Serious Question: Why Would You Vote For Obama?

 

I assume if you’re planning on voting for President Barack Obama (D-USA) in 2012, that you voted for him in 2008. Furthermore, I would hope that your vote in 2008 actually had something to do with what he campaigned on. So, let’s roll the tape, shall we?

Major campaign issues from 2008:

• The Economy. Well, with now a record 37 months at 8% or higher unemployment, you’d be hard pressed to argue that he’s turned around the economy, despite a $787 billion stimulus package (hey, where’d that money go, btw?)
• Close Gitmo. Last I checked, Gitmo is still open.
• Get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. No. And…no.
• Maybe you’re a supporter of gay marriage. Well, how much progress has been made here by the Obama administration? Err…none. In point in fact, I do expect Obama to make a serious push on this front later this year, closer to November. But remember, from January 2009 to January 2011, Obama had both chambers of Congress in his pocket. He could’ve passed anything he wanted to pass related to gay marriage. In a snap. But he didn’t. Remember this post when something doesn’t pass this year and he blames it on the Republicans. If you don’t, I will. And I’ll remind you. Again.
• High gas prices. Ooops.
• The federal deficit and exploding debt. He was going to cut the deficit in half. Last Thursday, Obama passed President George W. Bush’s deficit total. It took him 38 months to pass Bush’s 96 months of out of control spending. Yes, the economy exacerbated that. But I’ve discussed this before. And, surely, if that matters to you, then you’re upset about the fact that our credit rating has been downgraded? And you’re upset about the Democrats failure to pass a budget? But wait, that’s not Obama’s fault, you say! Well, is he, or is he not the leader of the Democrat party? If he pressured Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) to pass a budget, would one get passed? Bet the farm on it.
• Improve race relations. Well, I think we can all agree that hasn’t happened. And isn’t going to as long as that racist thug runs the Department of Justice.
• Tax cuts for 95 percent of working families. Never happened.
• No new taxes for middle class. Well, sure, as long as you don’t count cigarettes, healthcare, or don’t own a small business.
• Improve foreign relations, particularly with the Middle East. Based on this search, that doesn’t appear to have happened.
• He did get ObamaCare passed, but let’s be honest with ourselves. This is not the law that even liberals wanted or were promised. It costs more, does less, and pretty much ensures that every single conservative criticism is going to come true.

Did I miss something? Did something really, you know, awesomely awesome occur in the last 3 years? Or are you just too stupid to realize that the man is a liar who hates America, wants to destroy it, and will say anything to get your vote?

Stimulus: Saving & Creating Government Jobs Since 2009

Yes, that’s the result of a recent analysis of the stimulus package. You should download the PDF and read it, but here’s the money quote (emphasis mine):

Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to o set state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services. This suggests the possibility that, in absence of the ARRA, many government workers (on average relatively well-educated) would have found private-sector employment had their jobs not been saved. Searching across alternative model specifications, the best-case scenario for an effectual ARRA has the Act creating/saving a net 659 thousand jobs, mainly in government.

So, their analysis has a net loss of about half a million jobs, and their best case analysis is a net gain of a half a million jobs. The researchers note that the different conclusions are usually based on the “Keynesian multiplier”, an item that is taken on faith by Keynesians with absolutely no empirical evidence in support of it.

So, depending on worst case or best case, we spent about $1.5 million for every lost job or saved job, respectively. Government spending at its finest. I’m telling you, the government could have gotten me fired for free, or saved my job for a lot less than $1.5 million. However, if the government wants to spend $1.5 million on me for two years of work, I will happily accept the money.

No matter how you slice it, whether you agree with the pessimistic numbers (I do), or the optimistic, Keynesian ones, the stimulus package has been a dismal failure.

When I was growing up, there was this joke/riddle that was popular:

Q: What do you call 50 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

A: A good start.

Today, I think you should replace lawyers with “Keynesian economists”. A lost decade is a best case scenario if these policies are allowed to continue.

