Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Case Against Barack Obama...

"Obama was the perfect empty vessel, the perfect figurehead behind which the Woodstock and Communism-was-a-good-idea-only-poorly-executed crowd could hide behind while they gave it once last try......"

Lunatic's Asylum - I have not bashed President Frequent-Flyer-Miles for some time now, which is not surprising: in order to criticize someone for anything, it is first necessary for them to have done something. Barack Obama, as I have said many times before, is simply not a doer so it has been difficult to criticize anything after his first year in office -- except his lack of action. However, the last few months of Presidential inaction may have given new meanings to the words 'procrastination' and 'inertia'.

There simply hasn't been anything to talk about. The first year of the Obama Presidency was an easy topic to discuss and dissect, what with such juicy topics as nationalized health care, nationalized banks and auto companies, welfare-programs-disguised-as-economic-stimulus, the enormous waste of resources that was the actual Stimulus Bill, the twice-daily accusations of racism on somebody's part, the forceful implication by the administration and it's allies that mere principled disagreement with the Vacationer-in-Chief was tantamount to treason.

The second year of the Obama Experiment was simply chock full of politically-expedient bullshit; the Debt Ceiling Debates, the Libyan War, the call for an even bigger waste of taxpayer money (Son of Stimulus), Solyndra and the Green Energy Boondoggle.

Going into our Third Year with no one at the rudder, even the flow of politically-motivated crap has first slowed to a trickle and then eventually petered out into a state of complete non-action on anything. Once again Barack Obama, who's supposed to be a leader, has done what he's always done best: let someone else do (in this case, a Republican-led House of Representatives) and then cry "Obstructionist/Racist/Unfair!" at the top of his lungs.

Let's start at the very source of all of this apathy and political spinmeistering:


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It was clear to anyone who could draw breath without mechanical assistance in November of 2008 that Barack Obama was little more than a slick marketing campaign that took advantage of the sense of panic which gripped America at the time. If you bought the bill of goods that was the new-and-improved Kennedyesque kabuki play that was the rise of Obama, if you seriously believed in the nonsensical rhetoric about lower sea levels, international brotherhood, and an economic recovery sparked by more social and political welfare programs, then you cannot be in the least surprised that we have arrived at this current state of affairs, with a crippled President reduced to ducking hard issues and honest work.

It was perfectly clear then that Barack Obama was not prepared to do this job, and even more apparent that he didn't have the slightest clue as to how to do it. He didn't even have the intellectual honesty to admit that he wasn't even willing to learn, or to even try. Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid ran things for the first year of the Obama Presidency, dragging a clueless Commander-in-Chump along for the ride. When the ride ended at a Republican recapture of the House of Representatives, the people around President Doofus set about portraying their wounded and clueless man as the victim of a conspiracy of racist Tea Parties and nasty Republicans, and cried victim. 

When that didn't work, it was back to the old democratic (small 'd' intentional) party tactic of good old fashioned Class Warfare, and when that, also, failed to do anything except make Obama look like an even bigger retard, Plan C was to simply do nothing at all (the better to safeguard any chance of squeaking out another electoral win) and complaining that your political opposition is dead set against your special brand of mental diarrhea (did you really expect them to embrace it lovingly and enthusiastically?). All the while, Barack Obama pretends to be above the fray, to be shocked and concerned at the acrimony of the political landscape...and go on vacation...again.

We're now into Plan D, similar to what Muhammed Ali once coined the Rope-A-Dope Strategy; go totally defensive and protect yourself. Avoid the offensive by doing or saying anything that threatens to keep people interested in the political process, or which gives an opening to the ideological and political enemies of the regime. Barack Obama is more than willing to simply sit back, and make his political enemies punch themselves out, all the time sincerely hoping that the crowd gets bored or that your opponent will make that one fatal mistake. This plays out politically in the following fashion:

Obama says and does nothing, and lets the business of government be carried out through the two warring houses of Congress. The man who simply polluted the television screen with useless, bullshit speeches a year ago is now rarely seen. Every once in a while he presents what appears to be an opening in his defense, and then comes out punching when the enemy falls for the feint (and often, even when he doesn't). He then throws haymakers and prays that one connects, only to return to the defensive posture when he doesn't.

If you need a literal explanation of how this works in the political sense, then think of it this way: the recent Payroll Tax Cut debate has Obama actually agreeing to extend the tax cut, but only for two months. He basically says "You republicans love tax cuts, you should love this one..." knowing full well that he's only appearing to give them what they want, just on terms he knows that they cannot accept. When they, predictably, don't fall for this feint, Obama goes back on the defensive, saying the Other Side won't take "yes" for an answer, and is doing further damage to the economy.

Anyone with half a brain knows that a two month extension of a tax that does absolutely nothing to spur hiring or to increase demand for goods and services is no economic panacea. However, the purpose of this whole deception is not intended to produce any tangible result: it's simply to keep up the pretense that Obama, who does nothing, is actually trying to do something against unreasonable opposition.

