Hypocrisy….thy name is Obama: (h/t Gateway Pundit)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been traveling around the country and talking with folks about my blueprint for an economy built to last. It’s a blueprint that focuses on restoring the things we’ve always done best. Our strengths. American manufacturing. American energy. The skills and education of American workers.

And most importantly, American values like fairness and responsibility.

We know what happened when we strayed from those values over the past decade – especially when it comes to our housing market.

Lenders sold loans to families who couldn’t afford them. Banks packaged those mortgages up and traded them for phony profits. It drove up prices and created an unsustainable bubble that burst – and left millions of families who did everything right in a world of hurt.

It was wrong. The housing crisis has been the single biggest drag on our recovery from the recession. It has kept millions of families in debt and unable to spend, and it has left hundreds of thousands of construction workers out of a job.

Who created the policies that forced these banks to make loans to people who had no business getting those loans?

And who helped push those policies?

Why Mr. Obama did.

And now he wants to whine that the banks shouldn’t of given those high-risk loans out when they were REQUIRED to?

Now, we know what happens, because we’ve just seen it — what happened when we stray from those values. We saw what happened over the past decade when we strayed from those values — especially when it comes to the massive housing bubble that burst and hurt so many people. Millions of families who did the right and the responsible thing, folks who shopped for a home that they could afford, secured a mortgage, made their payments each month — they were hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of other people who weren’t playing by the same rules, weren’t taking the same care, weren’t acting as responsibly. By lenders who sold loans to people who they knew couldn’t afford the mortgages; and buyers who bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford; and banks that packaged those mortgages up and traded them to reap phantom profits, knowing that they were building a house of cards.

So which is it? Could those people afford that house or not?

Either way, these banks were FORCED to give these loans by the social do-gooders and this was one of the major reasons for the collapse in our economy, as Mata pointed out in her “US Economy – A “perfect storm” of housing and lending events” post.

But now we see the line of attack Obama will be using this election season. And what better foil does he have to use it against than a Mitt Romney?

It appears we need to focus on keeping the House and taking the Senate this election season, because we are going to get another four years of Obama.

I’m a huge fan of lotteries. It is one of the few taxes that citizens pay willingly. Spending a dollar for the prospect of winning a hundred million is kind of fun. And the fact that the state’s provide the fig leaf of responsibility by suggesting all funds go to support education makes players feel like they are doing their part to support the kids… Imagine, a way of taxing people that is actually voluntary!

Unfortunately however, most taxes are anything but voluntary, particularly those levied by the federal government. In 2011 the federal government took in $2.3 trillion in taxes. Not only did all of that get spent, but about $1.4 trillion more. And now Barack Obama is in charge of the spending machine. In the three years he has been President, Obama has spent over $11 trillion. That includes not only the $6.6 trillion Uncle Sam took in in taxes, but an additional $4.6 trillion that has been borrowed on your behalf, or at least for which you have the responsibility to repay. If we split that sum up amongst every one of the 310 million people in the country that would mean that Barack Obama has racked up $15,300 in debt on behalf of every American… in a mere three years.

I’d like to give that $4.6 trillion sinkhole a little perspective. Imagine that instead of that money going to failed green jobs scam companies like Solyndra or to university research departments to play World of Warcraft, something completely different happened. Imagine that on January 20, 2009 Barack Obama had knocked on your door, teleprompter in hand, and said “(Insert taxpayer’s name here) I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your President. And to show my gratitude I’d like to give you $5,000 a year each of the next three years. Now, you’ll have to pay it back of course, but I’ll spread the payments over 30 years and give you an interest rate of about zero.” You think to yourself “If I don’t take the deal he’s just going to barrow it in my name and spend it on poetry readings or some such thing.” Deciding you could come up with much better places to spend the money, you respond “Thank you Mr. President. I’ll take the checks.”

Wow. He gives you the check. Now you have a $5,000 you didn’t have the day before. You start dreaming…”What am I going to spend my new found money on?” Well, if you were an average driver, who uses approximately 700 gallons of gas a year, you could pay for gasoline for the year and still have about $3,000 left over. You could then spend $720 on clothes, $1,000 on entertainment and still have enough left over to cover half of your healthcare expenditures. “Not bad” you think.

