Is This True?

Barack Obama says he wants to rein in government spending but if what Mitch McConnell is saying right now on TV is true, then we must wonder what Mr. Obama means.

Mr. McConnell has just said that in the last 36 days, the US Congress has spent more money than the United States has spent in the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, AND the Katrina recovery.

Is Mr. McConnell right? If so, where's the outrage? Or should there be no outrage?

Peace through dissent.

Henninger, Straight Up

The unintended consequences of the Obama Super-Duper Stimulus Plan are discussed in this incisive commentary by Daniel Henninger.

Mr. Obama's stimulus plan is in many ways a lot like a theological argument: it's based in faith and fraught with paradox. And then there's that fear element pushed at nearly every turn.


Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.


BG

The "Eternal Optimist"

Readers might recall the mild uproar over comments made last year when then-presidential candidate John McCain's economic advisor, Phil Gramm, described the recession in psychological terms. In fact, Mr. Gramm was forced to leave his post in the McCain campaign after making this shocking statement:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession..."

Needless to say, Barack Obama and his minions seized on Mr. Gramm's apparent misstep and exploited it for vast political gain.

Perhaps you've heard analysts repeatedly say that Mr. Obama is actually something of an economic suppressant. What is meant by this is that his rhetoric has had a depressing impact on Americans and the economy. In fact, as I write this, the DOW has fallen nearly 300 points in response to Mr. Obama's signing of his stimulus package. Surely anyone paying attention to economic trends knows about market psychology and consumer psychology. Surely anyone with a radio has heard reports like "oil prices rose steeply today over fears that the conflict in Israel and Gaza will escalate," or reports of similar kind. Psychology plays a major, often THE major, role in markets. (Right now I see this on the TV screen: "Dow plunges nearly 4,000 points since first financial 'rescue' talks.")

Psychology is in many ways nearly everything. And Barack Obama has not helped one bit.

This morning, as I was traveling to a dentist appointment and listening to the radio, I heard Don Imus ask George Stephanopoulos about the need for someone in the White House to begin boosting consumer confidence with some encouraging words. Mr. Stephanopoulos, as you know, is both a political analyst with his own TV show and a fan of Barack Obama. In his answer to Mr. Imus, Mr. Stephanapoulos admitted that psychology is a "major factor" in an economic recovery; he added that Barack Obama, in order to push his agenda through, may have pushed too hard on the "fear pedal."

And Mr. Stephanopoulos is not the only person to criticize Barack Obama for this sort of thing. Mr. Obama is, without a doubt, a master of spreading fear.

INCREDIBLE STUFF!

Here's Mr. Obama last Monday night as he concluded his "prime time" news conference. Note how much better a speaker he is than his predecessor:

And so when I hear people just saying, "Uh, we don't need to do anything, this is a spending bill not a stimulus bill," without acknowledging that by definition, uh, part of any stimulus package would include spending, that's the point, then what I get a sense of is that there is some ideological blockage there that, that needs to be cleared up. But I am the eternal optimist. Uh, I think that over time people respond, uh, to uh, to civility and, and rational argument. I think that's what the people, uh, of Elkhart and people around America are looking for and that's what I'm, that's the kind of leadership I'm gonna try to provide. Alright? Thank you guys.

I must say it is nice to see civility demonstrated so impeccably, especially with locutions like "ideological blockage...that needs to be cleared up." And then there's the "rational argument" thing -- as if Obama's opponents are irrational and he in his gracious and conciliatory manner embodies reason at every turn.

Attentive readers know that Mr. Obama actually amended his own convictions to make his case. Earlier he said that a stimulus package and spending were identical. Now, spending is only "part" of a stimulus package ... "by definition." Of course, at least this writer laughs at Mr. Obama's audacity and cunning: "'By definition', sir? Really?"

Mr. Obama's rhetoric will brook no dissent: his definitions leave no room for stimulus plans constructed solely of cutting taxes and government largess. He knows his definitions, and they are static.

