namvet
Gold Member
Anatomy of a Failed Presidency!
The following is an interesting article and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.
Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist. He has had nearly 30 years experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He is also a writer for American Thinker.
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out.
Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of precedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task--all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.
Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012:
"For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." - James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." - Unknown
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Osama's Only Real Accomplishment
Lets get it straight, behind all the hubbub and noise, the international trips and summits, the TV specials and constant addresses to the nation and any other nation that would let him in, the huge spending plans and the photoshootsBarack Hussein Obama has accomplished only one thing in his first year in office.
Obamas only real accomplishment is that he took hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and directed them to his donors on Wall Street, in the unions and the insurance industry. Barry Hussein took in nearly 15 million dollars in donations from securities and investments companies, and his first priority was to pay it back with a massive bailout that has exploded the deficit.
As the number one recipient of funds from securities and investments companies, Obama made sure they were paid off first. In exchange for a mere 14 million dollars, the industry received as much as a hundred thousand times that much from the government. And we arent done yet. And that is even without counting Cap and Trade, a plan set to enrich certain key Wall Street backers of Obama and the Democratic party, at the expense of the last remaining shreds of Americas manufacturing sector.
And then there were the unions. Not only did Obama keep the UAW around through the effective bailout and takeover of GM and Chrysler, but his next priority was delivering the SEIUs health care plan. And while the SEIU appears to have lost out on the public option, unlike the AFL-CIO which has turned on the bill, SEIU President Andrew Stern is still expressing his support for Obama.
But while SEIU may not have gotten the government health care holiday they wanted, the insurance industry, which donated millions to Obama, got a bill which forces every American to buy insurance from them, or be fined and jailed. Its not quite marching customers over to them at gunpoint, but its the next best thing.
Obamas big donors are throwing extra large parties to celebrate their windfall
While ordinary voters are complaining that they got screwed by Obama, his big donors are throwing extra large parties to celebrate their windfall. While 2009 has been a terrible year for most Americans, insurance company stocks are rising and Wall Street is anticipating a chance to nickel and dime every American through Cap and Trade.
And that is the simple and ugly truth behind Obamas first term. Ignore the empty speeches and the even more meaningless summits. Behind the facade is the same stale old brand of Chicago politics, if you want something you gotta pay for it. If you want a street cleaning contract, then you better pay. And once you pay, the city will pay you twice the cost, even if none of the streets are ever clean. If you want to supply safety gear for the fire department, money better change hands. And then it doesnt matter if the gear works or how much you overcharge for it.
But at the national level, it isnt about municipal services or a state contract here and there, the kind of corruption that is bankrupting cities and states all across America. Its about a truly grand level of corruption, because the budget at Obamas disposal is virtually infinite. The money may not be there, but as long as the Chinese keep lending, Barry Hussein and his staff will keep on spending. Because when the bill comes due, they know they wont be there.
Obama has no personal investment in America. Its a resource to him like everything else. And when a con artist gets into a bank vault, he steals it clean, and then moves on. Unless he can be made dictator for life, Obama doesnt care much what happens after hes out of office. And if he is made dictator for life, that just means more wealth redistribution. The Chicago way is to treat taxes as a way to pay back favors and set yourself up for life. That mixture of left wing radicalism and organized crime that defines Obamas political background has no room in it for any kind of fiscal responsibility.
War on Terror and Afghan surge
Once in office, Barry Hussein could barely be bothered to care about the War on Terror, only announcing an Afghan surge after he had been shamed into it. His international trips accomplished nothing except to give Michelle Obama a chance to pick up more expensive and ugly souvenirs. Abusive to allies and slavish to enemies, Obamas foreign adventures impressed no one at all and accomplished even less.
Domestic security naturally went by the wayside. Obamas tossed wreath at Ground Zero demonstrated how well he had absorbed the contemptuous attitude of his mentor, Jeremiah God Damn America Wright. Neither a New Yorker nor an American, terrorism was nothing to Obama, except a chance to recite a homily about the virtues of Islam. The mosques of Mecca and the Madrassas of Asia had far more emotional resonance for Obama than the Twin Towers.
His Homeland Security Chief, Janet Napolitano, quickly reverted back to Janet Renos approach to domestic security with alarmist rhetoric about the dangers of right wing extremism. Meanwhile Renos own second in command, Attorney General Eric Holder hardly bothered to hide his sympathy for the terrorists. And so the 3AM phone call to Obama never came. Instead a passenger subdued the latest Al Queda terrorist, while Obama drowsed peacefully in his White House bed, visions of spending bills dancing in his head.
Now just as it had been with Afghanistan a few months back, Obama has been caught by surprise as an issue that he had demonstrated his unconcern for is coming back to bite him on the ASS. Naturally the reflexive Chicago tactic is to blame it on the Republicans. The problem is that the nameplate says Barack H. Obama, not George W. Bush. And by now its clear even to Obamas supporters, that the man will go on blaming Bush even after 8 years in office, without taking responsibility for the consequences of his own policies.
Creating jobs was an inside joke between Obama and his donors, where the punchline was Green Jobs
But Obama isnt stupid or incompetent. He proved quite capable of obsessively pursuing and shoving through legislation on the issues he cared about. Of course the legislation he cared about was passing kickbacks to his donors and enacting socialism for America. National security wasnt on the list. Defending America wasnt even gifted with a single checkmark. Creating jobs was an inside joke between Obama and his donors, where the punchline was Green Jobs.
When Cheney calls out Obama for abandoning national defense and the War on Terror, the White House has no response except to issue sanctimonious statements bemoaning finger pointing. Which is par for the course when the fingers are being pointed at you. But Obama is not a big believer in Trumans aphorism. If Harrys desk said, The Buck Stops Here, Obamas desk says, The Bucks Are Spent Here.
Forget national security. Obamas key interests are reform plans that benefit him personally. Next up will either be Cap and Trade or legalizing enough illegal aliens to outweigh all the out of work Americans just waiting for a chance to vote him out of office in 2012. (Lawyers after all formed the largest base of his contributors.) The buck doesnt stop in the Oval Office anymore. The moral compass does
a happy and prosperous new year??? not a fuckin' chance !!!!
