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Ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown

by Mojambo ( 128 Comments › )
Filed under Debt, Economy, Election 2014, Elections 2012, Elections 2016, Hillary Clinton, Media, Politics, Republican Party, unemployment at June 10th, 2013 - 8:05 am

The only thing though we can hope for (since Obama will NEVER be impeached) is to weaken him so much that we can limit the damage he is doing (and also hurt Hillary Clinton if she runs in2016).

by Nile Gardiner

The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011, when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is significantly worse for the White House, with the Obama administration engulfed in a series of major scandals (IRS persecution of conservative groups, the Benghazi debacle, and the Justice Department seizure of journalists’ phone records) that are not only eroding trust in government but also in the office of the president itself. This is undoubtedly a period of steep decline for the Obama presidency, whose imperial-style big government approach is being increasingly questioned not only by American voters, but also by formerly subservient sections of the liberal-dominated mainstream media. In contrast to his first term, Barack Obama is finding himself less and less shielded by the press, and far more vulnerable to public criticism.

With good reason, Americans don’t feel optimistic about their country’s future with President Obama at the helm. According to the RealClear Politics polling average, less than one in three Americans believe the United States is heading in the right direction. A new Economist/YouGov poll has the president’s job approval rating at just 46 percent, with 49 percent of Americans disapproving. Strikingly, 35 percent of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the president’s job performance, 15 points higher than the number who “strongly approve.” A mere 31 percent of Americans surveyed by YouGov believe the United States is “generally headed in the right direction.”

In addition to damaging scandals, which have raised major questions over the integrity and judgment of the Obama administration, there remain deep-seated concerns over the US economy and the enormous national debt, widespread opposition to the president’s health care reforms, and significant fears over national security. Barack Obama’s second term could not have started more badly for the “hope and change” president, who, with three and a half years in office remaining, looks more and more like a lame duck. Here are ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in trouble, with the outlook exceedingly grim for the White House.

1. The American public is losing trust in Obama

A recent Quinnipiac survey found that less than half of Americans (49 percent) now view their president as “honest and trustworthy.” According to Quinnipiac, the series of recent scandals have begun to significantly dent the president’s standing with the American people, with his approval rating standing at just 45 percent. The IRS targeting of conservative groups has been particularly damaging, with 76 percent of voters supporting the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal, and a series of Congressional hearings putting the Obama administration on the spot. Another survey, by NBC News/The Wall Street Journal, reveals a great deal of public concern over the “overall honesty and integrity of the Obama administration,” with more than half of Americans agreeing that recent scandals have “raised doubts” about the government’s trustworthiness. 41 percent of Americans believe that President Obama himself is “totally” or “mainly” responsible for the government’s handling of Benghazi – just 19 percent believe he bears no responsibility. On the IRS issue, only 24 percent say the president is not responsible in any way, while a third of Americans think he is largely culpable.

2. The Obama presidency is imperial in style and outlook

Leading conservative talk radio host Mark Levin was absolutely right when he blasted Barack Obama on Fox News back in January as “an imperial president.” It would be hard to find a US president in recent times who has behaved in a more arrogant fashion than President Obama, and that includes Richard Nixon. The Obama White House is routinely disdainful of criticism, sneeringly dismissive of Congressional opposition, nasty and brutish towards dissenting voices in the media, and completely lacking in humility. Even veteran reporters such as Bob Woodward, one of two journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, have found themselves on the sharp end of the White House’s boot after publishing unflattering stories. Woodward was warned earlier this year by a senior White House official that he would “regret” his remarks about the president’s handling of the sequester issue.  [………]

3. Most Americans are still worried about the economy

Economic concerns are the top priority for Americans according to Gallup. In a recent poll, 86 percent of Americans agreed that “creating more jobs” and “helping the economy grow” are the top two priorities. “Making government work more efficiently” came third, at 81 percent. Despite a slight uptick in economic growth, and improving housing prices in some markets, the United States still has deep-seated economic problems. Most Americans are still nervous about the economy. According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, just 46 percent of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing in handling the economy. 64 percent of Americans are “somewhat dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the state of the US economy today. Only 32 percent believe the economy will get better in the next 12 months. 58 percent of Americans still think the country is in an economic recession.

