Tag: Barack Obama
It’s the Economy, Stupid
Karl Rove is right… it is the economy and its too bad that Obama and the Democrats are willing to put Liberal Ideology before our once great country. Soon the realization that the price to be paid for having Obama as our President will be too high and Congress will have to be the “fall guys”. Hopefully enough of them will fall so we can correct the path we’ve been put on.
Tomorrow will likely bring more bad news for President Barack Obama on the number one issue for voters — the economy. The Labor Department’s monthly job report will almost certainly show unemployment topping 9%, with a couple hundred thousand more jobs lost in May.
It will get worse before jobs get better. Congressional Budget Director Douglas W. Elmendorf recently predicted that unemployment will continue rising into the second half of next year and peak above 10%.
Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains. For example, last week the president claimed that 150,000 jobs had been created or saved because of his stimulus package. He boasted, “And that’s just the beginning.”
However, at the beginning of January, 134.3 million people were employed. At the start of May, 132.4 million Americans were working. How was Mr. Obama magically able to conjure this loss of 1.9 million jobs into an increase of 150,000 jobs?
As my former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto points out on his blog, the Labor Department does not and cannot collect data on “jobs saved.” So the Obama administration is asking that we accept its “clairvoyant ability to estimate,” and the White House press corps has let Mr. Obama’s ludicrous claim go virtually unchallenged.
Still, there are limits to Mr. Obama’s rhetorical tricks. Even he cannot turn job losses into real job gains. And he won’t be rescued by stimulus spending.
Former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey made a persuasive case on his blog that the stimulus will be ineffective because the additional economic growth it spurs will come six to nine months later than it could have.
This is partly because, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates, only $185 billion (23% of a $787 billion stimulus package) will be spent this fiscal year. The government will spend an additional $399 billion next fiscal year. The balance — $203 billion — will be spent between fiscal years 2011 and 2019, long after the economy has turned on its own power and for its own reasons. In addition, much of the stimulus that went this year for tax cuts and transfer payments has been saved, not spent. (The national savings rate went from less than 0% to about 5%.)
If the Obama administration were more serious about growing the economy than just growing government, the stimulus would have been front-loaded into this fiscal year.
In addition, the claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
Any real improvement in the economy so far is more likely the result of the Federal Reserve expanding the money supply and the Fed and Treasury shoring up the financial sector.
But the Fed’s actions are risky. Easy money and expansionary policies are not sustainable. We may soon be in for a bout of inflation unless the Fed soaks up much of the money it flooded into the system. The government is also likely to hamper private investment as it uses a vast amount of capital to finance its debt. And when the Fed stomps on its monetary brakes, as eventually it must, we’ll get sluggish growth.
The irony for Democrats is that the Fed may hit the brakes in the run-up to the 2010 congressional elections or the 2012 presidential election.
It is becoming clear that the economy is now the top issue. Mr. Obama’s presidency may well rise or fall on it. The economy will be his responsibility long before next year’s elections. Americans may give him a chance to turn things around, but voters can turn unforgiving very quickly if promised jobs don’t materialize.
That’s what happened in Louisiana, where voters accepted Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s missteps before Hurricane Katrina but brutally rejected her afterward because she failed to turn the state around.
Until now, the new president has benefited from public willingness to give him a honeymoon. He decided to use that grace period to push for the largest expansion of government in U.S. history and to reward political allies (see the sweetheart deals Big Labor received in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies).
The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead — higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.
Nukes Are OK For Iran, But Not For Us?
As usual, Liberal inconsistency reveals that their true motivation is the destruction America.
Nuclear Power: If Iran has “legitimate energy concerns” that make its nuclear plants OK, doesn’t the energy-starved U.S.? Why doesn’t Iran, with the second-largest proven oil reserves, just build some refineries?
Normally, a nation with significant oil resources that decides to develop nuclear power would and should be praised for its prudence. Nuclear power is an emission-free domestic form of energy that is good for the environment and the economy.
Except when it’s a country that builds missiles instead of refineries and pledges to wipe a neighbor off the face of the earth.
