Back to Basics

I have a sneaking suspicion that President Barack Obama has a sign on his Oval Office desk that reads, “The buck stops with Dubya.”

According to the Boston Herald, “Our President cannot resist a good opportunity to blame Bush.” The President has blamed Bush on everything from the credit crisis to Hurricane Katrina.

It was on the five-year anniversary of Katrina late last month that Obama showed courage in the face of criticism and calmly reiterated the message from that chart topping song a decade past, “It Wasn’t Me.”

Last month the President was campaigning for the upcoming elections in New Orleans, ground zero for Katrina. He told the audience that he would not abandon their cause. Then the President called Katrina and its aftermath not just a natural disaster but “a manmade catastrophe — a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned and alone.”

“Implicit in Obama’s remarks,” wrote The Associated Press: “is an indictment of sorts against former President George W. Bush’s administration for its handling of the crisis.”

When it comes to the Gulf Coast the President just can’t resist blaming Bush. During the height of the BP oil spill the President was at it again.

“For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill,” said Obama from the White House Rose Garden last May. “It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.”

In fact, the Obama administration has a laundry list about the previous President, two wars in the Middle East and an economy that can’t get traction. The way Obama is revving up for the fall elections you would almost think he himself was running against Bush.

While giving a speech last month, Obama said the Republican Party hasn’t differentiated itself from its predecessor.

“They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas — not one,” Obama said to applause. It seems that Obama thinks he is taking the high road as to not actually naming Bush but instead saying, “The previous administration.”

Countless times Obama has said that it is Republican policies which caused the recession.

“We got here after 10 years of an economic agenda in Washington that was pretty straight forward,” Obama said in August. “You cut taxes for millionaires, you cut rules for special interests, and you cut working folks loose to fend for themselves. That was the philosophy of the last administration and their friends in Congress.”

And it is not just Obama whose mantra is to fault Bush. Congressional Democrats like to blame the former President for just about everything. Even with the 2010 midterm elections a couple of months away, Democrats think that “blaming Bush” is still a winning strategy, even though they have had a majority for almost four years and Obama has been in control for nearly two.

I am not yet an old timer but I have been around the block.

With the Not Ready for Prime Time Players holding court in the White House and the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight in Control of Congress it is easy to be critical. However, as our beloved Republic drinks the dregs of the Grapes of Wrath in this, the Season of our Discontent, being critical is not enough. Those of us who believe in limited government, free enterprise and personal liberty need to offer an alternate vision of the future or the Progressive who are seeking to prove that the only problem with all former attempts at a regimented collectivist corporate state was that they weren’t the ones implementing the 5 year plan will win by default.

First we must honestly assess our situation.

The American economy was been derailed by a combination of over regulation, over taxation and crony capitalism’s casino mentality. Since the congressionally mandated housing bubble collapsed dragging the phantom investments of the cronies to the casino floor the bureaucrats who mandated the mess have been in charge of cleaning it up. As a result a cyclical recession which according to the precedent of history should have been over in 14 months (May, 09) has been successfully stretched out for 29 months and counting.

In foreign affairs there is military side and the diplomatic. Militarily, our pre-emptive war in Iraq continues no matter what they call it. Afghanistan is swirling down the drain after the Commander-in-Chief decided it was a good strategy to announce his planned withdrawal date while showcasing the implementation of a surge. Our all volunteer military has performed valiantly and brilliantly however, no matter how sharp or strong the point of a spear is it is only as effective as the person wielding the weapon. Diplomatically, our President bows to foreign leaders, insults our friends and is seen as weak and ineffective by our enemies. Even the European socialists who provide the models for his vision of America and who added their voices to his choir back when he was the Progressive messiah have lately lost their enthusiasm for a leader of the free world who is leading them from the first world to the second.

