Bloodthirsty Liberal

Since I didn’t watch the SOTU (I think Taft delivered the last one I watched), I missed Obama’s call for popular fascism.

But Jonah Goldberg didn’t:

The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.

He said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but for Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

You say North Korea, I say Nazi Germany.

You say “work together”, I say indentured servitude.

Maybe I don’t believe in the things you believe in: ObamaCare, unsustainable debt, socialism. Maybe I don’t want to accomplish those goals. I don’t want that America; I don’t even want to think about it.

Why isn’t he working toward my ideas? Why doesn’t he reach for an America with a drastically smaller government and greater reliance on the individual? Why doesn’t he focus on economic and personal liberty? Imagine what we could accomplish.

This is Pelosi-speak: pure liberal fascism. If you disagree with me, you’re not just wrong. You’re bad, evil, hateful. I’m old enough to remember when dissent was the highest form of patriotism. (Yes, I’m that old.)

Further Goldberg:

What offends me about Obama’s speech, beyond the militarism and anti-democratic yearnings, is his continued belief that this is a lofty, compelling or interesting form of argumentation. I think the key to understanding this running theme in Obama’s rhetoric is not that he secretly yearns to be a strongman (he doesn’t) it’s that he has a basic contempt for the intelligence of the American people who don’t already love him and believes that the only way to break through to the bitter clingers is to speak in martial metaphors. “Maybe if I explain it using Navy Seals, they’ll shut up and let me do my job.” In other words, it’s disgusting if he believes this garbage and it’s insulting if he doesn’t.

Dude, you won one election, 53-47. You’re not Caesar. And we’re not your conscripts.

His advice: stop flapping your gums

“He went to Massachusetts to campaign against Scott Brown. Scott Brown is now a senator. He went to New Jersey to campaign against Chris Christie, who’s now the governor. He went to Virginia to campaign against Bob McDonnell, who’s now governor. He campaigned for the health care plan extensively, it became less popular. He campaigned in 2010 for the Democrats, they were shellacked. He began, in a sense, his presidency flying to Copenhagen to get Chicago the Olympics. Chicago was the first city eliminated. There is no evidence that the man has rhetorical powers he is relying on.”

Don’t forget when the Cambridge police “acted stupidly”! Next thing he knew, he had to sit down over a beer with a white cop. That couldn’t have been fun.

But what’s he doing right now, as I write?

President Obama will unveil a plan on Monday to cut the national debt by roughly $3 trillion over the next decade.

Is anyone listening anymore?

PS: Why yes, they are:

He ascended to the pulpit, spoke his brilliance, and the people responded as one:

What time is kickoff?

I think he said “pass this bill” (this bill yet to be written) so many times because he knew people would be flipping from one channel to another looking for anything but his gasbaggery.

Honey, I found a rerun of “So You Think You can Dance” from 2008! Quick, they’re about to do a rhumba.

BTW, -23 isn’t a record; it’s about where he’s been for the past several days. The Speech didn’t hurt, I suppose, but it sure didn’t help.

When the stenographers at Associated Press call BS on you, Mr. President, that’s gotta be some pretty ripe manure you’re slinging.

Peee-youuu!

Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional supercommittee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future – the “out years,” in legislative jargon – but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use.

Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due.

Wait, he doesn’t have the numbers yet? He’s been promising this Big Speech for weeks, I saw staged pictures of him meeting officials daily on Martha’s Vineyard, he tried that cheesy stunt of preempting the debate, he’s calling on Congress to pass it yesterday—and he’s got nothing but his schwantz in his hands (hand)? (Godfather reference, anyone?)

Unbelievable.

Obama’s proposed cut in the Social Security payroll tax does seem likely to garner significant GOP support. But Obama proposes paying for the plan in part with tax increases that have already generated stiff Republican opposition.

For instance, Obama makes a pitch anew to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which he has defined as couples earning over $250,000 a year or individuals over $200,000 a year.

These are the same Bush tax rates that he just agreed to renew, right? Of, for the solidity of John Kerry!

It’s hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery.

I’m running out of things to say. But then, so was he:

One is to set up a national infrastructure bank to raise private capital for roads, rail, bridges, airports and waterways. Even supporters of such a bank doubt it could have much impact on jobs in the next two years because it takes time to set up.

To paraphrase the Boston Gob, more mush from the simp.

If the intelligence of Rick Perry can be questioned, it seems only fair to ask.

Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results: guess so.

According to people familiar with the White House deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the president’s proposals for 2012 are expected to be a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits. Together those two would total about $170 billion.

Extending jobless benefits! Because it’s worked so well in the past! Never mind that even liberal economists admit that paying people not to work is not conducive to making them work. I wonder why they stopped at 99 weeks last time—were they afraid of the dreaded triple digits? What changed? (Certainly not the economy.)

But I hope you’re sitting down:

Obama also is expected to continue for one year a tax break for businesses that allows them to deduct the full value of new equipment. The president and Congress negotiated that provision into law for 2011 last December.

