With Friends Like These. . .

Sometimes, your friends do more harm to you than your enemies. That’s been the case for Obama lately, and I’m not just talking about Biden shoving Obama into the gay marriage debacle. The truth is that Obama’s friends are causing him all kinds of problems.

● Obama Hates the Middle Class: Last week, the Republicans introduced Obama’s budget in the Senate. It lost without a single vote (0-99). More interestingly, it got blasted by the United Auto Workers as an “attack on the middle class and our most vulnerable citizens.” That makes this a double embarrassment for Obama. It also drives a stake through Obama’s middle class champion act.

● Obama Hates Capitalism: Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a prominent Democrat and Obama supporter, blasted Obama’s main attack on Romney this weekend when he went on Meet the Press. Obama is hoping that people will hate Romney because he founded Bain Capital. To do that, he’s been demonizing Bain. In fact, he just released a new ad doing exactly that. Said Booker:

“If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with. This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop, because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on.”

Booker has since walked these comments back, but the damage was done and it presented Obama with another headache and another distraction. Indeed, he’s spent the week attacking Booker and trying to explain why his anti-Bain attacks are justified.

● Not As Brave As Jimmy Carter: For weeks, Obama has been pushing the idea that he’s some tough guy hero, unlike Mitt Romney, because he ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. Romney rightly blasted Obama for politicizing military action in an effort to make himself look good. Well, The Economist decided to come to Obama’s defense because they now say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a President trying to impress us with their military achievement (they said the opposite when Bush was President). Clearly Americans disagree as recent polls show upwards of 65% of people thinking that Obama was wrongly trying to politicize this military action.

In any event, here’s the great part. In defending Obama, they were particularly upset that Romney compared Obama to Carter when he said, “even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” They are upset because they view this as unfair, because while the raid Carter authorized was a failure, it was not cowardly. In fact, they note it took more courage for Carter to order that raid than it took for Obama to order the killing of Osama bin Laden. Yep, they said that. To defend Obama, they took his sole positive achievement in office and told us it was less brave than what Jimmy Carter did. That is truly sad.

● Stop Condescending, Mr. Obama: We’ve discussed the supposed war on women extensively. And just when you think it’s finally dead and buried, along comes MSM personality Campbell Brown to lecture Obama about his behavior. Indeed, she just wrote an editorial in the New York Times in which she took Obama to task for his efforts to “relate to women” by saying that his campaign has been “maddeningly off point.” She says he has “failed to connect with tens of millions of Americans, many of them women, who feel economic opportunity is gone and are losing hope.” Then she says,

“In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. . . Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills.”

Julia anyone? So much for pushing the war on women.

● Give An Inch: When Obama decided to endorse (and not do anything about) gay marriage, he assumed this would shore up his gay supporters. Actually, it just increased their list of demands. Gay groups are now running around demanding that Obama come through on other promises. Indeed, they’ve got a list of 52 demands, including repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, extending Social Security benefits to gay partners, changing immigration rules to prevent the deportation of same-sex partners, adding gays to the Violence Against Women Act, preventing workplace discrimination, etc. Rather than making them happy, he has just stirred the nest.

● Show Me The Money: Romney’s super PAC not only blew Obama away in terms of raising cash in April, but they had a lot more cash on hand to begin with, even despite having to fight a long and nasty primary. The MSM once claimed Obama would get a billion dollars and now they are fretting that he can’t even keep up with Mitt Romney. Moreover, Tea Party groups have many-times more money on hand than both. So much for all of Obama’s rich friends.

All in all, Obama’s bad year continues. His campaign can’t get traction and he’s found no way to attack Romney. The things he’s tried, like the war on women and the attacks on Bain Capital, have all blown up on him and now even his allies are criticizing him. His donors aren’t giving him any money, his supporters are getting pushy, and even his defenders can’t defend him without making him look like a fool. Ha ha.


Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site!
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More Trouble For Obama

Every week seems to bring more problems for Obama. Perhaps he should quit while he’s behind? Let’s add some more chapters to Obama’s tale of woe.

● Tally Me Banana: The most reliable predictor of a president’s chance of getting re-elected is real take- home pay, i.e. how much Americans earn after taxes and inflation. This is the statistic behind Reagan’s famous question: “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” According to a Vanderbilt University study based on elections between 1948 and 2000, a president needs at least 1% growth in the election year to be favored for re-election. So far this year, take-home pay has actually fallen -0.2% in January and -0.1% in February. Based on these numbers, Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels says Obama is likely to get 45% of the vote. . . which just happens to coincide with Obama’s approval rating.

