Anatomy of a Failed Presidency!

Just in case you missed it, the following is an interesting article from "American Thinker". This article is 5 months old, and things have only gotten worse...
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Another Failed Presidency

An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

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

RESTORING THE REPUBLIC - CAN WE RECOVER OUR COUNTRY? "TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION..."

I find the direction in which our country is being surreptitiously guided, while generally ignored by our citizens, to be absolutely incomprehensible! There is no acceptable explanation for subverting the Constitution, yet - on the whole - Americans are sitting on their hands as the United States of America is being converted into the Socialist States of America.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sacrificed their life all over the world so that others may be free. Yet when our own freedoms are threatened, we sit idly by. The word you're probably looking for right now is either "incredulity" or "apathy". For many of us, the thought of the USA possibly becoming anything other than a Democratic Republic is absolutely "incredulous" - totally outside the realm of believability. Since we don't believe it could happen, we adopt an attitude of "apathy" toward the possibility even when an exercise in "connect the dots" tells us it IS happening - right here, right now.

What are these "dots" that we should be connecting?

Dot #1. A few short years ago Anthony (Van) Jones was a Bay Area radical agitator - a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, waging war on the police and capitalist system. Van Jones' meteoric rise was assisted by many different liberal-left foundations, including the Open Society Institute of George Soros, which helped finance his "Green for All" organization. Today Van Jones holds a key position in the US government and has the ear of President Barack Obama as the Green Jobs Czar. (A non-elected, non-vetted political appointment.)

Dot #2. Mark Lloyd, a left-wing radical who supports stifling our rights of free speech one small step at a time, has been appointed as the Communications "Diversity" Czar. Besides just wanting to "backdoor" a newer, more strict version of the "Fairness Doctrine" (which was abandoned by the FCC about 25 years ago as "unconstitutional), Lloyd thinks we should "model our governance after Hugo Chavez" president/dictator of Venezuela. Chavez has forced the closure of all media opposed to his administration, effectively nationalizing Venezuelan television, radio and the press! How would Lloyd accomplish this destruction of the First Amendment? By taxing privately owned broadcast media stations at the rate of 100% of their annual operating costs, and then institute a fine, if the station is not meeting his definition of "diversity"! And how are the revenues from those fines used? They are given to PBS to support their radical left-wing agenda! Lloyd also espouses a "revolution in America". Apparently he has never heard that one should, "be careful of what you wish for - you may get it." And he may discover that the revolution he gets is not the revolution he desired.

Dot #3. Cass Sunstein, a radical left-wing Harvard Law professor, appointed to the position of head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is the next nail in the coffin of the First Amendment. Below are a collection of quotes attributed to Cass Sunstein. It is believed that these quotes are accurate:
On The First Amendment -
“Consider the view that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns. The view is respectable, but it may be wrong, and prominent specialists reject it on various grounds. The National Association of Broadcasters and others with similar economic interests typically use the First Amendment in precisely the same way the National Rifle Association uses the Second Amendment. We should think of the two camps as jurisprudential twins.” (The most recent "prominent specialists" to support the Second Amendment was the 9th Circuit Court and the Supreme Court of The United States.)

Hunting & Animal Rights
“We ought to ban hunting. [Humans’] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings.”

Free Speech - “A legislative effort to regulate broadcasting in the interest of democratic principles should not be seen as an abridgment of the free speech guarantee.”

“I have argued in favor of a reformulation of First Amendment law. The overriding goal of the reformulation is to reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.”

“Consider the “fairness doctrine,” now largely abandoned but once requiring radio and television broadcasters:
…[I]n light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals. It is past time for a large-scale reassessment of the appropriate role of the First Amendment in the democratic process.”

Taxes
“In what sense in the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …” (The singular answer to all the questions asked is a resounding "YES!")

This idiot's list, which looks like something taken directly from Mao-Tse Tung's "Little Red Book", goes on and on. Sunstein stands firmly against anything remotely resembling our Constitution and the Democratic Republic to which it gave birth! He emphasizes the "democratic" part, but fails to even recognize the republic aspect of our system of government, and that is what differentiates it from a strictly democratic form of government.