Let's be completely fair to President Marriott-Suites: he was never prepared, by education, temperament, experience, or intelligence, to do this job. He was doubly unprepared when you stop to consider the the circumstances under which he took the job. Still, he should have known (or the people around him should have told him) all about the trouble he would soon face. Apparently, no one cared: the purpose of Obama's elevation wasn't so much to fix pressing national concerns as much as they were the last gasp of a 1960's brand of socialism. For that task, Obama was perfectly suited; for the task of running a country embroiled in two wars, teetering on the brink of insolvency, politically divided, Obama was the proverbial plaything of democratic party interests who knew how to manipulate the levers of power to their advantage.

 Obama was the perfect empty vessel, the perfect figurehead behind which the Woodstock and Communism-was-a-good-idea-only-poorly-executed crowd could hide behind while they gave it once last try. And now here he stands (when he isn't on vacation, that is) with the following record to run on in 2012: the economy is no better, and arguably worse. We may be withdrawing troops from Iraq, but the War in Afghanistan continues and we've become embroiled in a third in Libya (don't you believe that we're out of that one, yet); the democratic party -- barring some unforeseen miracle -- is poised to suffer electoral defeats next year that may banish it to the political hinterlands for a decade or more. The country's debt has tripled on Obama's watch. And quite frankly, one wonders just how much Obama hands-on time was spent in crafting the policies that will, now, be forever associated with him.

My guess is none. Obama simply reads what someone puts in his teleprompter, and exudes a pretense of intelligence and competence. Work and sacrifice is always somoene else's responsibility, whether it's America's fault for being too soft and lazy, or Republicans' fault for not passing a bunch of legislation and regulation that's tantamount to their own suicide note as elected officals or a party. All the while Barack Obama plays the victim; pretending to be misunderstood one day, a victim of racism the next, the helpless plaything of political forces beyond his control the day after that.

And every day that goes by, he does less and less, and accepts responsibility for even less than that. Note, however, that he doesn't seem to have any problem whatsoever picking up the paycheck, attending the fundraisers, or dragging Air Force One and the Secret Service to yet another tony vacation destination on someone else's dime.

Frankly, the less he does the better, so far as I'm concerned. He done enough, already, by being either easy to manipulate, too stupid or stubborn for his own good, or just plain ideologically unsuited to our current realities. It's often said that "Less is More", and never was this adage more apt/

If there's anything Barack Obama HAS accomplished, it is sadly this:

He has reinforced every negative stereotype about a black man it is possible to think of. He has also lent even more credence to the voices of the pro-colonialists of the past who warned that the dissolution of the old European Empires would spell world-wide catastrophe because never before in recorded history had a stable, economically-secure, militarily-strong democratic state ever been run by a black man. They have been proven right, unfortunately, and surprisingly it's all happened on the watch of an African-American, a native to this culture, educated in our finest universities, but unfortunately still obsessed with discredited racial, economic, and social theories that blind him to reality.

Barack Obama makes Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela look like fucking Pericles of Athens.

The tragedy of Barack Obama isn't so much that he hasn't been effective; it's that the next African-American with Presidential ambitions will wear his failed administration around his/her neck like a lead albatross. This isn't fair; but it will happen. Obama may have been the first Black man to be elected President, but he stands a very good chance of being the last...ever.

There is no reason to vote for Barack Obama in 2012, unless you, like him, still live in the 19th Century world of exaggerated Dickensian inequity; you still believe that welfare is better than work and personal merit, or are a lazy bastard who leaves the heavy lifting in all things to others and takes undue credit where available, or are somoene who lays approbation for your own failure at someone else's feet. If you believe that symbolism is more important than substane, if you believe that stirring up the animosities of the the past is more important than fixing the problems of the present from which they've spawned, if you believe with all your heart that stealing borrowed (Chinese) money from Peter to pay Paul is sound economic policy, then by all means, vote for Barack Obama.

I'll see you on the bread line, assuming there's any bakers left by then, and they haven't all been unionized, legislated out of existence, or the trade falls completely by the wayside because there's no more carbon-spewing bakeries. But, if you care about your country, if you'd like an opportunity to have a job one day, if you're sick and tired of the pantomime theatre that democratic party politics has become, if you're tired of seeing latter-day hippies roaming the streets demanding high-paying jobs geared to their useless Master's in Gender Studies, all the while complaining it's Wall Street's fault they're having to pay off college loans and wait tables, then go the other way. Romney, Gingrich, it almost doesn't matter, anymore, so long as it's somebody with a makes-sense plan and the seeming ability to at least put in a day's work. And vote Republican all the way down ticket, too. It only works if there's enough R's to make sure some of those ideas get a fair hearing and can be passed.


Cross Posted from lunaticsasylum.blogspot.com
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