David Axelrod, chief Obama advisor and extremely highly-overrated thinker, told Chris Wallace Sunday the same sort of drivel, namely, that a stimulus package and spending are essentially identical. But that's the nature of propagandizing: say a thing just often enough to make it true. Mr. Axelrod is, after all, precisely where he is because he is expert in propaganda (which, of course, requires high-level thinking skills, albeit deceptive ones, so I concede, in part, that Axelrod might not be entirely overrated).

Mr. Obama believes the Bush tax cuts prove that such cuts don't stave off recession and that they may even cause recession. This from the same man who asserted on the campaign trail that Bush spent too much money. Moreover, if the "failed policies of the past," as Mr. Obama is wont to describe such things, led to this recession, then it must be asked which failed policies, the cuts or the spending. And if the New Deal was so effective, or increased spending under any president is an irrepressible inducement to economic growth, how come recessions still follow? If spending did not keep the economy in recovery under many different presidents, then why are we emulating the "failed policies of the past?"

The fact is this: the vast majority of Americans AND economists believe that the BEST stimulus package is one heavy on tax cuts combined with reduced spending. During hearings about the Bush tax cuts early in the Bush tenure, Allan Greenspan testified that the tax cuts would indeed work AS LONG AS THERE WAS A DECREASE IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING. It was a statement that still rings in my ears. And yet it was, and continues to be, utterly ignored. (It would be interesting to hear Greenspan now.)

But, alas! Barack Obama has everything in place: he has a package heavy on spending that also includes significant tax cuts. Hence, in the end, no one will be able to divine -- should the economy recover -- what portion of the stimulus was effective. Plus, as I've said in other posts here, the lower fuel costs we are all enjoying are part of a current windfall that can only assist recovery in ways profound and effective. And despite our inability to know whether this stimulus is ever effective, Barack Obama will insist that it was, will be, and ever shall be, effective. Perfectly effective.

In the end, it is all about psychology ... the psychology of fear, arrogance and conceit.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

He Is A Liar

A few months ago I finished reading Miguel De Cervantes' amazing work, Don Quixote. The novel is 940 pages long, and it introduces to the reader 669 characters. It took me about four weeks to read it.

I did not read Cervantes' masterwork, arguably the first of all novels, because I had to. I did not read it because failure to do so would result in disaster. I did not read it because it claimed to contain all manner of remedy and solution. I did not read it because it promised to stave off some inevitable slide into depression, sorrow, or destitution. I read it simply because of desire: I had read a condensed version in college with the expressed aim of reading it in its entirety at some later date. That date has now come and gone.

Barack Obama is about to sign into law an emergency bill full of all kinds of promises; the bill is over a thousand pages long and promises to help in this time of economic recession. At the very least, or so it goes, if the bill does not turn the American economy around, it promises to ease all Americans' pain. It may not stop the recession -- the mother of all recessions, allegedly -- but it will ensure that the recession will be "less bad," less deep, less painful.

Mr. Obama has told everyone in America that unless the bill is passed, all hell MAY break loose, a hell so vile, so vulgar, we may never escape from it. This, in a real sense, is allegedly the Al Qaida of all recessions: We must act boldly and swiftly, without wavering, to preempt a disaster that may -- or may not -- come! Mr. Obama stands upon the trash heap of the American economy, shouting to the world through a megaphone.

The solution to our great worries is a "vital" bill over 1,000 pages long. This bill is so DESPERATELY needed for our DESPERATE times, that every person who voted in favor of it, and the person who will sign it into law, has not bothered to read it. In fact, there are no reports coming from the White House that Mr. Obama is holed up in his study poring over his first legislative masterpiece. No one has even announced that Mr. Obama -- or anyone else! -- has simpy read this massive, cumbersome and unwieldly tome. No one has even hinted that tomorrow, or Tuesday, Mr. Obama will probably come out with a revised and edited bill, one that conforms not only to his image of excellence in literature, but also one that has been analyzed to see if the work meets its objectives. And Mr. Obama's preface to his novel bill -- there really has never anything like it before -- has been at times petulantly and amateurishly presented; yet he boasts without knowing the contents of his own work that something -- apparently anything -- is better than nothing.

Welcome to the new politics, far more vapid than the old. Nihilism seems more attractively informing and engaging than this cynical approach to stimulate economic recovery.

