Obama orders removal of White House Mirrors

Obama has been campaigning against George Bush since 2007. Yesterday he continued that campaign, but it is beginning to dawn on him that Americans know Bush left the White House a long time ago. In fact, he's gone into a quiet retirement in Texas. However, when a president is in trouble and his administration is failing, it's standard procedure to blame the previous leader. After all, how would it look if the population started thinking the new president was the one with the bad ideas?

If people began thinking it was the current president who was on the wrong path that president might have to give himself and his ideals a close examination. But we've got a president who is unwilling to face the fact that his ideas have failed. We have a president who cannot admit to himself or the nation that his theories do not work in practice.

However, given the state of the economy, the White House has been overtaken by fear and worry. Well, not everyone is afraid or worrying. Michelle Obama is vacationing in grand style in Spain, leaving the president to celebrate his birthday alone. But even he did not want to be alone with himself. He is now so afraid of himself and so deeply concerned about who and what he is that he cannot look at himself. He does not want to catch sight of himself while he's at home. To end that possibility he had all the mirrors removed from the White House. Meanwhile, as he walks the halls of the empty White House, he repeats a chant, "It's all Bush's fault, it's all Bush's fault."

Time to admit Obamanomics has failed

It's no coincidence that Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, announced her retirement the day before Friday's brutal unemployment report. With 131,000 more jobs lost in July, and downward revisions of 97,000 for the previous two months, it's easy to see why she would start looking for the exits.

Romer is best known for drafting the February 2009 report "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan," which the White House used as an ammunition belt in the fight to gain passage of its $862 billion economic stimulus bill (the actual cost of which exceeds $1 trillion when interest is included). Romer predicted that following passage of the stimulus bill, unemployment would plateau below 8 percent last fall and by this month register at 7 percent. That's not close enough for government work, as unemployment stands at 9.5 percent today. It would be higher except that hundreds of thousands of frustrated job seekers have given up looking for new jobs and dropped out of the labor force.

Predictably, the stimulus bill has proven to be an extraordinary waste of borrowed money that has failed to create jobs, generate economic growth or do much of anything other than line the pockets of White House political allies. That and give $308 million in subsidies to BP before the Gulf oil spill disaster, and subsidize a study on what happens when monkeys snort coke.

As Romer fades back to her teaching post at Berkeley, Obama is adding to the economic misery by creating an environment of regulatory uncertainty. The Wall Street reform law Obama recently signed potentially requires 533 new regulations, 60 studies and 93 reports, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has 29 active rulemakings, and there are 100 new rules on the Labor Department's agenda and 26 at the Transportation Department.

Add Obama's determination to raise everybody's taxes by allowing the Bush cuts from 2001 and 2003 to expire Jan. 1, 2011, and it's easy to why banks, businesses and consumers are hoarding trillions of dollars that could otherwise spur economic growth. And we haven't even addressed the destructive effect on economic growth of Obama's nationalization of major portions of the economy, including the banks, health care and the auto industry.

The economy is stalling, unemployment seems stuck at European levels of idleness, the federal deficit and the national debt are at historic highs, public confidence in Congress is at its lowest-ever level and big majorities of Mainstream Americans say Obama has the country on the wrong path. Obamanomics has failed miserably and it's time for everybody in this town to admit it so we can move on.

Jimmy Carter -- Obama's Guide to a One-Term Presidency

Obama Is Going the Way of Carter

Monday, 02 Aug 2010


President Obama is heading for a one-term presidency like Jimmy Carter’s, Dave Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, tells Newsmax.

Liberal commentators like to cite downturns in support for Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan in their first terms as evidence that Obama could still gain re-election. But Keene points out a number of factors that are different in the case of Obama.

“Reagan came in during a recession, and by 1982, we were still in the middle of that,” Keene says. “We had high unemployment. We had inflation.” But, he says, “Even people who disagreed with Reagan in the polls at that time said that they had confidence in him.”

With Obama, “They don’t like what’s going on,” Keene says. “They think it’s wrong. They’re scared to death. Not scared of the unemployment, which is bad, but they are scared about the future.”

Keene is one of the country’s most astute political observers. The American Conservative Union, with 1 million members, runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington and publishes an annual "Rating of Congress," the gold standard for ideological assessments of members of Congress.

What concerns ordinary citizens is “runaway spending and whether the country is changing,” Keene says. “That is very different than just being concerned about the immediate economic environment.”

On top of those concerns, Obama is ideologically driven and will not change course toward a more moderate agenda, as did Clinton.

“He’s a true believer,” Keene says. “He an ideologue, and he’s going to try and get what he can get regardless of public opinion.”

While Obama’s approval ratings remains higher than approval of his policies, that’s because he is personally likeable, and people don’t like to admit to themselves they made a mistake in voting for him, Keene observes. “The last thing to go is approval ratings.”

When they do turn against a president, “It’s irreversible. And that’s what you are seeing among the independents, the real swing voters last time. They are now leaving him in droves.”

At the same time, Obama is losing support within his base and among Democrats in Congress.

“I don’t think that he has friends on the Hill,” Keene says. “He doesn’t get involved in all of that, and he doesn’t really care about them. They are there to pass his junk, and if they have to pay a price for that, that’s their problem, not his. You can understand why a lot of these Democratic House members are really upset saying, Didn’t we just walk the plank for you 16 times, and now you don’t even care.”

Keene says Republicans will regain a majority in the House, possibly by big margins.

“The Senate is a real long shot,” he says. “I would expect the Republicans to win five or six or seven seats, which is not bad.”

In the meantime, Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil disaster and other issues is “leading people to conclude that maybe this guy isn’t up to it,” Keene says. “When that happens, there’s really no way out because even if they like you, they are not going to keep you.”

As a result, Keene says, “Obama is on the verge of being an unelectable president like Jimmy Carter.”