Now of course, that is just one $5,000 check. Given that the average American home has 2.6 people in it, the President quickly takes the $5,000 check back and gives you a $13,000 family sized check instead. You think “Wow, almost $40,000 over three years! Now that’s some serious cash!” At $13,000 the government just covered more than 80% of the total cost of what the average American family spends on housing. That’s pretty nice. At a rate that is lower than your mortgage as well. “This is going to be great” you tell yourself.

Then, suddenly, just as the President is about to leave you stop dreaming and start thinking about the big picture. “Mr. President! Wait! $13,000 a year for my family would be nice, God knows we could use it, but I don’t want to bankrupt the country or close down the government or endanger the national defense.” “Good citizen” President Obama calls you, “Don’t worry about that, we’ll make do with the just the $2.2 trillion or so we take in in taxes annually, which is, exactly what we spent way back in the ancient period known as 2004.” – remember this is a dream.

The wheels start turning in your mind… How different is your life in 2009 relative to 2004, and how much did a bigger government have to do with making it better or worse? Recognizing that the growth in government didn’t do much to make life any better over that time, you decide you can indeed live with a government budget circa 2004. “Ok, Mr. President, never mind, I’ll keep the money! Thank you!”

Of course, that was all a dream. Unfortunately for you – and the rest of America – you are apparently too stupid to know what to do with your own money, or in this case, the money the government borrows but forces you to pay back. As such, no mortgage payments for you. No gas money, movie money, no check to cover your family’s annual food and insurance bills combined. No, unfortunately, while you are indeed on the hook for the money, guys like Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Barney Frank get to decide where all that money (and much more) goes…

Fundamentally that is the problem. And it’s not just money. Nor is it just the federal government. Increasingly it’s all levels of government and it’s seemingly about everything. Rather than parents being responsible for their kid’s fitness, schools have to ban burgers and pizza. Rather than drivers being able to purchase the kinds of vehicles they want, the government mandates auto companies sell cars no one wants and forces drivers to put inflation spurring ethanol into them. Rather than consumers and markets deciding what banks, and energy companies and health insurance companies should succeed, the government sticks its nose in virtually everywhere at almost every turn.

At the end of the day, few people could or would run their lives the same way the government runs the country – and unfortunately running the country is exactly what governments try and do. Fantasy budgeting and accounting, a distinct lack of accountability, a nonexistent correlation between success and continued funding, and a Pollyanna notion that all human problems and foibles can be obviated by government fiat.

Whether we get another four years of Barack Obama (God help us…) or a first term of one of the big government “conservatives” currently vying for the GOP nomination, voters should understand that the deficits and the regulation creep and the basic suffocation of the capitalist system that made America great will not be put asunder until we nominate and elect a President who:

1. Recognizes that the power of the federal government is constrained by the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment;
2. Understands that role of government is to do only those things which citizens cannot do themselves and nothing more;
3. Has the intelligence to know where the line between the two is;
4. Has the courage to tell voters to begin acting accordingly.

That doesn’t sound like too difficult a task. One wonders why the GOP can’t seem to figure it out.

He and Pelosi and Hoyer and Waxman and the rest of the execrable democrats.

Much has been made about Mitt Romney’s income tax rate and it’s all the same. Sure he’s done nothing illegal but shame on Romney for paying what he owes. It’s his fault. He’s hiding something.

Romney’s tax rate unfair

Mitt Romney’s taxes make him the poster boy for unfair ‘carried interest’ rates

The NY Times cannot resist dunning Romney

The 1% and That 15%

Mr. Romney does not have to apologize for his wealth. But he cannot keep trying to conceal just how much the tax code has been tilted in his favor.

“in his favor”- and in no one else’s favor.

Mitt Romney, Tax Loophole Exploiter-in-Chief

Romney wealth puts him in top 1%

The notorious tax cheat Al Sharpton criticizes Romney:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’d think Romney wrote the tax code himself.

But it’s not his fault. It’s Obama’s fault, along with all the democrats.