Culturally, the peace, love and egotism of the boomers continue to plunge America into a cesspool of licentiousness and vanity. The culture of death has progressed from abortion to euthanasia. The celebrity worship has progressed from the adulation of actors and artists to the cult of reality TV where people are now famous for being famous. Our education system, once the envy of the world; produces high school graduates who can’t read their own diplomas, our institutions of higher learning are the bastions of anti-Americanism and Marxist thought, and teachers unions demand more for delivering less.

In an essay-sized capsule these are three major areas that need to be addressed.

I am always scanning web sites and video and audio archives on sites trying to locate “Progressives, The Truth in Their Own Words“. Well today I hit the mother load.

Glen Ford

Glen Ford of blackagendareport.com has done a radio spot and talks about how things are going for the average black American. He calls them African Americans but these are my brothers in humanity. So I will call them to me what they are, Black Americans.

Here  is an excerpt of Glen’s Rant about the insanity of Blacks that are mentally lost due to the election of a Black American President. I contend however the Obama is the First Post American President, regardlerss of his color. His policies are about as un-American as you can ask for.   My Opinion, based on facts.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

A section of Black America has lost their minds – literally – unable to make contact with reality since November 2008. Despite the horrific and disproportionate damage suffered by Blacks in the Great Recession, a psychologically impaired group of African Americans believes they are better off than before the recession began, and that the future is bright. When Obama entered, their powers of reason exited.
SOURCE : blackagendareport.com

UNCUT Audio here >> Black America Has Gone Insane

At a fundraiser in Milwaukee on Monday, President Barack Obama said in a speech, “Let’s reach for hope.” Apparently hope is all he has left.

While he “inherited”—a word he loves to use as if the economic woes of the country came to him by surprise—an economy that was in freefall due to Federal Reserve interest rates set at near zero and government policies that benefited Wall Street and Big Banksters while absolving them of risk, he supported most of those policies while a back-bencher in the United States Senate.

Obama has officially been president for 19 months, and his economic team began working hand-in-hand with the George W. Bush administration immediately after the November, 2008 elections. Everything done subsequently that has created the almost $2 trillion deficit and deepened and prolonged the recession lays at his feet.

He can hope things get better before the November elections. He can hope his economic advisors will get a good surprise for a change. He can hope his (and Michelle’s) summer vacation continues.

Our hope is that enough awakened voters hit the voting booths in November to stop the train wreck that is Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress.

While Obama urges his followers to reach for hope, right thinking Americans will soon be able to make a change.

Have you noticed how often the elitist “economists” in government, academia and the media are surprised by bad economic news?

They are constantly “surprised” by high unemployment numbers. They say the low manufacturing numbers were “unexpected.” They claim they didn’t “foresee” such a great trade imbalance.

When the Fed Open Market Committee met in June it said the economic recovery was “proceeding” and was likely to advance at a moderate pace. At the time they were talking of “tightening” monetary policy to fend off inflation.

Vice President Joe Biden has said we are in the “Summer of Recovery.” President Barack Obama has been saying his policies have “pulled us back from the brink of another Great Depression.” As recently as Aug. 2, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in an op-ed piece for The New York Times, wrote an uplifting column entitled “Welcome to the Recovery.” And he wasn’t being facetious.

He wrote that exports are booming, private job growth has returned, businesses now have strong balance sheets. But then he mentions his surprise.

“The new data show that this recession was even deeper than previously estimated,” Geithner wrote.

Still, he says, all economic measures represent an encouraging turnaround. He must have forgotten to tell that to the Fed.

Because the Fed’s had an “oops” moment. It has decided inflation isn’t an immediate threat after all, and they are “loosening” monetary policy again to try and stave off deflation and a second recession. But with the interest rate at zero there is little left to do.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signals he fears a double-dip recession. The Fed decides it’s going to buy back debt. Buy back debt?

Fiat currency is debt. So the Fed is buying debt with debt. It’s shuffling money piles around. It’s taking money from one pocket and putting it in another. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund declares the United States is essentially bankrupt, writes Laurence Kotlikoff of Bloomberg News.