Dot #4. Obama has called for "a civilian army, equal in number and strength to that of our military". Excuse me?? Why do we need a "civilian army" when we have a standing military, and against whom are these civilians supposed to "defend" us? Or, are they not supposed to defend the citizens of our nation... just the administration? Perhaps Obama feels the need for this "civilian army" because all our military personnel have taken an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...". It is the principles set forth in that document - above all else - that they have sworn to defend. Nowhere in the Constitution is the protection or defense of the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches of the government mentioned. The Constitution IS the establishment of the rules of governance of the free people of the United States.

This is just a sampling of the undermining of our nation by our own government. More than 90% of the so-called "Czars" (interesting choice of labels for somebody working within our government), are far-left radicals appointed by Obama to assist him in his elimination of the United States of America. In the immortal words of Pogo Possum, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The Democratic Republic of the United States of America can be rightfully restored. The accepted means would be by way of Congressional impeachment proceedings against Barack Obama. If Obama is replaced, then all his Czars would have to go, along with any other appointments he may have made. Our country is not safe so long as avowed Communist/Marxist/Socialist left-wing radicals are in unelected power positions within our own government!

"How could they impeach Obama?", you may be wondering. If intentional violation of the Constitution, mismanagement of national resources, and gross fiscal irresponsibility don't qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors", then I have no idea what might. Realistically however, with a lopsided Congress being controlled by the Democrats, the chances of impeachment proceedings being initiated are probably somewhere on the negative side of ZERO... unless there is an uproar from the public sector that Congress simply cannot ignore! You can be heard, but only if you speak loud and clear, in unison with a chorus of hundreds or thousands of voices. The question is... "Who will organize and lead that 'chorus'?" Will it be you... or will you wait for "George" to do it... and George doesn't?

May God save us from our own apathetic ignorance.

Outrageous Taxes Levied on Smokers and Drinkers

As of April 1st, 2009, Oregon State taxes on cigarettes increased by 59¢ per pack, and Federal taxes added another $1.01 per pack! This means that a pack of cigarettes will have a median price of about $6.00 per pack. Federal taxes on loose bulk tobacco, the kind used by the "roll your own" crowd, jumped from $1.09 per pound to $23.48 per pound! Statistically, this will create a new "class" of person. The working-class, low-income person is, statistically, far more likely to be the user of tobacco products, than are the middle- and upper-income persons. Assuming that "statistic" (I have not heard an exact percentage) is accurate, the new class will be the "well-to-do" working-class, lower-income person, who, regardless of the cost will refuse to surrender their tobacco habit, thereby making him or her the envy of his or her working-class neighbors. There's also an additional 50¢ per bottle tax on alcoholic beverages. This has been referred to as a "sin tax" for years, but it is, in fact, a pleasure tax. Tax those things that people enjoy, and you will reap greater profits for the Government than if you taxed things like cauliflower, vasectomies, or root canals! Certainly not everyone enjoys either or both of the aforementioned "sins", but enough people do enjoy them to make it very profitable for the Government. "So what?" you say "I don't smoke or drink, so it's no skin off my nose!" Well what do you enjoy? Fishing? Already taxed via "license fees". Boating? Already taxed via "registration fees". If you look at it from a practical standpoint, permits and fees are nothing more than a means of taxing people who enjoy certain activities. The "bowling fee" is probably coming soon, along with "golf permits", "softball licenses" and "Frisbee fees". Neither the Federal nor State Government "owns" the wild game of the USA, but the State sells you a "hunting license". Suppose that deer you just shot wandered over from one of the neighboring states just this morning? Does Oregon have the right to charge you a license fee to shoot a non-resident animal from the state of Washington or California? It's not like Oregon had anything invested in the maintenance of that animal. It's wild game! "Wild" implies that it belongs to nobody... "hunting license" is just a Government euphemism for another tax. And those "game tags"... one more tax!

The Obama administration seems to believe that we can be taxed into prosperity by adopting a more European tax standard - like 40+%. If that works so well, why are the Europeans experiencing the same kinds of difficulties the USA is having? We are not the Europeans!!
We are the United States of America, and there is no apology necessary for our ability to succeed in a free-market economy or to overcome adversity! Most Europeans envy us our successes, many resent us - not because we acted "superior", but because they felt inferior after we saved their collective asses in WWII. Yet even those that resent us still respect American technology, American creativeness, Americas willingness to help, and our military power.

Personally, I refuse to support his taxes, and smoked my last cigarette at 2pm, on April 3rd 2009! So far, so good.

There's an outside chance that I could be wrong about this... about the same chance that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has of becoming the Grand Ayatollah of Iran!