Category Archives: Barack Obama

President Pain

Barack Obama, Constitution, Ethics, Government, IMMIGRATION

It is “almost an impeachable offense for Obama to make specific spending cuts to hurt us,” contended Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox And Friends.

“The key word is PAIN. If the president is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us,” said Judge Napolitano, “rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid, and for which we have hired him—he is doing the opposite of what he has taken an oath to do.”

He has taken an oath faithfully to uphold the laws. In other words, to make the government work; don’t make it painful. Find a way to make it work on 2 percent less. He has, absolute, leeway as the chief executive. Leeway is integral to his office. As the head of the Executive Branch, the president can prioritize money and cuts. … Instead, he wants to cut in away that’ll make us stand inline five hours at the airport, and teach the Republicans a lesson. That’s the way the Constitution [should] work.

(VIA Myron Pauli.) The president’s first priority in causing you pain, just so you know who’s boss—he and family, after all, have a security detail for life—is to spring criminal aliens from jail.

Not only is this president an ass with ears, but he is also pain in the ass.

UPDATED: That Dog Obama Ate The Media’s Homework

Barack Obama, Bush, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

When it comes to Barack Hussein Obama, media abdicated all responsibility to do journalistic due diligence. It wasn’t only that all stories about the 44th POTUS were spun favorably; but entire issues were submerged entirely. Now two such invertebrates blame their intellectual and ethical deficiencies, spanning years, on the power of the president to mesmerize and misinform.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico are contemptible. They attest that, “Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does. They find his staff needlessly stingy with information and thin-skinned about any tough coverage. [Where? Tell me where?] He gets more-favorable-than-not coverage because many staffers are fearful of talking to reporters, even anonymously, and some reporters inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will decrease if they get in the face of this White House.”

VandeHei and Allen spill pages of pixels in claiming that the Obama administration bamboozled them, with the use of digital technology, aided by some really, really “authentically new techniques”; and with “government creation of content,” blah, blah, blah. (Their prose is diarrheic.) Next they’ll claim to have been subjected to subliminal messages during White House briefings.

The media are a Cult. Cults always blame The Leader for inducing a cult following.

When I saw what Bush was all about, nothing could stop me from exposing his machinations (and likening W’s “Bring ’em on grin” to the grimace “on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis”). Nothing stopped libertarians outside the Beltway from exposing Bush’s illegal and immoral war on Iraq. For doing so throughout the Bush years, I became persona non grata in Republican circles on September 19, 2002.

VandeHei and Allen are whinging castrates. They should make you sick.

UPDATED: “These guys are acting like they’re just innocent dupes,” rages Rush Limbaugh.

A Budget Cut In D.C. Doublespeak (I.E., Bowel-Speak)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Taxation, The State

Tom DiLorenzo (he’s a friend) on D.C. bowel-speak:

In Washingtonese, if one proposes a $100 billion spending increase, and actual spending increases by “only” $90 billion, they call it a $10 billion budget cut.

And on the Washington Monument Syndrome game, via LRC.com:

The game is this: Whenever a politician is “threatened” with a minor slowdown in spending, the first thing to do is to eliminate police, firefighters, ambulance services, school buses, etc. — everything that inflicts the maximum discomfort on the victims of the government monopoly (a.k.a., taxpayers). The booboisie then wake up from their American Idol stupor for a moment to raise a fuss, and the proposals to slow down spending growth disappear. (It’s called the “Washington Monument Syndrome” because the head of the National Park Service shut down the Washington Monument in the ’60s in response to Congress’s temporary refusal to fund his complete spending wish list. Tourists from every state complained to their congressmen, and the Park Service wish list was fully funded).

Updated: The Oink Sector Is Always Seen (‘A Decrease In the Spending Increase’)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Economy, The State, War, Welfare

“The art of economics,” wrote Henry Hazlitt, “consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” Hazlitt was encapsulating Bastiat’s What-Is-Seen-and-What-Is-Not-Seen principle.

“Flanked by emergency medical personnel,” write the editors at the WSJ, “Mr. Obama made his usual threat of Armageddon if automatic spending cuts go forward on March 1. Americans can expect more such melodrama in the coming days, so as a public service we thought we’d break down the President’s three biggest political tricks.”

Members of the “oink sector” were front and center in Obama’s show. What you didn’t see were the many private-sector suckers who work to fund the wealth consuming sponger sector, members of which were on show. What you didn’t see were the unemployed in the private sector, who are displaced because of the growth of government.

Think zero-sum, or parasite vs. host. The first (the parasite) is sucking the lifeblood of the second (the host). The larger the parasite gets, the weaker the host will grow.

UPDATED (2/22): “What a bunch of Keynesians,” writes the Fox News column “Power Play” about … the Republicans. Now that’s progress. (Fox News is usually a megaphone for the GOP.)

So here sit Republicans, teeth clenched, gripping their desks, waiting for the “devastating” cuts to explode the economy and just hoping that Obama will get some of the blame for having invented the thing. They are assuming that $85 billion less spent by the government will cause devastation in an economy of some $16 trillion.

The sequester, as everyone knows, “was …the brainchild of Team Obama.” It is nothing more than a “decrease in the increase in spending,” another good way to describe the “crippling reductions [Obama] says will result from the government spending only $15 billion more this year than last year.”