Reporting the latest “surprising” job numbers, The Wall Street Journal says the “government’s latest snapshot of the job market was bleak; a sign the economic recovery is running out of steam with 14.6 million Americans still searching for work.”

Or, as Tig Gilliam, the chief executive of the staffing firm Adecco Group North America told The Journal, “It’s a double whammy because it causes people to take a psychological step back. Now, it looks like not only has the economy slowed, but maybe it wasn’t as good when it was originally reported as we thought.”

On Aug. 11 the trade numbers came out. The U.S. trade deficit grew to the largest level in almost two years on rising imports form China. Imports increased to $200.3 billion while exports fell to $150.5 billion—a deficit of $49.8 billion. Most economists had expected it to be about $42 billion.

“This is spectacularly terrible,” Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics told AFP news service, explaining that rising imports eat into anemic U.S. growth figures.

Surprise.

If they are constantly surprised by the results of their policies, could it be that they don’t really know what they’re doing?

The latest jobless numbers are out. Unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 percent — with employers shedding 131,000 jobs in July. Private sector employers added 71,000 (less than the private sector payroll additions in June); 143,000 Census workers were let go. The WSJ reports:

The jobless rate, which is calculated using a separate household survey, held steady at 9.5% in July. Economists were expecting it to edge higher to 9.6%.

After the worst recession in decades, the recovery that began in July 2009 has recently been losing momentum, but it’s hard to say if it’s just a temporary slowdown or if the economy could start to contract again. The Federal Reserve may consider taking steps to support the economy when officials meet next Tuesday. Some worry that with unemployment still so high and consumer prices recently dropping, the U.S. economy runs the risk of falling into a Japan-like deflationary trap of very slow growth and falling prices.

…in a sign of the labor market’s continued weakness, Friday’s report showed that 45% of unemployed Americans, or 6.6 million people, were out of work for more than six months in July. The longer someone is without a job, the harder it is to find work. With time, people lose skills — and employers are often loathe to hire someone who hasn’t been working for long periods.

More downward-revised numbers:

The June data was revised down significantly. Payrolls fell 221,000 that month, more than the 125,000 drop previously reported, as only 31,000 jobs were added in the private sector.

Taking into account revisions to prior months this year, the U.S. economy added an average of less than 100,000 jobs a month in the first seven months, a level that’s not strong enough to bring unemployment down.

The eve before the numbers came out, yet another Obama economic adviser is abandoning ship:

President Obama must grapple with the economy without another key adviser, given the departure of Christina Romer.

Romer, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, announced Thursday night that she is returning to her previous job as economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her resignation follows that of budget director Peter Orszag.

Rumors about who pushed her out:

…the scuttlebutt, apparently, is that she had run-ins with Larry Summers, who had a lot more access to The President.

There’s also gossip — completely unsubstantiated, we just know that people are chattering about this — that Summers wanted Romer out.

Meanwhile, back in Spain…

Spanish police have cleared off a stretch of beach for U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha to relax by the Mediterranean after a busy day of sightseeing.

Police used palm trees Friday to mark off the boundaries of a 100-meter (100-yard) expanse for the American delegation. On either side, onlookers gawked.

As the first lady rested inside a canvas hut by the shore, her 9-year-old daughter splashed around in the sea and a security guard swam with her.

It is almost unfathomable to me that television’s talking heads and pundits sill continue to scratch their respective noggins and ask why The Obama is talking — again — about raising taxes via letting President Bush’s tax cuts (for everyone I would add) expire. ‘To end them,’ the pundits offer, ‘will amount to the largest tax increase in US history — during the worst recession since the Great Depression.’ These same talkers refuse to accept the Occam’s Razor explanation — the principle that states the simplest (most obvious) explanation is usually the correct one. In this case, Occam’s Razor tells us that Obama has no intention of allowing America to recover. Instead, he is actively stealing all of the liberties, religious freedoms and wealth from We-the-People and placing it into his, his masters’ and minions’ pockets.