Strong job creation and robust economic growth are being significantly hampered in the United States by declining economic freedom, including rising tax rates, the growing burden of government regulation, and a rising dependency culture. Unemployment still remains at 7.5 percent, with nearly 12 million Americans out of work. 47 million Americans are living on food stamps (the highest figure in American history), and a staggering 128 million Americans are now dependent upon government programmes. A full economic recovery still remains far away. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost to the recession. [………]

4. America’s level of debt is frightening

America’s economic problems are compounded by its huge debt problem. Barack Obama continues to lead the United States down the path of European Union-style decline, with incredible levels of public debt, currently standing at $16.85 trillion, a per person debt of $53,000. President Obama has done nothing to confront the vast entitlement programmes that are a yoke around the necks of future generations of American taxpayers, while taking an axe to defense spending, resulting in politically driven cuts that undermine America’s national security while doing nothing to reduce the country’s debt burden. As he made clear in his Inauguration address in January, President Obama remains committed to a big spending, big government vision, and one that will force the United States down the road to economic ruin unless it is reversed.

5. Obamacare is hugely expensive and increasingly unpopular

A key liability that will further expand America’s debt mountain is Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), the Obama administration’s hugely ambitious and expensive health care reform initiative that threatens to dramatically increase the cost of healthcare for ordinary Americans as well as businesses, when it goes into effect next year. Forbes Magazine reports that in California Obamacare is expected to increase individual health insurance premiums by 64 to 146 percent. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimate puts a $1.85 trillion price tag on Obamacare in its first 10 years. A clear majority of Americans oppose Obamacare. The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows 54 percent opposing the law. A Reason/Rupe poll found that a mere 32 percent support it. An April poll by the Kaiser Foundation, and reported by Politico, revealed that “just 35 percent of Americans view Obamacare ‘very’ or somewhat’ favorably, down 8 points since Election Day.” [………]

6. Independents are rapidly withdrawing support for Obama

As Gallup polling has consistently shown, America is ideologically a conservative nation, with conservatives outnumbering liberals by a nearly two to one margin. Strikingly, as Gallup has found, more than 50 percent of Americans view Obama as more liberal than themselves, with just 27 percent of voters declaring that they share the same ideology as the president. Despite a clear advantage in terms of ideology, the Republicans have struggled to win over sufficient numbers of “moderates” (roughly a third of US voters) in the last two presidential elections, many of whom identify themselves as “Independents.” There are signs, however, that support for Obama among Independents is dramatically falling.  [………] By a 45 percent to 35 percent margin, Independents believe that Republicans in Congress are doing a better job than President Obama on handling the economy.

7. The liberal media is less deferential to Obama in his second term

The Washington Post, standard bearer of the liberal establishment in the US capital, has labeled the IRS scandal a “horror story” for the Obama administration. Even The New York Times, the de facto inflight newspaper of Air Force One, recently carried a headline on its front page declaring: “Onset of Woes Casts Pall Over Obama’s Policy Aspirations.” The liberal mainstream media closed ranks behind Barack Obama for most of his first term in office, and relentlessly pummeled his presidential election opponent Mitt Romney ahead of the November 2012 vote, in a shameless display of bias towards their favoured candidate. [………..] Meanwhile, MSNBC, President Obama’s biggest flag-waver on cable news, has seen its ratings plummet in recent months, with Fox News further building its dominance of the ratings.

8. The Benghazi scandal has been extremely damaging

Much as the Obama administration tries to downplay the significance of the Benghazi scandal, it refuses to go away, with 46 percent of Americans believing “the administration deliberately misled the American people about the events surrounding the death of the American Ambassador to Libya” according to Quinnipiac. Like the IRS scandal, the Benghazi debacle has undermined trust and confidence in the Obama presidency. 58 percent of Americans in the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey agree that that the State Department’s handling of the Benghazi attack raises doubts “about the overall honesty and integrity of the Obama administration.”

In the aftermath of the barbaric killing of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012 at the hands of al-Qaeda linked Islamist militants, the Obama administration tried to pass off the brutal attack as a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that hardly anyone has seen. Undoubtedly worried that the killings would upset the White House’s carefully crafted narrative in the lead up to the 2012 election that al-Qaeda was in retreat, administration officials sought to downplay the broader significance of the attack in the run up to the presidential vote, a strategy that succeeded in the short term, but has since imploded in the face of sustained Congressional scrutiny. Not only has Benghazi damaged the president, it also hurt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s image too.  [………..]

