End of the Magnificent Obsession

While the American obsession with Barack Obama may not be over, it may finally be descending from the stratosphere. How can I tell? Just watch the mainstream press. The man who was raised to Messiah status over the past 12 months, the man who could do no wrong, the one who was going to save us all…has been dropped like a hot potato. Or maybe the press is following my number one rule of life: when you are in trouble…lay low!!

Last week, Obama had a fiasco news conference about his government health care takeover, offering little new in the face of a Congressional Budget Office report which has blown the plan out of the water. He even declined to be covered by the same policy he hopes to foist on you. He finished with a flourish calling the Cambridge Police Department stupid vis-à-vis his friend, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Gates who decided to right 400 years of racial oppression on his front porch while surrounded by police sent there to protect his property.

So with racism abounding, and his legislative agenda limping around in circles, and his poll numbers plummeting, the mainstream press decided to lead off the news with a flurry of Michael Jackson stories and a bride and groom doing a dance down the aisle to get married (actually, it was pretty good!!) I guess the rule is “out of sight, out of mind.”

Barack Obama is learning a political lesson. If you are going to tax and spend, sooner or later you are going to run out of people to tax. In the case of health care, it is the suburban, middle to upper class independents in the northeastern part of the country that are experiencing buyer’s remorse now that he is going after them. It’s really not a good idea to raise the specter of government health care when 85% of Americans rate their health insurance as good to excellent, and the health care crisis is at bottom of the list of country concerns; especially after spending the country into oblivion his first 12 weeks in office.

More importantly, I think the country is beginning to see him for what he is. He is a radical tax and spend liberal/socialist with a chip on his shoulder. He gives a good speech with the tele-prompter. Take it away, and his true beliefs come out. Consider the following;

1) He was elected to be a post partisan president, who could bring people together. He has been the most partisan president I can remember in my lifetime. Even “W” could find common ground with Ted Kennedy. Obama’s entire legislative agenda has been so radical, it could not garner more than a few Republicans votes, and now the Blue Dog Democrats have come to their senses and are running towards the door. You won’t get re-elected in West Virginia supporting a San Francisco agenda. The Democratic tent just isn’t that big.

2) He was supposed to be a post racial president. But his off the teleprompter comment about the police and Dr. Gates show his true beliefs. You can judge a man by the company he keeps. President Obama had a penchant for racists and radicals, Dr. Wright, Dr. Gates…and Bill Ayers. He is certainly the president of black America, and to a degree Hispanic America, but when will be President of the people in the America who are pulling the freight?

3) He has failed to lead. Who is running the country? Obama is busy partying in France, in Hawaii, in Martha’s Vineyard while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are calling the shots. Obama is the black guy in the White House being told what to do by the radical left. His purpose is clear, cheerlead and sign what is put in front of him.

4) His foreign policy is a fiasco. The President of the World has lost the respect of the Europeans who have shifted to the right. The Russians ignore him. The Chinese lecture him. The Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the North Koreans laugh at him. God knows what the Arabs think. He bowed down to the King of Saudi Arabia. And the same press, who criticized Bush for military action in Iraq and the surge, is barely covering the rapid build of troops in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. Where are the peaceniks now?

This guy had better shift to the center and shift fast, or his presidency will implode and then we will have a problem. Of course, ideologues don’t care. Notwithstanding, the old Silent Majority is still there. It will destroy him.

A Reruen to Normalcy - The Left's Waterloo

Isn’t it interesting that midst the economic malaise in which the country finds itself, the stock market is going up? That is not necessarily unusual. Unemployment is a lagging indicator, which means that it is backward looking reflecting what has already happened. The stock market is a leading indicator reflecting what is anticipated to happen. If the market anticipates things are going to get better, the market will go up.

Part of an anticipated upturn involves decreased inventories. When things get bad, stores and manufacturers don’t buy new inventory choosing instead use whatever is on hand. When that is depleted, the inventory rebuild primes the pump, so to speak, and one there is an upturn in economic activity. The economy, in effect, reseeds itself. But something more fundamental has happened giving the market a boost way beyond the current economic fundamentals, which quite frankly, suck.