And cynical is the apt word for what is going on. Mr. Obama is just cynical enough to have his minions denounce critics with the apparently incisive retort that "no one ever reads appropriations bills." He is just cynical enough to publicly and unabashedly proclaim that doing anything is better than doing nothing. He is just cynical enough to confidently swagger toward the podium and suggest that Americans don't mind enslaving themselves to his massive debt for generations -- in the land of the free. He is just cynical enough to tell Americans -- except for his own cabinet appointees -- that we all must show our patriotism by "giving back," by sacrificing through hard work and persistence the monies earned fairly and honestly. He is just cynical enough to earmark billions of dollars to many of his campaign's largest donors. He is just cynical enough to believe you don't really care.

Indeed, it may be true that no one reads appropriations bills, which is a shame. But this is no ordinary appropriations bill: this is nearly a trillion dollars in EMERGENCY outlays. This is SUPPOSED to work. But who believes Barack Obama when his own party has not read its own answer to his warnings? Attentive Americans respect in an instant those who voted against the bill BECAUSE they have not read it; Republicans who stonewalled did so largely because the NEW and IMPROVED president and his minions did not provide enough copies of the bill or even enough time to read it before putting it to a vote. (Apparently, it is historically [in a recent sense] the case that bills of this magnitude are presented in digital format so analysts can search for key words to expedite the analytical and editing process. Not with this bill, which came over the transom in print form. Moreover, the Obama administration promised all bills would be posted for five days on the White House website so the public could comment. But not this bill. Such actions and inactions prove how cynical and grotesque this new government actually is.)

The reality is that you've been deceived. Barack Obama is both a liar and a mere Yes Man. He has not read his own work; he has no idea what he is actually signing. Yet he tells us we live in desperate times and thus must act responsibly. His very actions speak against his own alarmism and moral convictions. And since he has not read his bill but will sign it anyway, we know he does not care that he puts his name to the work of ghostwriters. He is merely saying Yes to those who are REALLY leading him. He's not in charge. He's merely the front man. How else to explain his shameless signature on a bill he has not read -- or drafted -- that claims will heal all woes? This is supposed to be HIS bill, his legislative success. How can that be when he can't take the time† to read a manuscript presented in his name?

It is hard to believe that this man won an election. Any election.


Peace through dissent.

©2009/Bill Gnade. All Rights Reserved.

†Even if Mr. Obama reads the entire bill, his signature explicitly endorses the entirety of the bill. Can you imagine that this alleged master politician and this alleged master of language would read this bill and not hold it for further editing, emending and review? Yes, it is easy to imagine because this is not about his actual leadership. Clearly, he is not his own. Welcome to the "new."

Triskaidekaphilia: A Friend of the Jason Act

Barack Obama will have to be a true friend of Friday the 13th, particularly if Congress agrees today on the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package deemed absolutely essential by his presidential decree. If the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package does clear Congress today, one rather doubts Mr. Obama will sign the bill on Friday the 13th, despite his promise to sign it immediately. (And if he does not sign it today†, rumor has it that Stevie Wonder will be performing "Superstition" during the formal signing ceremony.)

The Friday the 13th bill, hereafter known as the Jason Act, is the economic equivalent of global warming legislation. Barack Obama's urgent and rather plaintive pleas for quick action, and his dire warnings about imminent disaster and catastrophe, have not been the least bit scientific. He has been warning us in religious terms: this MIGHT happen; this COULD be the consequence; repent, and follow me. His alarmist, fear-mongering rhetoric (I've long noted that the left, including Barack Obama, is the fear-mongering set in domestic and international politics) about stimulating the economy is built on the identical fallacies global warming activists rely on -- the non causa pro causa fallacies where correlations are confused with causalities (a word which, I note, looks a lot like casualities).

Since Barack Obama is unable to tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package is not passed "immediately," he therefore cannot tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package IS passed. Knowing this, he and his disciples, particularly those posing as economists, have already begun to change their language. This stimulus is not so much meant to get America out of recession. It is meant to prevent the recession from being as bad as it MIGHT be. This is not a stimulation of the economy as much as it is a bandage: it is not meant to make things better, only to make things "less worse." Sort of like Al Gore's pleas to make imminent global devastation "less worse."