9. Obama’s national security strategy is weak and confusing

President Obama’s recent address to the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington has to go down as one of the most weak-kneed speeches by a US Commander-in-Chief in modern times. His call for a winding down of the global war against Islamist terror was naïve in the extreme, and sent completely the wrong signal to America’s enemies at a time when al-Qaeda is strengthening its presence in parts of the Middle East as well as North, West and East Africa. [……….] His Guantanamo policy is deeply out of touch as well with American public opinion. US polls have consistently shown strong support for keeping the camp in operation. This is hardly a strategy that will endear President Obama to an American public that feels less safe today than it did in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

10. Obama is “leading from behind” on the world stage

American foreign policy has become even more weak and incoherent in President Obama’s second term. On the world stage the United States has not been this powerless and disengaged since the days of Jimmy Carter. “Leading from behind” is no longer just a mantra for the Obama administration – it has become its philosopher’s stone. Washington’s leadership on the Syria crisis is non-existent, with the White House content to farm out its foreign policy to Moscow and the United Nations. On Afghanistan, Obama’s position is one of retreat and a handover of power back to the Taliban. Iran is barely mentioned by the president, as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions march on. Meanwhile key allies such as Britain are treated with contempt and lectured to on European policy as though it were a schoolboy being reprimanded for speaking out of turn, while the Special Relationship and the transatlantic alliance continue to be eroded. [……..]

Read the rest –  The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 2013. Ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown

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Posted in Debt, Economy, Election 2014, Elections 2012, Elections 2016, Hillary Clinton, Media, Politics, Republican Party, unemployment | 128 Comments »

Amateur hour continues as the Obama White House tries damage control over the Churchill bust snub to Britain

by Mojambo ( 146 Comments › )
Filed under Argentina, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, UK, World War II at July 31st, 2012 - 2:00 pm

If it were not so pathetic, the amateurism of this White House would actually be funny.  Let’s face it – Obama hates Winston Churchill, who although a God awful military strategist,  was our firm friend and an anti-Communist.  For third world liberationists such as Barack Obama father and son,  Churchill was an imperialist and they  prefer to admire people such as Mao Zedong.

by Nile Gardiner

The White House is continuing to tie itself in knots over the Churchill bust issue. As I noted in my previous blog, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer was forced to back peddle furiously this weekend after he ludicrously denied that a loaned bust of Sir Winston Churchill had been sent back to the British government by the White House in 2009 soon after President Obama took office. In fact he wrongly accused Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer of an outright lie when he brought up the matter of the bust in an op-ed piece for The Post last Friday. After the British Embassy pointed out that Pfeiffer’s comments were factually wrong, the White House staffer issued an embarrassing clarification in the form of an “update” on the White House blog.

Pfeiffer’s gaffe over the Churchill bust has continued to build momentum in the US media and on Twitter, with former ABC and Fox News correspondent Brit Hume describing the whole episode as “amateur hour at the White House.” Even The New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal called the White House’s handling of the issue “bumbling and amateurish.” A follow-up piece by Mr. Krauthammer calling on Dan Pfeiffer to apologise for his attack is currently the most-read article on influential US news aggregator RealClear Politics.

The issue was also raised on Monday morning at a White House press conference given by Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest, who has added fuel to the fire with his adamant rejection of the idea that President Obama might have snubbed the British by deciding to turf the Churchill bust out of the Oval Office. In response to a question by an American journalist, Earnest replied (watch the video here at RealClear Politics) that the White House was determined to combat “a myth floating in the darker corners of the Internet” regarding the motives behind returning the Churchill bust:

Question – Can you tell us why the White House decided to weigh in on this whole Winston Churchill bust scandal, and whether you guys are gonna clarify what bust is where, and … [drown out]

Josh Earnest – It is almost like a bad Sherlock Holmes script, right? The case of the missing Winston Churchill bust? Uh – the reason – uh –that we waited on Friday is because there is – uh – a myth floating in some of the darker corners of the internet that suggests that upon taking office the president went out of his way to snub the British people by prematurely returning the bust of Winston Churchill that had occupied a prominent place in the Oval Office of the previous president.

That’s not true. Uh – as the White House curator has previously explained and I believe as we’ve explained on the end of the day on Friday – uh – the bust was loaned to President Bush by the British government. Uh – as is customary at the conclusion of President Bush’s term and before President Obama entered the Oval Office – uh – the bust was returned to the British Embassy.

[………]

Mr. Earnest, who is clearly no Sherlock Holmes, did not elaborate what he meant by the “dark corners” of the Internet, but he was almost certainly referring to the British press in an insulting fashion, which reported widely on the decision to return the bust and how the move was causing consternation at the time among British officials concerned about a possible weakening of the Special Relationship under President Obama.

