
I bought my first house with a V.A. backed loan.
Lord Palmerston, the 19th-century British statesman, supposedly said: "When I wish to be misinformed about a country, I ask the man who has lived there thirty years."
Obama has lived in the US for about 30 years, perhaps a bit more.
He just wants one term, but he wants it as "President for Life."
There was an interesting article on the WSJ that laid the blame for the Fannie and Freddie debacle at the feet of Mario Cuomo as head of HUD. They said that he wrote the directives that increased the no downpayment loans and later the liar loans.
Sounds right.
The interesting thing is that capitalist and capitalism requires a government that doesn’t provide cheap money with no strings attached - once the standards were lowered by the feds, capitalist do what they do - generate trillions of dollars in new loans under those guidelines, nothing else would be expected of capitalist. Once generated and sold to the fed entities those entities packaged trillions of loans into derivatives (mortgage-backed securities) all with A1 ratings (based on fed guarantee) but the chickens finally came home to roast in the last few years.
It all started with people like Cuomo and Frank - primarily all democrats, except some Republicans (including W) that wanted practically everyone to own a house. Obama is once again clueless - it wasn’t private industry that created this mess, it was the Federal Government’s fire sale on house financing for all. Yes, banks got caught up in the frenzy, but the public was victimized by FANNIE and FREDDIE - by the Federal Government’s stupid (free) money program.
The irony is that it’s all being covered up by politicians - the responsible class. It’s not what capitalism or capitalists did to America and Americans, it’s what socialist and socialist programs did to America and Americans.
Someone should pay a price.
His past, his allegiances and his citizenship are, to say the least, murky and more than a little questionable.
Even if he was borm in Hawaii, which I seriously doubt, culturally, he is a foreigner, having been raised in Indonesia as a muslim, not to mention his marxist, communist indoctrination during his formative years.
I too believe that he plans to be "President for LIfe", which could very well explain why he is unconcerned about re-election - he doesn't plan to allow elections to be held.
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