How’s That Stimulus Workin’ Out For Ya?

38 days until the great flood.

Noted economist and author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan) is blunt about it:

“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Of course, President Barack Obama’s (D-USA) not listening to the likes of Taleb. He prefers to listen to the likes of Nobel Award winning idiot, Paul Krugman, who thinks that the only problem with the stimulus is that we didn’t spend enough!

So, the choice on November 2 is clear. If the stimulus is workin’ for ya, vote for candidates who support it. If, on the other hand, it isn’t, and you’re worried about the long term budget outlook, like the Director of the CBO, vote for someone who wants to Stop The Insanity.

Obama’s Broken Promises

You know, I can’t remember an elected official ever breaking so many promises so quickly.

• “No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”
  
  Errr…except for Mark Patterson, and William Lynn, and Tom Daschle, and…
  
  
• “Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”
  
  The ink wasn’t even dry on the stimulus bill, and no one had read the complete thing when he signed it.
  
  
• “The system is broken. We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress’ seniority, rather than the merit of the project. We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced D.C. lobbyists to do it. And we can no longer accept an earmarks process in which many of the projects being funded fail to address the real needs of our country.”
  
  Of course, the “stimulus package” is chock full of earmarks, as is the budget bill.
  
  
• “I’m not going to take away your guns.”
  
  Errr…except when I am.
  
  
• We’ve already laughed at his promises of “fiscal discipline.”
  
  
• And finally, let’s not forget the theme of his campaign: “Hope and Change”.
  
  Well, he’s failed on hope. His words of despair are eerily similar to those of President James E. Carter (D-USA). (quite possibly the worst speech ever by a sitting American President—why oh why did they have to include this speech in Miracle?)
  
  As for change, well the lurch towards socialism certainly counts as change, but I really don’t think that’s what most of his voters had in mind. As for reversing policy decisions made by that “fascist Bush administration”, well, just click here.
  

The 92 Percent Solution

Via JustOneMinute:

Feel the anger - here is a website dedicated to the 92 percent of Americans who are making their mortgage payments.  The mission statement reads more like the Declaration of Independence

From their own Welcome Page:

The 92 Percent Group is committed to the preservation of free-market economics in the United States, specifically in relation to the Obama Administration's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.  We believe this plan is unjust to the vast majority of American taxpayers; in particular to the 92 percent of homeowners who are current on their mortgages.

And yes, they have a blog.

“The Rant” and a “Dissenting View”

By now, you’ve surely seen or at least read Rick Santelli’s “Boston Tea Party” rant from last week. If, somehow you’ve lived in never never land and missed, here’s the obligatory YouTube embed:

 

Santelli pretty much nails how an overwhelming majority of us feel.

However, Doug Masson, a blogger from Indiana has responded to it in his blog. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll extract one of the few remotely salient points:

These guys, if they are smart, do not want to draw attention to themselves. There is a lot of ambient anger out there looking for a place to land. Because the “financial industry” is nameless, faceless, and complicated for the “Average American” (including this one), very few individuals have taken too much heat for the economic collapse. But if a guy like Santelli wants to stand up and tell honest folks who got in over their head despite hard work and good intentions that this is all their fault, I just have to say “good luck with that.”

The most interesting thing about Masson’s piece is it’s Clintonian nature. Barack Obama (D-USA) needs someone like this in his administration, because the response is brilliantly done.

Notice how he never refutes anything that Santelli has said. Instead of attacking the message, he goes straight for the messenger. Bill Clinton was a master at doing just that.

Note to Doug: the message is still valid, no matter what you may think of the messenger. And that’s yours, and Obama’s problem.

Laughable Headline of the Day

Obama Warns Mayors Not to Waste Stimulus Money

President Barack Obama (D-USA) should take a look at this (Click on the pic for full size).

Or perhaps he should take a look at this spreadsheet. There appears to be plenty of waste to choose from there.