First to break the story of the Churchill bust being returned to the British Embassy was The Sunday Telegraph’s Tim Shipman (now at The Daily Mail), who wrote in February 2009:

Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats. A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Two weeks earlier, in January 2009, The Times had revealed the bust had been removed from the Oval Office and placed in storage, in a piece headlined: “Churchill bust casts shadow over the Special Relationship” (no longer online, but available on news databases such as Lexis/Nexis). Significantly, The Times noted that the British government, led at the time by Gordon Brown, was keen for the bust to go back to the Oval Office:

Britain wants President Obama to put a bronze bust of Sir Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office, where it stood for the past eight years as a symbol of an enduring special relationship with America. The White House is not so sure.

[……..]

The bronze was lent to George Bush by Tony Blair in 2001 from the Government Art Collection for the duration of his presidency. It  is now due to be returned.

However, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington said yesterday: “We have made it clear that we would be pleased to extend the loan should Mr Obama so wish.” He added that no response had been received; yesterday the White House declined to comment.

It is very clear from these articles in two of Britain’s leading newspapers that the British government gave every opportunity for the Obama White House to keep the Churchill bust, but the president chose not to do so.  After all, he could easily have accommodated both Lincoln and Churchill in the Oval Office. The White House, however, remains firmly in denial over the return of the bust, which carries great symbolism on both sides of the Atlantic.

By any measure this was an insensitive snub to America’s closest friend and ally, at a time when 10,000 British troops were fighting alongside their US allies on the battlefields of Afghanistan, and continue to do so today. And this was no isolated incident, but part of a broader pattern of disdain for the US-British alliance, culminating recently with the Obama administration’s appalling decision to back Argentina’s call for UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands. The White House is quick to mouth platitudes about the Special Relationship, but in practice clearly doesn’t believe in it.

Read the rest – Churchill bust debacle: ‘amateurish’ Obama White House remains firmly in denial over snub to Britain

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Posted in Argentina, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, UK, World War II | 146 Comments »

An updated list – Obama’s top ten insults against Great Britain – 2012 edition

by Mojambo ( 43 Comments › )
Filed under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, France, Russia, UK at March 15th, 2012 - 11:30 am

As Yael from Boker Tov, Boulder points out – Obama hates Britain almost as much as he hates Israel. If I were Romney I would mention to America and to Obama in any debate that the first thing I would do as president would be to request the return of the bust of Winston Churchill.  How sad that Britons (according to polls) so wanted Obama to win in 2008.

hat tip – Boker Tov, Boulder

by Nile Gardiner

For the past two years I have published a list of Barack Obama’s biggest insults against America’s foremost ally, Great Britain, during his time in office. Here is an updated list to accompany President Obama’s hosting this week of an official visit to the White House by the British Prime Minister, as a reminder that a basketball trip to Ohio and a bells and whistles state dinner do not erase a track record of major insults by the Obama administration since it took office.

Mr Obama has been by far the most anti-British president in modern American history, kicking off his presidency with the removal of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, and continuing today with a policy of knifing Britain in the back over the Falklands. He will be all smiles and full of platitudes this week when he greets Mr Cameron in Washington, but the fact remains that for President Obama the Special Relationship has been largely a blip on his teleprompter screen, in his eyes an anachronism of a bygone era, rather than the engine of the free world.

Here are the 2012 rankings:

1. Siding with Argentina over the Falkland Islands

This has remained the top insult for three years running. For sheer offensiveness it’s hard to beat the Obama administration’s brazen support for Argentina’s call for UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands, despite the fact that 255 British servicemen laid down their lives to restore British rule over the Islands after they were brutally invaded in 1982. In a March 2010 press conference in Buenos Aires with President Cristina Kirchner, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Argentina a huge propaganda coup by emphatically backing the position of the Péronist regime.

In June 2011, Mrs Clinton slapped Britain in face again by signing on to an Organisation of American States (OAS) resolution calling for negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, a position which is completely unacceptable to Great Britain. To add insult to injury, the Obama administration has insisted on using the Argentine term “Malvinas” to describe the Islands in yet another sop to Buenos Aires.

In 2012, against a backdrop of growing aggression by Argentina, including efforts to blockade international vessels fishing in Falkland waters, the Obama administration continued to undercut Britain. In January and February the State Department again supported direct negotiations between Argentina and Britain, parroting the line taken by Buenos Aires.