● Running On Empty: Under Jimmy “Malaise” Carter, the price of gas increased 103.77%. People went insane and Carter was tossed out on his rear. How does Obama compare? Gas prices have risen 103.79%. . . slightly worse than under Carter.

And here’s an interesting aside. It turns out that 65% of hybrid owner go back to regular cars with their next car. So if hybrids can’t sustain their popularity with the people most likely to buy one, then it’s hard to see how Obama’s anti-gas push won’t hurt him.

● Burning Down The House: After never actually recovering, the housing market has started slipping again. The left is stumped. They really thought that this time would be different from each of the prior “recoveries” in the housing market. This is a killer for Obama because most Americans use their homes as their retirement savings.

● Get A Job: Yeah, that whole jobs recovery thing didn’t happen either. After a brief uptick, things are looking bleak again. The economy added only 120,000 jobs in March even though it needs 360,000 just to stay level with population growth. Right now the real unemployment rate is estimated to be 18% (almost one in five).

● Party All the Time: As America enters its fifth year of belt-tightening, GSA (the General Services Administration) is showing the public that government employees continue to live high on the hog. In the past couple weeks, we’ve seen a lavish $822,751 GSA party in Vegas disguised as a “regional training event” (complete with taxpayer-funded clown and mind reader), and videos of GSA employees playing around instead of working. What’s worse, however, has been the response. Team Obama tried to blame Bush for this, which went down about as well as blaming original sin. Moreover, government apologists whine that these are “first-class public servants and patriotic Americans” and it’s unfair to criticize them! Talk about being out of touch!

Now we’ve learned that the government is handing out “incentives” like ipads and laptops to these hard(ly) working (un)patriotic Americans. Again, this is supposedly Bush’s fault.

● Taxman: The latest Obama attack on Romney is that he only wants to be president so he can cut his own taxes. If that’s the best Team Obama has, they should start moving now.

● History Repeating?: Interestingly, Obama said yesterday that this election provides the clearest contrast since the 1964 election between Barry Goldwater and LBJ. Hmm. Carter-Reagan beg to differ, but let’s consider the parallels:

In 1964, LBJ tried to destroy the United States by imposing the Ingrate Society. Obama tried to do the same with his Crony Society and ObamaCare. In 1964, Johnson set us up to lose the Vietnam War. Obama is doing the same throughout the Middle East. In 1964, race was a flashpoint throughout the country. Now, Obama/Holder are trying to generate a race riot. In 1964, LBJ used one of the most despicable ads of all time -- the daisy ad, which suggested Goldwater wanted to start a nuclear war. Now, the Democrats and Obama are whining about a Republican war on old people and women and blacks. LBJ was a corrupt bastard. Well, shuck my grits, so is Obama! In 1964, the federal government tried to stop illegal voting practices which kept blacks form voting. Now, Obama is letting the Black Panthers intimidate voters and is whining about voter-ID laws being a return to Jim Crow.

In any event, there is method in this racist’s madness. Obama is invoking 1964 and not FDR because 1964 has been associated with the Voting Rights Act. Basically, this is an attempt to fire up his black base without alerting whites to what he is doing. And speaking of his black base. . .

● Black or White?: Although the MSM has been quick to hide Obama’s name now in connection with the Trayvon Martin scandal, it seems to be coming up a lot. And where it comes up the most is in questions about why Obama doesn’t seem to care about white people? After commenting about Trayvon, he failed to condemn the Black Panther bounty on Zimmerman. Then he failed to address several other black-on-white hate crimes. Now he’s ignored the beating of a 27-year-old white man in Gainesville by a group of 5-8 blacks who jumped the man and shouted “Trayvon” before the attack began. Even the Gainesville P.D. has declared the crime “racially motivated.” Yet, Obama has not called for calm or demanded that people not seek racist revenge for Trayvon. . . as he did when Islamic terrorist Hassan shot several American soldiers. In fact, the only time crimes, wars, terrorist acts or natural disasters seem to move him are when blacks are the victims. Hmm.

I think the left is realizing this is a problem because the MSM has all but cut off Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, they’ve downplayed all other race-crimes, and they are trying to redefine the Trayvon shooting as something other than racially motivated. The new arguments are that it was the result of gun ownership or “vigilante culture” in movies. Of course, here are two facts to blow holes in that garbage: (1) there are 250,000,000 handguns in the US, but only 12,000 shootings a year, thus guns are not a motivator of any sort. (2) Almost every American has seen the films The Washington Post blamed for causing this “vigilante culture,” and yet Zimmerman was the only one to “get it” and become a vigilante? Thinking never was a liberal strong suit.