Markets hate uncertainty. In order for business and markets to thrive, the players have to know the rules. This past fall, we experienced a severe credit freeze which had the possibility of collapsing the entire world economy. It was scary. I don’t think any words can describe the seriousness of what happened. President Bush, followed by President Obama, reacted. They threw everything at the problem but the kitchen sink, and something worked. Credit markets are beginning to function again.

Unfortunately, the crisis hit in the middle of the presidential election. Center-right America shifted to the left, and elected a Democratic House and Senate, and a very personable, confident, and extremely radical left wing president. President Obama, not one to waste a crisis, moved to implement a suppressed far left agenda while wrapped in conservative lingo. In his short time in office, he nationalized the largest automobile producer in the United States. He took over the largest insurance company. He took over the largest bank. He formed a shadow government outside of the checks and balances of Congress by the appointment of so-called “czars” to handle everything from foreign policy to food additives. He increased the White legal staff by 25% in his rush to move power from Congress to the Executive branch of government. He threw out the rules of bankruptcy, and began to replace executives and boards of directors of American corporations. He quadrupled the national deficit, and his debt projections have reached a point where our GDP cannot begin to repay the amount of money owed in any meaningful way.

Then he made the biggest attempted power grab in United States history by attempting to take over the health and energy sectors of the economy. This would give the government unprecedented intrusive power over the daily lives of Americans. Under the guise of wellness programs, it would dictate what you can eat and how much exercise you have to do. Under the guise of global warming, it would set the temperature in your house. It would monitor where you go, and how much you drive. And in the name of efficient health care, it would do cost-benefit analysis to determine just how much medicine and what treatments you are entitled to. The net result would be a decrease in care overall, but especially in the area of elder care, where when you reach the age of 75, you may be deemed to old for that hip replacement….and that new cancer drug that has just been developed…you can’t have it because you are over 80. These are Orwellian changes in our way of life, and our expectations.

Reality has finally caught up to Mr. Obama. Even a fawning press couldn’t hide the truth behind what Obama was trying to accomplish. A very brave soul in the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office blew the whistle on the proposed health care “reform”, and spelled out the costs and how it works. The "ram it through" approach with no details and no explanation has been stopped, and maybe now we will get a legitimate debate as to how to handle the problems for a true and legitimate health care reform bill as opposed to a takeover and control bill.

In energy, Cap and Trade passed the House by one vote with eight Republicans voting for it. Not great in an overrwhelmingly Democrat Congress. The opposition continues to line up as it becomes clear that Cap and Trade means Americans pay while China, Brazil, Mexico, and India continue to spew carbon emissions. It will not pass the Senate, as constituents ask what company in its right mind would locate a factory here with this stuff on the books.

What does that have to do with a rising stock market? Business senses that the radical left has been stopped in its tracks by reality and an election in 2010. While the spending got through, business is sensing that the two main bills that would have decimated the American economy for the next 50 years are, if not dead in the water, sinking fast. Senator DeMint may have been almost right. Maybe Obama hasn't met his Waterloo, but I think America has reached the limit with left wing manipulation, lies, and policies.The rules are once more returning to normalcy.

Dictatorship of the Minorities

Every day I read some group or company or organization is getting Federal aid. Today is no exception. In one article, I read that minority broadcasters have approached Timothy Geithner for a bailout. They claim that minority broadcasters are suffering more than most and are “almost an extinct species.” Of course, they will probably get it, and you shouldn’t be surprised.

In another article, I read that the government is once again considering assistance to those who are unable to make their mortgage payments. An Obama official was quoted as saying it was reasonable for the administration to consider measures of loan forbearance.

My question is, who is there for me? My wife and I get up every morning and go to work. We have worked hard through adverse circumstances when the legal profession was so crooked locally it effectively stopped me from practicing. The corruption crossed over into the education system where my wife was accused of stealing money, threatened with job retaliation if she didn’t talk her union into certain terms the school system wanted, and then was left hanging out to dry by both the school system and her union after an illegal reduction in force. No one was there for us, and my wife had paid union dues for 20 years.