2. Calling France America’s strongest ally

In January last year, President Obama held a joint press conference at the White House with his French counterpart, literally gushing with praise for Washington’s new-found Gallic friends, declaring: “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.” As I noted at the time:

Quite what the French have done to merit this kind of high praise from the US president is difficult to fathom, and if the White House means what it says this represents an extraordinary sea change in US foreign policy. Nicolas Sarkozy is a distinctly more pro-American president than any of his predecessors, and has been an important ally over issues such as Iran and the War on Terror. But to suggest that Paris and not London is Washington’s strongest partner is simply ludicrous.

These kinds of presidential statements matter. No US president in modern times has described France as America’s closest ally, and such a remark is not only factually wrong but also insulting to Britain, not least coming just a few years after the French famously knifed Washington in the back over the war in Iraq.

3. Lecturing Britain on a federal Europe and undercutting British sovereignty

The Obama administration’s relentless and wrongheaded support for the creation of a federal Europe, from backing the Treaty of Lisbon to the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), is a slap in the face for the principle of national sovereignty in Europe. While the Bush Administration was divided over Europe, the Obama team has been ardently euro-federalist. Hillary Clinton called the Lisbon Treaty “a major milestone in our world’s history”, and in an interview with The Irish Times in 2009 stated: “I believe [political integration is] in Europe’s interest and I believe that is in the United States’ interest because we want a strong Europe.” And Vice President Joe Biden has described Brussels as the “capital of the free world.”

Most insultingly, the Obama administration has sought to intervene in British policy towards the European project. The US Ambassador to London, Louis Susman, has warned Britain that “all key issues must run through Europe.” According to a report by The Parliament.com, in a private meeting with British MEPs at an event in the European Parliament in January 2011, Susman called for a stronger British commitment to the EU, emphatically warning against British withdrawal:

[…….]

4. Betraying Britain to appease Moscow over the New START Treaty

In February 2011, The Daily Telegraphbroke a major story with damaging implications for the Special Relationship, revealing that Washington “secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty.” According to The Telegraph report:

[……]

5. Airbrushing Britain from Europe

A striking feature of Obama administration speeches on Europe is the frequent omission altogether of Great Britain, as if it doesn’t even exist. A major recent example of this was an address in January 2012 by Philip H. Gordon, US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, on “the state of transatlantic relations”, which completely left the British out of the discussion of the role of US allies in the Afghanistan and Libya operations, as well as the Iranian nuclear crisis. As I noted at the time:

It is a sad day when the most senior US official on Europe cannot even bring himself to acknowledge the vital role and huge sacrifices made by America’s closest partner on the battlefields of Afghanistan, while much of Europe barely lifts a finger in the war against the Taliban.

6. Throwing Churchill out of the Oval Office

It is hard to think of a more derogatory message to send to the British people within days of taking office than to fling a bust of Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office and send it packing back to the British Embassy – not least as it was a loaned gift from Britain to the United States as a powerful display of solidarity in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Obviously, public diplomacy is not a concept that carries much weight in the current White House, and nor apparently is common sense. Three years on, the Churchill bust incident continues to embarrass the Obama White House, and remains a sad symbol of this administration’s contempt for the Special Relationship as well as one of the greatest figures in British history.

7. Placing a “boot on the throat” of BP

The Obama administration’s relentless campaign against Britain’s largest company in the wake of Gulf oil spill was one of the most damaging episodes in US-UK relations in recent years, with 64 percent of Britons agreeing at the time that the president’s handling of the issue had harmed the partnership between the two countries according to a YouGov poll. The White House’s aggressive trashing of BP, including a threat to put a “boot on the throat” of the oil giant, helped wipe out about half its share value, directly impacting the pensions of 18 million Britons. This led to a furious backlash in the British press, with even London mayor and long-time Obama admirer Boris Johnson demanding an end to “anti-British rhetoric, buck-passing and name-calling”.

[…….]9. Insulting words from the State Department

The mocking views of a senior State Department official following Gordon Brown’s embarrassing reception at the White House in March 2010 says it all:

There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.

10.  Confusing England with Great Britain

Perhaps less of an insult than an embarrassing indictment of Barack Obama’s Columbia and Harvard education, the president’s extraordinarily ignorant response to the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran last November, dubbing it the “English” Embassy, was the kind of elementary mistake that would have had America’s liberal press howling with derision had it been made a few years earlier by George W. Bush. As I wrote soon after the president’s gaffe:

It would be nice if the leader of the free world bothered to look at a map once in a while, or even paid a visit to the British Embassy in Washington, currently housing the Churchill bust that Mr. Obama unceremoniously threw out of the Oval Office soon after his inauguration… The White House will no doubt dismiss this latest faux pas by the president as a slip of the tongue, but it cannot disguise the fact that it has on many occasions treated Britain and other key allies with an air of disdain, and even contempt.