Such vagueness is endemic to liberal political agendas; you find obfuscation and red-herrings rubbed all over the landscape of liberal political arguments. Liberals don't really want you to follow the actual logic trail. They'd rather cloud and misdirect. They'd rather you not actually ever catch the fox (because that would be cruel).

The stimulus package as it stands is set to hit the streets at about the same time the economy might be reviving -- on its own. The huge economic windfall that has hit America in the form of vastly lower fuel costs WILL show up in a few months as a recession of the recession; lower fuel costs are stimulating the economy right now though proof of such a stimulus will not be seen for some time. And all this WITHOUT Obama's stimulus package. But throw his package into the mix, and attempts to clearly discern what aided the soon-to-be lauded "Greatest Recovery Since Roosevelt" will be clouded by political pollution. Was it just the lower fuel prices that turned the economy around? Was it just the natural cycle of the market? Was it the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus package? Was it the expansion of government programs and projects? Alas, we will not know. And that is why this stimulus is a joke: Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have placed every idea, good or bad (mostly bad), into this package in hopes that, throwing it at America, something will stick.

One good thing: We've got nearly four weeks behind us of America's Great National Embarrassment.

Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.

†And if Barack Obama signs it tomorrow, will the Great And Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Package? One wonders.
©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

The Complete Master Of Language

The god of language has spoken:

"Then you get the argument that this is not a stimulus bill, it is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point." -- Barack Obama

Critics need not bother the master with clarity of meaning. His deliberate use of language precludes them from even exploring the nuances of words in his presence. That Mr. Obama fails to note that tax cuts, tax holidays, and the like are entirely stimulative without the nasty necessity of spending a cent, proves only how stiffly precise language is when he is in command. He is, after all, editor-in-chief. Linguistic flexibility, by the way, is not a quality of "change we can believe in."

He can stutter and stammer and stall all he wants; he can read everything from a tele-prompter or note card -- even the simplest announcements -- but we are reassured by his minions we can be confident he has his finger on the red pen of self-editing.

Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.

©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

No, We Aren't

(Inauguration Day, 2009)

It is ironic that Jamie Foxx, one of many pop-culture icons on hand Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial lauding America's first pop-culture president, Barack Obama, would quote the late Thurgood Marshall during early inaugural festivities:

“Each of you as an individual must pick your own goals. Listen to others but do not become a blind follower. Do not wait for others to move out. Move out yourself. Where you see wrong or inequality, speak out, because this is your country, this is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”

Has there ever been in the history of the American people a more blind, conformist, passive and incurious mass than those who have deified Barack Obama? Have you met a single Barack Obama supporter who has an original thought in his or her head about the man? Have you met anyone informed about who this parvenu actually is, what he stands for politically, and what he has actually ever accomplished? This is a president without a resúmé, and yet "change has come!" This is a president who has neither a record of success nor one of failure, and yet "hope is here!" Granted, a case can be made that the election of George W. Bush to the office of president is incontrovertible proof that one needs no qualifications to serve in the Oval Office, but at least Bush had been something, even if that something was a failure. He may have only been a governor of a large state; he may have only been a poor businessman. But at least he had a record, a provenance; even if his life was replete with failure and mediocrity, we could map those failings for ourselves. But Barack Obama, whose only notable qualification is that he has been perpetually running for president, is surrounded by millions of folks who adore him, blindly, mindlessly (and even cynically); he is revered for doing nothing more than, as Hillary Clinton said during her campaign, giving a speech (or two). Jamie Foxx urges the very people who have acted like a common, disinterested and mindless herd not to "become blind followers." The irony is too great not to note.

Inauguration Day. This is NOT a great day for America, though I will say it is an exciting and important day for Americans who have been under the impression that America has been such a bastion of racism that the election of a person with darker skin than white could never be elected to the presidency. I am happy for those who find some message of potential and possibility in his election. But today is a bad day for those who disagree with the over-arching theme of the inauguration -- that "We Are One" -- for the simple reason that America is not one. Over 56 million people voted against Barack Obama: 46% of those who bothered to go to the polls believed he was not fit to be president. And there is no evidence -- NONE! -- that those who opposed him, and STILL oppose him, harbor ANY racial ill-will against him simply because his skin is dark. There are millions of disenfranchised voters not applauding this day -- for reasons having everything to do with ideology, with policies -- and nothing to do with race. Those who voted against Barack Obama do not see "change"; instead they see 1992 and corruption, scandal, in-fighting, smoke-and-mirrors promises, and deception.