So there you have it, more woe for Team Obama. He is a sad clown now.

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Is America Ungovernable?

Did you ever meet one of those people who decides that something must be impossible because they weren’t able to do it? That’s a defense mechanism that keeps them from having to acknowledge a defect within themselves. Liberals are big on defense mechanisms, and this is one of their favorites. Indeed, every time one of their Presidents fails at something, they rush to warn us that this something is simply impossible. And when their Presidents fail utterly, we are treated to a whole slew of articles lamenting the fact that America is ungovernable.

Let me take you back to Jimmy Carter. When Carter was elected, liberals were elated. Things had not been going well for the country. Liberal John Kennedy botched foreign policy before he was killed. Liberal Lyndon Johnson botched the war in Vietnam, and his Great Society was worsening racial tensions and exploding poverty. Then, in collaboration with Satan, aka Nixon, the liberal Democrats in Congress passed a Soviet-style regulatory scheme to protect us from everything, and strangely the economy began to collapse.

But here was Carter. If anyone could fix our broken country, it was Carter. Why? Because Carter was a liberal-certified genius. Indeed, they called him the smartest man ever elected President. They pointed out that Carter was a former naval officer and a nuclear engineer (though Carter’s school records do not reflect this). They pointed to his supposedly incredible attention to detail, his legendary honesty (since dispelled by Bob Woodward), and his successful career as a Georgia State Senator and Governor of Georgia. Here was a man who was so smart that he could not possibly fail.

Yet fail he did. . . spectacularly.

He let the Soviets invade Afghanistan (a failure for which we are still paying today). He let inflation skyrocket and economic output collapse -- leading to a new term “stagflation.” Unemployment soared. The debt soared. He let the Arabs exploit American dependence on oil to dictate American policy. He let the military wither and the dollar collapse. And he went through an embarrassing hostage crisis.

Clearly the man was not up to the task of being President, right? No, not according to liberals. Instead, they “reasoned” that if the smartest man alive could not run the country, then the country must be ungovernable. Seriously. There was open talk in liberal ranks that “the Presidency is too big of a job for one man.” There was talk that “the economy had changed” and that 10%+ unemployment was the new natural state of our economy. And they talked about America needing to learn “to accept a diminished role in the world” because our superpower days were over.

It never dawned on them that the man they tagged as ultra-smart was simply not a good leader. It never occurred to them that he was weak, afraid, and that his economic policies (policies they believed in) were at fault for the nation’s problems. No, they chose instead to believe that these problems simply had no solution rather than accept the fact that the solutions they offered were wrong. Indeed, Reagan’s success in turning around each of these areas came as a great shock to them. In fact, they spent most of his first term waiting for their perceived reality to set in and the country to return to the “normal” state that Carter encountered.

Now fast forward to the present. George Bush and his liberal friends in Congress passed laws that caused bubbles to form and burst, blowing a huge hole in the economy. Our military was bogged down in failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. American influence the world over was waning. Oil prices were soaring again.

Enter Barack Obama. Liberals described him as the smartest man to ever be elected President, despite the total lack of any proof (and in spite of significant contrary evidence). They pointed to his ghostwritten books, his time teaching, his Harvard education, and his “successful” career as a United States Senator. Here was a man who was so smart that he could not possibly fail.

Yet failing he is. . . spectacularly.

Afghanistan is a morass. He let unemployment reach and exceed Carter-like levels, and he has no idea how to turn this around. The economy is failing. He’s driven the deficit/debt to unprecedented levels, so high that he’s risking bankruptcy. He’s let China exploit his party’s dependence on deficit spending to dictate American policy. Iran is getting closer to building an atomic bomb. And so on.

So what are liberals saying now? Are they admitting that their ideas didn’t work? No. It’s 1979 all over again. We’re hearing that 9% unemployment may be “the new normal,” and that Americans need to accept that the days of a strong economy are gone forever. We’re hearing that America must accept that “there are limits on American power,” and we can no longer play the role of superpower. And we’re hearing that the country may be “ungovernable.”

The ungovernable charge comes from the fact that Obama had supermajorities in both House of Congress, devoted zombies ready to do his bidding throughout the country, and a level of genius never before seen when he entered the White House. Yet, he failed repeatedly. He was never able to get his policies in place as he wanted them, and more significantly, his policies didn’t seem to help. Since liberals cannot accept that their policies run counter to human experience and human nature, and they cannot (yet) accept that Obama isn’t the expert to end all experts, the only conclusion they are left with is that there must be some change in the country that has permanently driven up unemployment, permanently depressed economic activity, and permanently weakened our power and influence.