Read the rest – Barack Obama’s top ten insults against Britain – 2012 edition

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Posted in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, France, Russia, UK | 43 Comments »

The most arrogant US president in decades (and a superpower on the precipice)

by Mojambo ( 47 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Business, Cult of Obama, Democratic Party, Economy, Misery Index, unemployment at January 6th, 2012 - 8:30 am

Nile Gardiner unloads on the incompetence, arrogance, and utter contempt that Barack Obama has for the American people. Too bad we have such a piss poor lot of candidates because the man is definitely beatable.

by Nile Gardiner

In December Barack Obama vainly declared himself the fourth best president in American history, up there with the likes of Abraham Lincoln and FDR, just three years into his first term. In an interview with 60 Minutes on CBS he observed:

The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

Perhaps this display of self-importance is not surprising, coming from a president who enthusiastically accepted the Nobel Peace Prize after just a few months in the job, and even campaigned thousands of miles across the Atlantic in Berlin while running for office. This is a leader who thinks nothing of taking a $4 million, taxpayer-subsidised vacation in Hawaii – nearly 100 times the average annual salary of an American worker, which currently stands at $41,673.

And upon his return from the sun-swept beaches of the Pacific, the president decided to bypass the elected representatives of the US Congress on Wednesday by unilaterally installing “three members of the National Labor Relations Board as well as a director for the controversial new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” (Richard Cordray), in a huge sop to the powerful Left-wing labour unions. The move has been condemned on Capitol Hill and described by a prominent legal scholar as “a tyrannical abuse of power”.

There is something rotten at the heart of the White House when the President ignores the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution and rules with impunity. Not only is it an unhealthy power play by executive authority in the freest nation on earth, but it is also a display of extraordinary contempt for the American people 14 months after the US mid-terms where voters emphatically rejected the president’s agenda. Despite his self-proclaimed “shellacking” at the hands of the US electorate, President Obama continues to behave with impunity, in the belief that most Americans are wrong and that he is right. His approach is remarkably lacking in humility and empathy at a time of tremendous public dissatisfaction with the state of the nation.

A major Gallup poll published just before Christmas underscored in sharp detail the depth of the malaise that has set in Obama’s America . According to the survey, US satisfaction in 2011 ranked as the second lowest since 1979, with “on average, 17 per cent satisfied with national conditions”. In the words of Gallup:

Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000.

The 11% readings from August and September are just four percentage points above the all-time low single-poll reading of 7% from Oct. 10-12, 2008, recorded after the financial crisis, passage of the TARP legislation, and a sharp downturn in stock values.

[…]

And the national debt has reached truly terrifying proportions under Obama’s big government leadership. As former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett noted in a must-read piece this week describing the findings of the just-released 2011 Treasury Financial Report of the United States Government:

According to the report, the federal debt — simply the cumulative value of all past budget deficits less surpluses — was $10.2 trillion on Sept. 30. But the government also owed $5.8 trillion to federal employees and veterans. Social Security’s unfunded liability — promised benefits over expected Social Security revenues — was $9.2 trillion over the next 75 years, or about 1 percent of the gross domestic product. Medicare’s unfunded liability was $24.6 trillion, or 3 percent of G.D.P.

[…]

America is a superpower on a precipice, sinking under debt, historic rates of unemployment, expensive healthcare reforms, and a continuing housing market crisis. But instead of a presidency that grasps reality and is serious about getting this great nation back on its feet, the American people are saddled with leadership that is intent on bankrupting and condemning them to decades of decline. Barack Obama sits at the helm of a sinking ship holed below the waterline by arrogance and hubris, driven by liberal elites who are fundamentally out of touch with a disillusioned electorate. President Obama’s contempt for public opinion as well as the US Constitution, coupled with his failing big government agenda, will ultimately prove his downfall in an increasingly conservative nation that won’t readily accept the liberal mantra that it’s best days are behind it.

Read the rest – Barack Obama, the most arrogant US president in decades

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Posted in Barack Obama, Business, Cult of Obama, Democratic Party, Economy, Misery Index, unemployment | 47 Comments »

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