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Obama's Attention Deficit Disorder
Townhall.com ^ | October 25, 2015 | Donald Lambro

Posted on 10/25/2013 10:59:50 AM PDT by Kaslin

The hallmark of Barack Obama's zig-zag presidency is that he never focuses on a problem for very long. He shifts from one to another in a desperate search for an issue that will save his legacy.

One moment he's threatening to bomb Syria's poison gas depots. The next, he's embracing a sneaky delaying strategy from the Kremlin, letting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad freely resume his brutal attacks on his own people.

Remember Syria? A mere two months after Assad gave the go-ahead to launch a grisly sarin gas attack on Syrian civilians, "the episode appears to have been forgotten" in the Oval Office, the Washington Post observed last week.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a deal to begin long term negotiations that would eliminate Assad's stocks of chemical weapons. Negotiations are to begin late next month in Geneva. But this deal -- which Putin and his pal Assad put together -- will take many months if not years to achieve -- as Assad proceeds with his deadly suppression of Syria's rebellion.

Assad has resumed bombing the civilian population in urban centers, and has been blocking food supplies in an attempt to starve his people in a brutal effort to put down Syria's rebel uprising once and for all.

The deal that was so eagerly embraced by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry is accomplishing just what Russia and Assad wanted: time to finish their evil deeds without a peep from Washington.

Of course nothing will come from the meeting in Geneva, which is likely to turn into a lengthy exercise in diplomatic mumbo-jumbo. Assad has made it clear he does not plan to leave office, and the U.S. has no serious proposals that could force him to step down.

"The West's problem is that the camp it supports in the negotiations is divided and has no control on the ground," Assad said in a recent interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar.

Meantime, the blood bath continues, a messy subject the president avoids talking about.

"Perhaps it's no surprise that it's Mr. Assad rather than Mr. Obama who wants to talk about this. For the United States, it's a bleak and shameful picture," the Post said in a lead editorial.

But for the Obama administration, that was yesterday's crisis, and they've moved on to other problems, like the approaching collapse of Obamacare.

First came the bungled rollout of the on-line, sign-up process that prevented untold thousands of people from completing the complicated and lengthy application forms.

Then came revelations that the sign-up system failed to pass test runs just days before its official launch. A mere 2,000 test users tried to finish the first step but the system crashed. Incredibly, the administration went ahead with its rollout anyway.

That has forced the White House to extend the deadline to purchase health insurance through online market places for another six weeks before the government penalty kicks in for those who do not obtain coverage.

(Note the Obama administration still refers to a punitive "penalty" for failing to buy insurance, and not to a "tax," the term that was at the core of the Supreme Court's finding that Obamacare passed Constitutional muster.)

"It is the latest sign that the health care law remains a moving target," the Post said Thursday.

More than that, it's a further example of a deeply flawed national healthcare law that critics have long said cannot work and should be repealed. It will lead to higher health care premiums in the insurance market, force businesses to drop their employee plans or lay off workers to cut their costs, and erode the kind of quality health care we have come to expect in our country.

While the White House was frantically attempting to tape together a plan that was rapidly coming unraveled, other issues were looming on the horizon that will define the Obama years.

There was the lackluster, part-time Obama economy where it has become harder than ever to find good paying, full-time jobs in our country. Businesses are not hiring the way they did in previous administrations.

Over the past five years, Obama has demonstrated that he does not understand what produces jobs and a healthy economy. He is still pushing the same old public spending, snake oil medicine for what ails the economy -- remedies that he was peddling back in 2009.

Last week, with his job approval polls sinking into the low 40s, he offered some suggestions about how to reshape the budget to "create jobs." Except, that it was the same old recipe he has offered again and again to a Congress that has ignored his recommendations, even among the Democrats who run the Senate.

He called for closing "corporate tax loopholes that don't help create jobs, and frees up resources for the things that do help us grow -- like education and infrastructure and research."

But enormous expenditures on roads, bridges and rail projects have had no permanent impact on our economy, and neither have growing education and R&D budgets which are very long-term investments anyway.

This economy needs a strong booster shot in capital investment and that can come from closing tax loopholes and using the savings to cut the tax rates for businesses and individuals. Democrats and Republicans are working on this idea right now, but Obama has been ignoring their plan that has always worked in the past.

There are similarly large economic and social disasters looming ahead for our country, but Obama is oblivious to them, too.

A new economic report out this week finds a majority of Americans who have 401(k)-type investment accounts are going deeper into debt faster than they're saving for their retirement.

Before the Obama years, 46 percent of such workers were piling up debt faster than they were building their savings. That figure has now risen to 64 percent.

The Gallup Poll reported Thursday that 43 percent of Americans surveyed said they were "struggling" in this economy.

When will Obama get around to that problem, or even acknowledge it exists?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
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1 posted on 10/25/2013 10:59:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

“Apres-moi, le deluge.” Obama, the Sun King.


2 posted on 10/25/2013 11:09:09 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: Kaslin

Ah , the shiny spoon thing


3 posted on 10/25/2013 11:15:13 AM PDT by molson209 (Hillary Clinton)
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To: Kaslin
He's f*cked up health care now he wants to move on to immigration. We need to say, “NO!!!”. Republicans need to forbid him from doing anything else! And if he goes off to play golf, they need to confront him on the golf course!
4 posted on 10/25/2013 11:21:22 AM PDT by ryan71 (The Partisans)
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To: Pearls Before Swine

Actually it was Louis XV (1715-1774) who supposedly said, “After me, the deluge.” The Sun King was Louis XIV (1643-1715). Louis XIV was hardworking, Louis XV was lazy...so Louis XV makes for a better comparison with Obama.


