O's Malaise At Mellon

[Winston Smith]

Malaise At Mellon

Deja Vu: In a Carteresque speech Wednesday, the president said we should tax our way out of despondency and dependence on fossil fuels. The American dream isn't slipping away. It's being stolen by big government.

It might as well have been President Carter addressing the audience of students and faculty at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. Instead it was President Obama who spoke of our dependence on fossil fuels and blamed everybody and everything, except for a lack of presidential leadership, for our current situation.

On July 15, 1979, President James Earl Carter gave what has become known as the "malaise" speech. He didn't actually use that term. Instead, he spoke of "a crisis in confidence ... that strikes at the very heart and souls and spirit of our national will."

On Wednesday, Obama spoke of the "feeling of not being in control of your own economic future — that sense that the American dream might slowly be slipping away."

In fact, the American dream is being taxed away by a government already spending our children's inheritance.

Carter spoke of an energy crisis that was "the moral equivalent of war" and of our "intolerable dependence on foreign oil." Obama warned of "our continued dependence on fossil fuels (that) will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet."

But it's our continued dependence on government, expanded under this administration, that will smother the American economy and people.

Obama also blamed "greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street" along with oil "corporations taking dangerous shortcuts to compromise safety." And don't forget those rascally Republicans: "Before I was even inaugurated, the congressional leaders of the other party got together and made a calculation that if I failed, they'd win."

Captain Queeg is still searching for the missing strawberries.

Sorry, but there's no one to blame for the president's failed policies but the president — from the trillion-dollar stimulus that created no jobs to the nationalization of health care that will lead to ballooning deficits, doctor shortages and rationing. It is the president who is failing, and the voters will remember in November.

As bad as things are, they'll get worse under policies Obama announced in the speech. He noted that the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill and that a similar plan sponsored by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry is stalled in the Senate.

"I want you to know the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months," he said. "The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century." If the votes will be found as they were for the health care overhaul, this could get expensive.

He said the transition from fossil fuels is possible "if capital comes off the sidelines." That's a tough sell when his favorite energy sources don't work when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

"And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution." In other words, a carbon tax.

As the Heritage Foundation notes, subsidizing experimental energy sources doesn't become more attractive because oil pollutes our waters. In Louisiana alone, Heritage reckons, Waxman-Markey would result in the loss of 15,000 jobs, higher gas prices and rocketing consumer electric rates. Whom will Obama blame that on?

What Obama offers is a skyrocketing misery index, unsustainable debt and oppressive, job-killing taxation.

If the students at Mellon were anxious, they had reason to be. We have labeled Jimmy Carter our worst ex-president. He may soon have a rival for that title.

[WilliamW]

We have labeled Jimmy Carter our worst ex-president. He may soon have a rival for that title.

At least Crater made it through his whole term.  Obummer is going out on his shield before the 2012 election.

The Coming Resignation of Barack Obama

Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection.

I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership. ...

[ham]

I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership. ...

do NOT count on it...
even if he wanted to, which I doubt, his 'friends', bankrollers and puppeteers need mr. Uganda Andropov in place to cover up a few more tricks, appoint a few more bastards and hand out a few more contracts.
For those who just care about negroes chasing a ball, Andropov was a supreme soviet president whom many supposed had died in office quite some time before the news broke out. Chernenko (a KGB executive) was appointed next, then Gorbachev.
Insiders claim Andropov was dead when he wrote letters to world leaders; sovietologists argued the military and party nomenklatura put that little interval to veeery good use.

[WilliamW]

[Don Dresden]

Obama Making Carter Years Look Like Paradise

Let me first always remind readers that polls are a snapshot in time. Two years from now, President Obama could be sitting on top of the world politically. But for now, he has lost all but 38 percent approval from the critical "independent" American voters. They're the ones that gave him the presidency. He appears headstrong in his determination to show the nation what a disastrous presidency looks like.

Pundits often point to the presidency of Jimmy Carter as the modern example of a failed leader. It is no secret that I have, despite my former years as an active Republican, always viewed the Carter administration with a kinder overall assessment than have most of my friends. That's partly because, like Carter, I'm a Georgian. I grew up knowing many Carter friends and associates. I also know many behind-the-scenes stories that shape my view of him.

I no longer feel the need to defend Carter, largely because of the direction the Obama presidency has taken. Let's compare the two administrations.

First, national health care. It was Carter's intra-party nemesis at the time -- the rabidly liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, now deceased, who pushed Carter over and over to create a universal health care program. Carter demurred. He suggested that instead it should be brought about incrementally. He figured an immediate, all-out push for it might bust the national treasury. Imagine that!

Now consider Iran. Because of Carter's unwillingness to simply cave in to every demand of the Iranian militants who overthrew the Shah's government, Iranian extremists stormed our embassy in Tehran and took hostages. This calamity was likely the single issue that sealed Carter's doom when he ran for re-election. Few know that Carter's own chief of staff, the late Hamilton Jordan, took a tremendous physical risk when he operated in disguises in trying to negotiate the hostages' freedom. And when it became clear that Carter's longsuffering negotiations were failing, he at least tried a daring, if poorly executed, rescue of the hostages.

Fast-forward to today. The United States government and some in media seem obsessed with appeasing anybody and anything Islamic. Only the latest example is the decree from NASA that its "foremost" mission is to recognize and appreciate the contributions of Muslims to science.

More, we seem unable to properly respond to crises, or even to recognize them as such, when they happen. That's the case in the Gulf of Mexico. Massive amounts of oil continue to gush at a rate far greater than was first admitted. We've all read and heard about oil-skimmers and other ships unavailable for clean-up duty because of government red tape and concessions to American labor unions. State governments' requests for early help defending their coastlines were all but ignored.

Jimmy Carter's response to a tragedy like this might have been a blunder. Who knows? Yet I have little doubt that by now he would have tried something -- anything -- daring and bold to help save the coastlines of what, after all, is his own native region of the country.

Look, I'm not trying to boost Carter into the "top 10 presidents list." I do want to point out that Carter spent much of his time fighting with Democratic congressional leadership that was more liberal than his own administration was.

Plus, the Carter administration didn't view every real or perceived crisis as a political "opportunity." Quite the contrary: The Carter administration learned that crises can lead to political demise. Where did that demise eventually come from? Independent voters. They had committed to Carter because they were weary of Watergate and President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. They wanted change they could believe in.

President Obama had better rethink his governing philosophy of implementing liberal policies at every opportunity. He desperately needs to convince Americans that he will tackle a crisis and run the government with moderation.

The so-called "Georgia Mafia" of the Carter years may have earned a bad name in the history books, but Obama's "Chicago Mafia" is making Carter's crowd look like a band of consummate professionals.

Thirty-eight percent approval from independents. Who could have guessed it?

[Dickie Billericay]