Right now the government is there for blacks. The government is there for Hispanics. The government is there for gays. The government is there for terrorists. The government is there for Muslims. When has the government done anything for me? In a word, never!

Majority rule has been taken over by a Dictatorship of the Minorities. It is getting scary. Recently, in Akron, a group of black thugs attacked a white family and seriously hurt these folks. The shouted as they beat these people up that is “a black world now!” The Akron police are investigating that this might be a “hate crime.” Do ya think? The fact that they have to even ask the question is insulting to whites. Of course it is a hate crime.

Now Judge Sotomayor is being considered for the Supreme Court. Her opinion that a Latina woman could reach a better decision than a white male is racist and insulting. Yet certain members of Congress did everything during the hearings today but clean her feet. If a white lawyer said the same thing in reverse, his/her license would be revoked and face trumped up criminal charges.

Even illegal aliens make out better, with their kids getting in-state tuition to colleges while other Americans are shut out. And of course, let’s not forget the activist women, who said they didn’t want the money going to white, male construction jobs. It didn’t, and now unemployment is pushing 10%.

The government is going to learn a hard lesson. After Jimmy Carter, the press conjured up the angry white male…blue collar Democrats who voted for Reagan. Maybe the angry white male will make a comeback. You can only soak a certain segment of society to pay for all of the rest for so long before the end of the line is finally reached. That is when the real problem will rear its ugly head.

That Great Money Machine in the Sky

The economic news continues to be bad, and I am constantly amazed why government officials are so surprised. It’s very simple, until some normalcy returns into the country’s financial life, banks will be reluctant to lend, businesses will be reluctant to expand, entrepreneurs will be reluctant to take risks, and consumers will be reluctant to spend. The rule of the day, preserve what you got because you never when “they” will be coming to take it away from you.

For the economy to work, there have to be rules. People have to know what to expect. And the Obama administration has turned the rules upside down. A friend of mine said it best, it’s like everything is backwards. What concerns me the most is I am hearing this from places where I shouldn’t be hearing it, and from people who have rarely say anything at all political. They don’t understand what is going on, and they are afraid of what is going on. The contrarians among us will say that is a good sign. Don't bet the rent.

President Obama and his cohorts in Congress just don’t get it. There isn’t some big money machine in the sky that continually pours out its bounty on America. America’s wealth comes from Americans that work. And Americans won’t work if the government is going to take what they make away from them. The least scintilla of government abuse of power will cause these folks to pull back. We have more than a scintilla. If I have heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times. If the government can takeover GM, what can they do to me? No matter what the motivation of the government, what has happened is inherently un-American, and the population is beginning to sense it.

That doesn’t even begin to tap into the growing fear of increased taxes, increased energy costs, increased inflation, and increased interest rates. All of these are legitimate fears.

A client of mine is the epitome of an entrepreneur. He and his family work in several separate but related businesses. They work 12 hours/day, 6 days/week in the most basic of American undertakings…buying and selling surplus merchandise. These guys know one thing, hard work. But the client said to me today “I just don’t get it. What is the government doing? These people work for us, or at least they used to, and I am deeply concerned.” And that pretty much sums it up.

Deeply concerned is an understatement. No one will do much of anything if they think the government is going to tax and spend us into the poorhouse. I don’t think that President Obama is a bad man. He is a creature of his upbringing and his experience. He attended private school growing up on scholarships. He attended undergraduate schools on scholarships. The attended law school on scholarships. Throughout it all, he was at the receiving end of racism while watching the benefits of privilege. When he finished his education, he went to work as a community organizer, which basically lobbied to take money from one group of people and give it to another.

Now, as President, he continues his redistributive ways. That is what he knows; all the while thinking the pot of money at the end of the industrial rainbow will never run out. Even his stimulus package is based on social fairness rather than projects that will generate hard jobs that use concrete and steel. They don’t need any more jobs for white construction workers. Nowhere is there any incentive for business start ups, business expansion, and job growth and creation.

Meanwhile, those of us down here in the real world are scratching to make a living, reluctant to take the chances that will make this country grow again, and wondering whether or not the government will ever realize that in order for that big money machine in the sky to work, it has to prime the pump with some incentive.