5 posted on 10/25/2013 11:23:41 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Kaslin

6 posted on 10/25/2013 11:29:20 AM PDT by BubbaBasher ("Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals" - Sam Adams)
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To: Verginius Rufus

My bad for not checking. Love the quote, though, and I think it captures some of O’s attitude.


7 posted on 10/25/2013 11:32:28 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: Kaslin

Obama creates one disaster after another and then purposefully moves on. No problem is ever fully addressed.


8 posted on 10/25/2013 11:48:35 AM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: laplata

It’s a saturation psyops technique IMO. Overload the MSM and thus the people with crises and issues so no one can focus on any one thing long enough to hold him accountable or catch what he is doing with EOs.


9 posted on 10/25/2013 12:12:28 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: Kaslin

What a vicious insult to ADD.


10 posted on 10/25/2013 12:21:28 PM PDT by WayneS (Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos...)
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To: Kaslin
There is no problem so great that it cannot be made worse by having it attract Barack Obama’s attention.
11 posted on 10/25/2013 12:23:29 PM PDT by WayneS (Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos...)
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To: TigersEye

Cloward-Piven: Chaos.


12 posted on 10/25/2013 12:42:52 PM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: TigersEye

Right in the middle of the start of the Obamacare fiasco start, he starts focusing on Immigration.


13 posted on 10/25/2013 12:44:48 PM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: laplata; TigersEye

The following link is to an old FR thread, about an even older conservative booklet called “The Revolution Was”, written in 1938 about FDR and the New Deal. It is ALL happening again - amazingly, chillingly so.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts

An Excerpt:

Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.

But it could not be so embarrassed and all that line was wasted, because, in the first place, it never intended to make that kind of sense, and secondly, it took off from nothing that was implicit in the American scheme. It took off from a revolutionary base.

The design was European. Regarded from the point of view of revolutionary technic it made perfect sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake......

Having passed this crisis, the New Deal went on from one problem to another, taking them in the proper order, according to revolutionary technic; and if the handling of one was inconsistent with the handling of another, even to the point of nullity, that was blunder in reverse.

The effect was to keep people excited about one thing at a time, and divided, while steadily through all the uproar of outrage and confusion a certain end, held constantly in view, was pursued by main intention.

The end held constantly in view was power.


14 posted on 10/25/2013 12:52:52 PM PDT by 21twelve ("We've got the guns, and we got the numbers" adapted and revised from Jim M.)
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To: laplata
Cloward-Piven: Chaos.

Yes, that is just what it is. I have a feeling that that is a two edged sword though. 0bamaCare is going to stink so much so fast it may just be lib/Progressive policy that gets rejected in a wholesale fashion.

Progressivism has advanced as far as it has incrementally. The frog in the pot method. Clinton understood that and backed off when he saw that the American people were going to choke on it if he pushed any harder. Hill and Bill both understand that.

But 0bieWon thinks he's so smart that he can just shove it all through in one big push and it will be too late. I think he actually believes America will love the new socialist/commie state. I think he's wrong.

15 posted on 10/25/2013 1:00:41 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: 21twelve

I have seen that before. Thanks for injecting it here again as it is very appropriate. Hopefully the connectivity of this era will be the undoing of that revolution.


16 posted on 10/25/2013 1:04:32 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: TigersEye

Good, accurate points you make.

Obastard is a dedicated Marxist/Fascist/Progressive and whatever other ugly things that apply to him and he’s going to end up choking on his own bile.

He’ll not back off like Clinton. Even in the middle of the beginning of the Obamacare fiasco, he starts to focus on Immigration.

Obama has many things in common with any and all tyrants throughout world history.

He’s as dangerous and evil as they come. He’s one sick, evil bastard.


17 posted on 10/25/2013 1:17:47 PM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: TigersEye

>>>But 0bieWon thinks he’s so smart that he can just shove it all through in one big push and it will be too late. I think he actually believes America will love the new socialist/commie state. I think he’s wrong.<<<

I like your attitude but disagree with your premise.

The left doesn’t care if it is liked or hated. What it wants is power to accomplish its goals. I agree that Obama thinks that one big push will lead us to a place where it is too late; unfortunately, when it is too late would mean that the pogroms, or camps, or whatever we’ll call the American model of the gulag will become available to quash dissent and kill the opposition. They don’t care if they have the approval of the population. It is irrelevant in their way of thinking.


18 posted on 10/25/2013 1:24:51 PM PDT by redpoll
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To: laplata

I think the Clintons are just as dedicated to Progressivism and just as evil as 0bama but they have one thing going for them that he doesn’t. They know America. Thanks to 0bama’s foreign upbringing and his narcissistic pig headedness Hillary may not be able to go back to the incremental strategy. 0bamaCare is going to expose the Marxist model for the supreme failure that it is.


19 posted on 10/25/2013 1:25:01 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: redpoll

Bring it! 110 million Americans don’t own 350 million arms for nothing.


20 posted on 10/25/2013 1:26:16 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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