Isn’t that the tax break for corporate jet owners? This guy says it is.

There was no greater symbol of inequity and greed than this tax break, no mustache tip more evilly waxed. Yet here it is, extended.

Obama is either so dumb he makes Rick Perry look like IBM’s Watson computer—or he’s stark raving mad. (Or? And?) Up till now, I’ve been angry; now I’m scared.

Brett Stephens can.

Snapshots from President Obama’s efforts to improve America’s standing in the world, 923 days into his administration:

A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.

B is for the federal budget deficit, which is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008.

C is for China’s military budget. For 2012, Beijing plans to increase spending on defense by 12.7%. The Obama administration, by contrast, proposed Pentagon cuts in April averaging out to $40 billion per year over the next decade, and Congress may soon cut a lot more.

D is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.

E is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.

F is for free trade. Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which facilitates $1.6 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush midwifed more than a dozen FTAs, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of FTA’s signed by the current president: zero.

G is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.

H is for Hillary Clinton, who—I can’t believe I’m writing this—would have made a better president than Mr. Obama.

I is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital.

That is but a taste. Get thee to the link to read it all. And if you’re too lazy, I’ll give you the most depressing one of all:

Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012.

- Aggie

Who’s the baddest ass of all?

“Mr. President? The world is over here, sir. Behind you.”

But I’ve been trying to figure out who President Obama was channeling last night in the SoTU (or the STFU, as I almost keep calling it). Some have cited Reagan-esque themes, others Kenned-ian echoes. Uh-uh. Not quite what I’m feeling.

The raised chin, the determined gaze. (What is he looking at anyway? Is the teleprompter too high?) Who does that remind me of?

I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’ll come to me.

Okay, maybe we get a little partisan around here. Maybe we’re not the best judges of how President Obama’s speech went last night.

Let’s go to an independent panel of judges.

What say you, Janet Napolitano?

Maybe she’s just letting the music of his soaring rhetoric wash over her. Yeah, that’s it.

Senator Reid?

Too many all nighters, obviously, working tirelessly on behalf of the people.

How about someone with a bit more critical eye?

And I’m not even talking about Alito’s “Not true” (which it wasn’t). Didn’t Ruth Ginsburg look like she was getting a spinal tap? The whole black-robed crew looked profoundly unimpressed.

And is that how Obama talked the whole night? His voice shrank like his testes were retreating inside his abdomen. No wonder Reid yawned.

Can’t we find one person—one—who was moved by the president.

Round up the usual suspect:

I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.

Actually, Chris, he’s been black his whole life. Or half-black… light-skinned, whatever. You Democrats are so hung up on race, it gives me the creeps.

Anyone else?

Lobbyists – Obama has not “excluded” lobbyists from his administration; he’s hired over a dozen for key posts, and the AP notes seven of those waivers were for White House posts. Obama called for restrictions on lobbyist contributions, but those already exist.

…

Openness: “Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.”

Tough crowd, huh? My mother always said if you don’t have anything nice to say, pretend to be asleep.

ZZZZ

PS: Okay, just one more:

At 48:45 on the cspan feed, Republicans laugh when he says the freeze will start next year. Obama pauses, clinches his jaw, and adds the off-script line “that’s how budgeting works.” Then Democrats laugh back at the Republicans and applaud.

If you saw the fox feed, it was on the tight shot when he said it. I remember being struck at how angry his face looked, much like it did after Joe Wilson’s comment last year.

That’s his greatest weakness. Republicans should just start laughing at him and making jokes.

UPDATE
Someone took that advice to heart:

Now we find out it wasn’t just Justice Alito who was upset with his trash-talking. Senator John McCain was seen mouthing, “Blame it on Bush,” when Obama misrepresented the situation he inherited. Think Progress caught the president’s dishonest attack on Bush:

By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.

The camera then cut to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who leaned over to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and appeared to whisper, “Blame it on Bush.” The two men then laughed.

Is he done?

Whew! That wasn’t a SoTU speech; it was an epic, a saga—I kept waiting for Achilles to emerge from his tent. (Like Hillary, he was a no-show.)

Posting may be light today, my little bloodsuckers, as I had nightmares about a three-headed monster who, no matter which way I turned, breathed fire and platitudes into my face. (The other heads either stared wide-eyed at me or nodded its hair-plugged noggin at me.)

I blame the drinking game I acted stupidly by playing. Every time the president said the word “I”, well, I took a shot of tequila. I was unconscious by 9:23 (I know this because I broke my wristwatch when I hit the floor.)

Thank goodness someone was paying attention!

President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won’t just be “one of those Washington gimmicks.” Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won’t have any teeth.

…

[S]ome of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.

A look at some of Obama’s claims and how they compare with the facts:

Ooh, this is going to be good.