Note: Obama is overthrowing the US government and indefatigably working to destroy the United States of America — by doing away with the middle class and creating an impoverished slave (aka serf) class; a class of people who — if they want to eat and have housing — will be forced to worship The Obama and his personal idols.

If not the first, I was one of the first to name Obama and his dictator-command government as Marxist. It is and has been proven to be so, over and over again. Obama is now issuing Executive Orders on items that should Constitutionally be the purview of Congress. Dr. Laurie Roth broke the story that Obama is planning to combine and force through a gay marriage and illegals’ amnesty bill. And, The Obama and his bought-and-paid-for DOJ is now not only suing the State of Arizona for enforcing laws already on the books — over AZ SB 1070 a watered-down version of federal law — in order to protect US citizens (which The Obama refuses to do), but is also planning to bring the full force of the US government down on US Sheriffs who attempt to implement the law.

Note: Since Obama usurped the office of President of the United States, he has quickly, steadily and forcefully made up laws (aka Executive fiats) that go against the American people but, both support and embolden the enemies of the USA.

Obama & Co is stealing us blind and appears to be transferring billions of dollars to others outside of the USA. In other words, The Obama is moving the wealth of the USA to its enemies. This is Obama’s redistribution of wealth. Obama is illegally transferring money to his home country to support infanticide in Kenya. Daily, Obama is now mocking God, the American people and anyone who tries to stop him. A dictator is defined as “a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government.” Obama is a dictator. And this dictator is not — I repeat NOT — a US citizen.

Well, this is pretty disturbing from the TARP Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky. The race and sex of the dealership owner apparently factored into determining whether dealerships would be closed down. First some background. GM and Chrysler were forced by the government to close 2,000 dealerships and putting 100,000 people out of their jobs during a recession. Now it turns out that these closing probably didn’t save the car companies any money and it may have even cost them money (p. 30, from the “Factors Affecting the Decisions of General Motors and Chrysler to Reduce their Dealership Networks,” July 10, 2010, Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program).

In fact, when asked by SIGTARP what GM will save by closing any particular dealership, one GM official stated the answer is usually “not one damn cent.”

Furthermore, a GM official stated that removing a dealership from the network does not save money for GM—it might even cost GM money—and that savings cannot be attributed or assigned to any one dealership. According to one GM official, it was a “math exercise” to assign a savings amount to one dealership; it was difficult to estimate savings for a particular dealership because the savings are expected to be achieved when the entire dealership network plan is accomplished.

The report concluded (pp. 28-29, see also pages 11-12):

One, although there was broad consensus that GM and Chrysler generally needed to decrease the number of their dealerships, there was disagreement over where, and how quickly, the cuts should have been made. Some experts that SIGTARP spoke to in connection with this audit questioned whether it was appropriate to apply the foreign model to the U.S. automakers, particularly in small markets in which the U.S. companies currently have a competitive advantage, a concern apparently not substantially considered by the Auto Team when they adopted this theory. The conclusion that the manufacturers should close dealerships more rapidly than originally planned was also criticized as being potentially counterproductive; one expert opined, for example, that closing dealerships in an environment already disrupted by the recession could result in an even greater crisis in sales.

So how did GM determine who to shutdown? (pp. 17-18)

GM determined that dealerships with a DPS Score of 100 were average performers; those below 70 were considered poor performers and would not be retained. SIGTARP noted, however, that GM did not uniformly apply the phase one criteria to the entire network. For example, our analysis found that two of the wind-down dealers did not meet either criterion.

New York Times: After Job Training, Many Still Scrambling for Employment:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment.

Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A study conducted for the Labor Department tracking the experience of 160,000 laid-off workers in 12 states from mid-2003 to mid-2005 — a time of economic expansion — found that those who went through training wound up earning little more than those who did not, even three and four years later. “Over all, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent,” the study concluded.