Iran says it’s developing nuclear power to generate electricity while it waits for the 12th Imam and the apocalypse to arrive. To hasten the process, however, it is using its nuclear knowledge to amass fissile material necessary to build a bomb. It’s developing missiles to deliver that bomb, presumably somewhere in the heart of downtown Tel Aviv.
Our new administration is trying to talk them out of it, and the Iranians are quite willing to drag out the conversation as long as it takes to develop their nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it.
“Although I don’t want to put artificial timetables on that process,” President Obama has said, “we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we’ve actually seen a serious process move forward. And I think that we can measure whether or not the Iranians are serious.”
Unfortunately, Iran by the end of the year should have enough weapons-grade material to make a bomb, if it doesn’t have enough already. One thing we can measure is the increasing number of centrifuges they have spinning. They are not designed to keep the lights on in Tehran.
It would seem to us that encouraging Iranian use of nuclear energy in any context is the last thing we should be doing. In a BBC interview broadcast on Tuesday, President Obama said:
“Without going into specifics, what I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations. On the other hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region.”
This echoes remarks made in Prague last month, when the president said his administration would “support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections” if Iran gives up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But it hasn’t, and the race is already on. Iran state television interpreted these remarks as recognizing “the rights of the Iranian nation,” by which it means its right to develop nuclear power unencumbered.
That Iran is not serious about peaceful nuclear energy is shown by its refusal to build the refinery capacity needed to eliminate its dependence on imported gasoline. That money instead has gone to buying more centrifuges and expanding nuclear facilities. If Iran’s energy aspirations were legitimate, it would be building refineries and not bombs.
The irony here is that at the same time we are encouraging Iran to exploit the peaceful uses of nuclear power, we are discouraging its use here at home. We have legitimate energy aspirations as well, and one of them is reducing our dependence on imported oil from countries that do not have our interests at heart.
We let billions flow overseas and domestic oil resources from the Chukchi Sea to ANWR to Western oil shale to the Gulf of Mexico go unexploited. We have one thing in common with Iran: We’re not pushing refinery construction here either.
We prattle on about nuclear power being costly and nuclear waste being a danger without a safe place to store it even as we shut down Yucca Mountain, a perfectly safe place to store it. We place all sorts of regulatory and environmental impediments in its way.
Why is nuclear power a viable energy source for Iran but not for America?
Obama Declares Iran-Dependence Day
If only we had a President who would personally deliver “rockets’ red glare” and “the bombs bursting in air” over Tehran this July 4th!
Another classic opinion piece by Ed Anger.
Enjoy!
I can’t believe it: Obama just invited a bunch of crazy foreigners to a Fourth of July party!
Our embassies throw Independence Day parties around the world, so this year, the Communist-in-Chief is inviting local bigwigs to come, too.
That means guys who work for President Achmed Dirtybad of Iran will get to set foot on our property!That’s pretty funny, because Achmed Dirtybad first became famous when he and his friends took over our embassy in Iran back in the 1970s!
I knew Obama wanted to relive the Carter Presidency, but this is ridiculous. It’s bad enough he wants us to save electricity and drive ugly little cars and put up with crazy inflation like Jimmy did – but now the Teleprompter Kid wants to relive the 1970s in this whole new way! Next thing you know, Obama will be yelling “Kiss my grits” and wearing platform shoes!
I can see it now: a bunch of Iranian kooks asking for pig-free hotdogs at the cookout, or trying to barbeque a goat. I bet they bring their own fireworks, too – nuclear ones! And maybe they’ll burn an effigy of Uncle Sam, like they do every weekend anyway.
How can Iranian big shots celebrate something called “Independence Day” when they’re the same guys who lock up ladies who don’t wear bags on their heads? (Although I like their idea of not letting women drive – I guess they’ve met my mother-in-law.)
All in all, poor old Ed doesn’t feel much like celebrating this Fourth of July. Mark my words: they’ll ban fireworks and barbecues next because they cause pollution. Don’t laugh – that’s the first thing Hitler did when he took over. You can look it up!
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