Actually, so-called fact-checking pieces can be just as subjective as the rest of AP’s so-called news. But let’s have a look:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

…

OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. … And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

Okay, I take that caveat back. That was good. Really good.

Rush has been calling tonight’s speech “State of Obama”, and he’s right.

But the State of Obama is good—according to President Obama:

SAWYER: A lot of people think you must say at the end of the day, this is not who I was in 2008, these deals with Nebraska, with Florida…

OBAMA: Let’s hold on a second, Diane. I mean, I think that this gets into a big mush. So let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals. There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked. So that’s point number one.

Number two is that I think it is important to know that the promises we made about increased transparency, we’ve executed here in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, this is the first White House in history where you know anybody who has walked into my office, anybody who has walked into the White House, you actually have a record of who comes in. We have put more stuff on the Internet than ever.

We’ve eliminated lobbyists from all the boards and commissions that historically, you know, they dominated in this town.

Got that everybody? It was Congress’ fault, there are no lobbyists in government, and the White House is so transparent you can see the color of the First Lady’s underwear (a fetching shade of lavender today, I see—grrr!).

You just keep repeating that.

But I’d dump all over Harry Reid, too, if I were a black man referred to in the terms Reid used. Who does he think he is, Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia)?

Jive, racist, honkie, mo**erfu**er.

You’ve read Aggie’s screed analysis of the spending freeze (see next post).

Here’s mine:

Under mounting pressure to rein in mammoth budget deficits, President Obama will propose in his State of the Union address a three-year freeze on federal funding that is not related to national security, a concession to public concern about government spending that could dramatically curtail Obama’s legislative ambitions.

For pete’s sake, is that what they’re teaching in journalism school these days? This is the Washington-freakin’-Post! Give me National Enquirer and John Edwards’ John Thomas over this tripe any day.

It’s also a lie, as dishonest as it is illiterate:

The freeze would take effect in October and limit the overall budget for agencies other than the military, veterans affairs, homeland security and certain international programs to $447 billion a year for the remainder of Obama’s first term….

What “international programs”? What is an international program? American Idol, I guess, because of Simon Cowell.

Anyway…

The spending freeze would affect only about one-eighth of the nation’s $3.5 trillion budget, the bulk of which is devoted to entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are responsible for much of the future increase in spending. It would not restrain funding for the $787 billion economic stimulus package Obama pushed through Congress early last year, nor would it apply to a new bill aimed at creating jobs, which Democrats have identified as their top priority in the run-up to November’s congressional elections.

…

It is also unlikely to affect the approximately $900 billion health-care bill, which has been on life-support since the Massachusetts vote. In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Obama vowed to press ahead with health care and other first-year agenda items, even it means jeopardizing his reelection chances in 2012.

So we’re going to freeze spending (except on national security and all entitlements) after we spend at least another two trillion dollars?

That’s his “freeze”? And he expects us to take him seriously?

Just one more bleeding chunk of this reportorial rump roast:

Obama’s commitment to cutting deficits will be an important theme of his address to Congress, administration officials said, and will be fully detailed in the budget he is due to submit to lawmakers early next week. Administration officials have declined to say specifically how the president plans to reduce deficits projected to add more than $9 trillion to the national debt during the next decade. But he has endorsed several measures aimed at meeting that goal, including the adoption of stringent pay-as-you-go budget rules that would bar lawmakers from passing programs that increase deficits and the creation of a bipartisan commission to work toward a balanced budget.

“But he has endorsed several measures aimed at meeting that goal…”

That’s the problem!!!! He’s said everything on every side of every issue!! How can the president who’s taken budget deficits into warp drive where no debt has gone before fix his mouth to say he wants to adopt a pay-as-you-go approach?

And then blame lawmakers!

Does he try to double-talk Michelle this way? I doubt it. She’d use those incredibly toned arms of hers to box those incredibly large ears of his.

All I can say is I hope Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel has something good on opposite the SoTU speech. I’d rather watch Mike Rowe wallow in pig crap than President Obama in bull crap.

(See, Aggie, that’s how you do reasoned, logical analysis.)

PS: Note that the Senate ain’t buying into his new populist act:

The Senate has rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the deficit this year.

The special deficit panel would have attempted to produce a plan combining tax cuts and spending curbs that would have been voted on after the midterm elections. But the plan garnered just 53 votes in the 100-member Senate, not enough because 60 votes were required. Anti-tax Republicans joined with Democrats wary of being railroaded into cutting Social Security and Medicare to reject the idea.

Obama endorsed the idea after being pressed by moderate Democrats. The proposal was an amendment to a $1.9 trillion hike in the government’s ability to borrow to finance its operations.

If this were really about tax cuts and spending curbs, do you think “anti-tax Republicans” would oppose it? Me neither.

Just heard a caller to Mark Steyn sitting in for Rush suggest that congressmen need not shout “You lie!” at the president’s borscht-belt material, just laugh.

“We need to reign in out of control spending…”

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!