We are not one.

I am grateful to a Boston radio talk show host for reminding me yesterday of one of the political left's mantras repeated during the bulk of the Bush presidency. That mantra was shouted even by Hillary Clinton in the wake of Bush's (and her) decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq: We heard "Dissent is not unpatriotic!" from all sectors of our nation's disenchanted. But if dissent was patriotic under the Bush regime, it is surely as glorious under the Obama regime. I admit I do not hold much in common with the host who reminded me of my right to dissent, but I do accept his commentary that the double-standards inherent, not only in the press but in the Democratic Party itself, are so despicable that dissent is not only the only option, it is the noblest option.

For this citizen to be in good standing with his own conscience and convictions, dissent is my only choice. And no, I am not afraid of the ridiculous rejoinder that I must therefore be a person who supports inequality, injustice, racism, oppression, torture, war and "the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer." Moral rectitude is not, even by a long shot, the banner flying over the Democratic Party and its new president. I dissent against deception. I dissent against idolatry, of worshiping a mere man. I dissent against the claim that "America's standing in the world" as defined by pop-culture has been elevated by the new imperialists moving into the White House, led by a pop-idol president. I dissent against the obvious socialistic plans of the new regime; I dissent against the fear-mongering used by Mr. Obama to push down the throats of the American people a "stimulus package" that we need "urgently," and I do so noting that such dire and frightful forecasts coming from Mr. Obama's lips are religious in nature and not one whit factual: he claims to know outcomes he cannot know, telling us we "must" do X and Y before it is "too late," that we are in "imminent danger" and we MUST act with a "preemptive" strike against this mother-of-all recessions. (The economic alarm rung by Mr. Obama sounds exactly like the "non causa pro causa" global warming fallacies used by the likes of Mr. Al Gore.)

I dissent against the idea that America looks to a president, some guy in Washington, for inspiration. For guidance. For direction and hope and a moral compass. I dissent against the day we have become so pathetic we must be reminded by a president and a Congress that we need "national days of service," as if America heretofore had been struggling to find volunteers: that until we all saw Barack Obama roll paint on a wall yesterday, Americans had no idea that helping others was a good thing. I dissent against the idea that kindness is to be a matter of law, and not a matter of grace.

And not only do I dissent against the welfare state, I dissent against those who believe the state -- the collective unified as one -- and not the individual acting in freedom, is the basis of the American constitution. I dissent against the new master/plantation mentality already evident in the new regime -- that the master will provide jobs, stimulus, safety, ease -- if we all just comply, if we all just pick our cotton and stop our partisan bickering -- and give the fruits of our slavish labors back to the master to redistribute fairly among those who are "less fortunate." I dissent against a state that seeks to enslave and indebt its citizens to itself. And I dissent against the Ponzi scheme that is the Obama regime's economic plan.

I dissent against the blindness of people like Bono -- who has made himself into a god, perhaps a lesser god. He seeks to eradicate poverty, and yet can countenance -- and participate in -- an inauguration costing more than $105 million. Recall the OUTRAGE over President Bush's intent in 2004 of spending a mere $40 million for his inauguration -- and Bush's party was during the heights of a sterling and thriving economy. Today home foreclosures are at an all time high; Barack Obama has warned us of how dire things are in this recession. And yet things are not so dire that he and his minions would consider refraining from blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on pop-idols and party favors. (Barack Obama believes Americans will overlook these huge expenditures, or so it is reported.)

We are not one. And no we can't.

In honor of the words of Thurgood Marshall, I shall indeed pick my own goals. I will NOT be a blind follower. I will fight injustice and evil and idolatry everywhere I see it. I will NOT be like the common herd that has gathered at the beck-and-call of pop-culture, baptized by the zeigeist, at the National Mall.

Peace through dissent.

BG