In other words, it’s not Obama who failed, it is simply impossible for this country to succeed. . . just as it was impossible for America to ever succeed again circa 1979.

So watch for more and more of these articles, until they enter the next phase of their grieving -- anger directed at the false messiah. ETA November.

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Democratic Administrations Seem Less Stressful

Ever notice that life is less stressful when the Democrats hold the White House? Actually, I’m serious. I’ve lived through several now and I can honestly say that the country seems much more at ease when the Democrats are in charge. Bear with me as I try to figure this out (or bare with me if you prefer).

Honest Jimmy Carter

My first real experience with a Democratic President was Honest Jimmy Carter. Good times, let me tell you.

Sure, we had 7.6% unemployment, 13.5% inflation, falling incomes, gas lines, labor strikes and the such, but that’s part of life. Anyone who says differently is just expecting too much. . . or so the media constantly assured us. Besides, Jimmy was such an honest man that you couldn't fault him. At least, that was the standard media motif.

With nothing to worry about, there were no nasty movies about Carter either. In fact, if I remember correctly, Hollywood was largely apolitical at the time, except for the occasional movie attacking Nixon. Oh, and the music. . . the apolitical music?! Great stuff!

The Evil Ronald Reagan

Then came Reagan. Man, the Reagan years were tense. The economy was crap. Sure, he got unemployment down to 5.2% and inflation down to 1.9%, but those weren’t real jobs. The real jobs were vanishing at an alarming rate, leaving us to sell hamburgers to each other. . . and our Japanese masters.

What caused all of our jobs to vanish? Greedy corporate types, all personal friends of Reagan, would forcibly buy our prosperous companies and part them out just to make a quick buck. I remember seeing a film about this. In fact, I recall a bunch of films attacking this horrible thing called mergers and acquisitions, and vulture..., er, venture capital.

And don’t forget what Reagan did to us with his debts! He sold our futures! Deficits of around 3% of GNP?! What was he thinking? (For cynics who note that Obama’s deficit is 12.6% of GNP, all I can say is that it was a different time and 3% meant more than it does today.)

Fortunately, there was strong oversight. The media kept on him day. . . after day. . . after day! He may have been made of Teflon, but that wasn't going to stop them. And who can forget all those Congressional hearings to investigate every single thing Reagan or anyone in his administration did (or didn’t) do! Even Hollywood and the music industry strove to point out how horrible Reaganomics was over and over again.

Oh (almost forgot), Reagan was dangerous too. He dreamed of getting us killed. He wanted to start a nuclear war! At least, that’s what a dozen movies (like Dreamscape) told us. . . and the protesters chanted. . . and a few Congressional Democrats proclaimed. . . and a bunch of singers sang about. It is any wonder things were so damn tense!

Heartless George Bush

Then we got Bush. He wasn’t Reagan, but he wasn’t much better. Bush brought us the wars that Reagan always wanted. He attacked Iraq to get its oil. In fact, I remember protestors screaming this daily, and of course Hollywood and the music industry backed this up in their films and music. The media did a great job of investigating this too. . . constantly. As I recall, they really dug into the idea that he sold Iraq the very weapons they would use to kill so many American soldiers and he encouraged Iraq to attack Kuwait, a ruthless dictatorship of the kind that Bush favors, just to cause the war. True evil there.

Man, wasn’t it funny when he threw up in Japan? How many times did I see that on television!

Bush also gave us junk bonds, increasing the pace of jobs disappearing, and the S&L crisis -- caused by his nephew Neil Bush! He brought us the age of the never-ending Independent Counsel. And he created homelessness to kill poor people. Robert Redford told us so himself (Sneakers anyone?). I’m pretty sure the media backed Redford up on that. I don’t recall exactly, because there were so many stories about the 200 million homeless that it got a little confusing, but I think they did confirm it.

Very tense times.

Good-Natured Rogue Bill Clinton

Bush gave way to Clinton and things changed. Sure, Clinton loved women, but man was he a good guy. He was the Great Communicator II, the greatest politician of our time!

Let’s see, great economy, budget surpluses, nothing happened overseas. He ended homelessness. Sure, there were more mergers during the Clinton years than the Reagan/Bush years, but those were good mergers. They made America efficient.

Unlike Bush, Clinton never sold any influence. At least, I don’t recall hearing about that in the media.

Strangely, the number of films about presidents dropped off to almost nothing during his term. In fact, Hollywood largely went apolitical again, hmm. But that’s not to say they were playing favorites just because they were all FOBs. . . we got their word on that. Plus, don’t forget, they did do that one film about Clinton being a good-natured rogue who loves McDonalds. I remember a good deal of consternation in the media over that.

