Obama: This Emperor Has No Clothes

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/01/20/barack_obama_inauguration_this_emperor_has_no_clothes_it_will_all_end_in_tears

This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.

The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions. Yet Western - and British - commentators are cocooned in a warm comfort zone of infatuation with America’s answer to Neil Kinnock. We should be long past applauding politicians of any hue: they got us into this mess. The best deserve a probationary opportunity to prove themselves, the worst should be in jail.

It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it. The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe.

These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.

One of the best analyses I’ve ever read. Its as if somehow ‘hope’ can substitute for substance. Somehow, liberal wishes can fix everything, everything will come out right because we wish it so.

An unnatural system can only work through the use of terror and force. Is there any other name we can attach to things like the IRS? Is there any other name we can attach to the Fed and their fiat money besides ‘fraud’? Yet it is on THESE premises that our leaders propose to organise a viable society.

A child could see how illogical this system of fraud and terror is, yet we and our leaders seem bound and determined to see it through to the end, hoping all were turn out well because we WISH it so. Madness.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
One of the best analyses I’ve ever read. Its as if somehow ‘hope’ can substitute for substance. Somehow, liberal wishes can fix everything, everything will come out right because we wish it so.

[/quote]

My daughters 4th grade teacher is laying it on thick, and talks about hope in class and Obama. Hope never paid the damn bills, and never results in anything tangible. It’s a fucking wish for petes sake!

DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.

[quote]Rockscar wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
One of the best analyses I’ve ever read. Its as if somehow ‘hope’ can substitute for substance. Somehow, liberal wishes can fix everything, everything will come out right because we wish it so.

My daughters 4th grade teacher is laying it on thick, and talks about hope in class and Obama. Hope never paid the damn bills, and never results in anything tangible. It’s a fucking wish for petes sake!

DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.[/quote]

exactly, hope should drive you to positive action. If you needed this guy to have hope and take positive steps for your own progress, you already lost.

Reagan wanted to get out of our way. He wants to hold our hand and tell us what to do. Reagan said the scariest thing you could ever hear was " I’m from the government to help".

The president can do very little ,except stay out of our way thank you.

[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/01/20/barack_obama_inauguration_this_emperor_has_no_clothes_it_will_all_end_in_tears

This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming.

What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks.

A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud.

Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.

The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack.

At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric.

Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state.

With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions. Yet Western - and British - commentators are cocooned in a warm comfort zone of infatuation with America’s answer to Neil Kinnock.

We should be long past applauding politicians of any hue: they got us into this mess. The best deserve a probationary opportunity to prove themselves, the worst should be in jail.

It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it.

The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe.

These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.
[/quote]

Gerald Warner is in my humble opinion the best social/political commentator in the UK he is also one of only a few real conservatives left in the media. His intelligence, perceptiveness and ability to relate are unparalleled.

[quote]Rockscar wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
One of the best analyses I’ve ever read. Its as if somehow ‘hope’ can substitute for substance. Somehow, liberal wishes can fix everything, everything will come out right because we wish it so.

My daughters 4th grade teacher is laying it on thick, and talks about hope in class and Obama. Hope never paid the damn bills, and never results in anything tangible. It’s a fucking wish for petes sake!

DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.[/quote]

Maybe you should start paying attention? :wink:

[quote]
“Action” [/quote]
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

[quote]
“Hard Work”[/quote]

[i]n reaffirming the greatness of our nation we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor – who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

 For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.  For us, they toiled in sweatshops, and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip, and plowed the hard earth.  For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sahn. 

 Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.  They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.[/i]

AND: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/dr_king_service/

America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/family/

[quote]… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.[/quote] Maybe you should pay more attention? :wink:

[i]Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

 What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths.  What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.[/i]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/

[quote]Rockscar wrote:
DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.[/quote]

This dude is right on…The hysteria is a bit absurd, but I welcome it. A lot of people will sober up when they figure out that Obama cannot walk water. What I realize about this guy is he may talk a good game, but bottom line, he is there to do what he wants and he doesn’t give a fuck what anybody thinks. That whole bi-partisanship crap is a farce as usual. He wants to be king…
He is not dumb however, he knows the hysteria won’t last which is why he is moving very quickly while he’s got tons of support.

FOCA is particularly disturbing, because it not only makes abortion more accessible than band-aids, it trumps states rights and private institution rights. The good news there is that the supreme court would be forced to shoot it down, because that is unconstitutional…It would take a full blown amendment to the constitution to take hold.

[quote]Rockscar wrote:

DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see. [/quote]

I know it’s probably not any consolation, but I watched his speech and not only did he emphasize that we have problems we have to work to fix–he also stated that our problems must be solved with ‘old’ values: Hard work, honesty, etc.

Being a conservative I was shocked that he actually said something that made sense for once.

That being said, it remains to be seen whether it’s just talk or if it has any merit.

[quote]johnconkle wrote:
Rockscar wrote:

DO SOMETHING.

“Action” “Hard Work” “Focus” “Family”… now there’s a couple of theme’s I’d like to see.

I know it’s probably not any consolation, but I watched his speech and not only did he emphasize that we have problems we have to work to fix–he also stated that our problems must be solved with ‘old’ values: Hard work, honesty, etc.

Being a conservative I was shocked that he actually said something that made sense for once.

That being said, it remains to be seen whether it’s just talk or if it has any merit.[/quote]

Actions speak louder than words…See the 825 billion dollar bail out…It is not hard work, it is for social programs and contraception.

I’m a little partial to plans that use proven practices and that don’t cost $825 Billion over those that a pure speculation and cost $825 Billion but that’s just me.

House GOP sees stimulus in tax cuts, not spending

House Republican leaders presented President Barack Obama on Friday with proposals to stimulate the economy that rely exclusively on tax cuts and envision none of the federal spending backed by Democrats and the administration.

The alternative includes across-the-board cuts in the two lowest income tax brackets, placing unemployment benefits off-limits to taxation and a new $7,500 break for home buyers who make a minimum down payment of 5 percent.

Another provision would also cut taxes for small businesses.

Republican Reps. John Boehner of Ohio and Eric Cantor of Virginia outlined the approach at a White House meeting with congressional leaders of both parties at which Obama urged passage of legislation by early February to revive the economy.

House Democrats plan a vote next week on an $825 billion plan that includes about $275 billion in tax cuts and $550 billion in new spending.

Much of the spending would come in politically popular areas such as health care, food stamps and road construction and would include money designed to blunt the impact of state budget cuts affecting schools.

The GOP alternative reflected fault lines in the debate over the first major issue to arise since Obama and the new Democratic-controlled Congress took office.

“Rather than spending too much, too late as the congressional proposal does, our proposals let the American people keep more of what they earn to spur investment, encourage savings and create more private sector jobs,” Boehner, the GOP’s House leader, said in a statement.

While Republicans claimed their approach provided for more in tax relief than the Democrats’ measure, they said they were still awaiting official estimates. They also said they could not estimate the number of jobs it would create.

It called for reducing the current 10 percent bracket to 5 percent, affecting a taxpayer’s first $8,350 in income, and lowering the existing 15 percent bracket to 10 percent, covering income from $8,351 to $33,950.

Small business owners could take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income.

Many Republicans have criticized the extent of spending advocated by Democrats.

“We understand that there will be spending in the final bill, the Democrats have made that completely clear,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House.

Separately, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., renewed his call for the federal government to provide help to the states in the form of loans rather than grants, as Democrats prefer.

In an appearance at the National Press Club, McConnell said of Obama: “I think he’s open to new ideas. I’ve given some of mine. …We’ll see as we go along how many of them are incorporated.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090123/ap_on_go_co/republicans_economy