I don’t recall any protest music. But then what would you protest? He only used the military where it was absolutely necessary -- when the safety of the United States was at issue. . . like in Yugoslavia, and Somalia, and Haiti. And unlike Bush, whose failures led to a second Gulf war, Clinton solved the Somalia and Haiti problems completely -- or if he didn't, we never heard about it. He would have solved that Al Qaeda problem too, if the Republicans had let him. And you can't really blame him for Rwanda, no one knew what to do about that.

All in all, it was a very tension free time.

Bushitler

But all that changed when Bushitler stole the election and imposed himself upon us. I don’t even know where to begin with Bushitler.

Look at the problems he didn't solve in Rwanda, Somalia, and the genocide in Darfur!

And I’m not saying he caused 9/11, but I read that he knew about it and he didn’t call the airport to stop those guys because he wanted to create an incident to let Dick Cheney’s firm take Iraq’s oil. I don’t have any facts to back that up, and neither does the media, but I seem to recall reading that daily in real newspapers. I guess, sometimes the truth transcends the facts.

Seriously, was there anything he did right in Iraq or Afghanistan? Not according to the media, or Hollywood, or the music industry, or the protestors, or Democratic Congressmen, or Senators, or governors. And wow was Hollywood busy with movies about Bush and Iraq. The music industry too (how unfair to attack the Dixie Chicks for saying what everyone in the media was already saying).

And that was just the beginning. He tried to kill black people when he caused Katrina. He destroyed our economy, causing an unemployment rate that reached almost 7% -- no economy can survive with an unemployment rate that high, and the President is directly responsible for unemployment. . . except Obama and his 10.5%, that’s not his fault.

Bushitler also generated a massive deficit of around $200 billion! And don’t even think of comparing Obama’s $1.4 trillion deficit to Bushitler’s, they just aren’t the same thing. In fact, they're so different that the media doesn't even bother making the comparison.

Don’t forget Bushitler forced an entire generation of soldiers to develop mental illness and to become homeless. Everybody lost their homes! He let AIDS run wild in Africa, and, let’s be honest, he was stupid. How many times did I hear that! Probably every day. And didn’t he cause a school shooting?

Thank God he’s gone. Too tense.

Barack “The Messiah” Obama

Finally, we have the Obamatopia of today. What pleasant times. Sure there’s 10.5% unemployment, but that’s to be expected -- employment always lags in a recovery. We have $1.4 trillion deficits, but that’s Bush’s fault too, and those should drop again in 5-10 years. The dollar is falling, but that’s good for the stock market.

We’ve had no mass shootings and no terrorist attacks that have made the news. We have no homeless, and all of our soldiers are fine again. Foreclosures have stopped. We have no racial strife, except that racist cop. AIDS in Africa has ended. He solved Darfur. Obama brought peace to South America, I don’t think we’ve heard a peep out of Chavez in some time. . . certainly no criticism from him. Our relations with the Middle East are great, or so we're told.

What’s not to like? In fact, times are so good that most journalists have little to do except report what Obama tells them. I don't think I've heard a body count since Bush left office? And I guess the media dropped their demand to film caskets coming home. Who needs the stress of seeing that!

Hollywood too seems to have become apolitical again, except for the few films honoring Obama. Of course, the television industry also has worked hard to help Obama out with bringing us together and doing a few good things.

All very stress free.

My Point

Ok, enough. I think you get my point. I am actually being quite serious when I say the world seems less dangerous and less contentious when the Democrats are in power. For most people, it does. And there is a reason for that: the Democrats’ fellow travelers in the media and in the culture industry work to generate that perception.

They will savage Republicans on a 24/7 basis, including making things up when there is nothing to complain about. Angry films get cranked out, personal attacks are made nightly on television or in songs, Congressional investigations are held, and a chorus of hate arises all to keep the public on edge.

Why? Because the perception that life is contentious when the Republicans are in charge can be a powerful force to wear people out under Republican regimes, to get them to give Democratic another chance, and to keep fence-sitters voting for Democrats.

This is why it’s so important that conservatives reinsert themselves into the culture -- from Hollywood, to Madison Avenue, to the music world, to the media. We cannot allow this perception to continue unchallenged. It's like letting your competitor send people to your restaurant to bother the customers.

By the way, lest anyone suggest that the left is merely acting on principle, explain to me why they suddenly go silent on those same principles, and will ignore or forgo them, when the Democrats win the job? It’s all for show folks.

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