This tax rate was never an issue for democrats when John Kerry paid 13.9% in 2003. No democrat stood up and said Kerry’s tax rate was unfair.

How about Romney’s “off shore” money?

How about John Kerry’s off shore money?

Documents obtained by the Globe detail John Kerry’s 1983 investment of between $25,000 and $30,000 in offshore companies registered in the Cayman Islands. The document below, signed by Kerry, shows his pledge to purchase 2,470 shares of Peabody Commodities Trading Corp. through Sytel Traders, registered in the Caymans.

How about Apple’s off shore money?

Apple may have enough cash on hand to make Scrooge McDuck’s money vault look like a kiddie pool by comparison, but according to SeekingAlpha, most of that cash is effectively trapped overseas. US$54 billion of Apple’s overall $82 billion in cash is in offshore accounts, and Apple cannot repatriate that money to the States unless it wants to pay a huge 35 percent corporate tax on it.

If Apple attempted to bring that money into the States, right off the bat through the magic of taxes that $54 billion would transform into $35.1 billion, with the other $18.9 billion disappearing down the federal money hole. With that much cash at stake, it’s no wonder that Apple hasn’t been in any hurry to repatriate its huge foreign cash reserves.

But never mind all this odious hypocrisy. Who’s fault is this tax rate?

It’s Barack Obama’s fault.

It’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

It’s Harry Reid’s fault.

For the first two years of the Obama Presidency, democrats controlled all three parts of the government. democrats owned a supermajority from June 2009 to February 2010. Obamacare was passed via reconciliation.

democrats were too busy trying to destroy health care and finding green energy companies who would lose billions of taxpayer dollars to be concerned with Romney’s tax rate.

They owned Congress. They could have fixed this. They didn’t.

So shut up.

It’s the mother of all boners. Barack Obama gambled the future of the US oil supply on Brazil.

He lost. China kicked his butt.

In March Barack Obama put on his best groveling suit (you know, the same one he wore when genuflecting to the Saudi King) and went off to Brazil looking for foreign oil. The schtick was thick:

Obama started by saying that being in Brazil was a great joy, and thanking his hosts on behalf of his wife Michelle and family for the warm welcome they received.

The US president said it was a pity that he had to come only days after the Carnival but: “my only regret is that we missed the party by coming a few weeks after Carnival. Maybe that’s the best — since I’m not sure I would have had the same level of productivity from my staff”.

While emphasizing US weaknesses, he promised the US would be Brazil’s best customer:

Obama also spoke about energy. “The oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States”, he said, adding that the US want to help Brazil with the technology needed to extract it and, when Brazil is ready to begin selling the commodity, “we want to be one of your best customers”.

That is not to be. Brazil blew off Obama for China instead:

BUENOS AIRES — Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.

The United States wants it, but China is getting it.

Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.

The deals are part of a growing oil relationship between the two countries that, thanks to a series of billion-dollar agreements, is giving China greater influence over Brazil’s oil frontier.

Apparently deciding that the US needed neither the oil nor the jobs, Barack Obama rejected the Keystone Pipeline.

President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”

The “decision by the Obama administration underlines the importance of diversifying and expanding our markets, including the growing Asian market,” Oliver told reporters in Ottawa.

Once more, China will be the beneficiary.

Obama is strangling domestic oil exploration with bans and moratoriums pretty much everywhere in the US and at the same time is pouring billions of US tax dollars down the toilet on failed “green energy” projects for his top donors. Then in liquidation Obama made sure his donors got their money before us taxpayers.

No energy, no jobs, no oil. Barack Obama does seem determined to lead the United States into becoming a third world nation while making certain China prospers.

Change is….absolutely necessary.

Mitt Romney will beat Barack Obama and he will beat Obama for the same reasons some conservatives don’t like him. I am well aware that some of my fellow authors here find Romney less than ideal but I do believe the future of this country depends on Barack Obama being defeated in November and a Romney-Santorum ticket is just what is needed.

Obama has already taken a stab at Romney for his financial history but it is not going to gain traction and Jack Lew is the reason.

Barack Obama named Jack Lew to replace Bill Daley as chief of staff. Jack Lew was one of the investment bankers who bet that worthless CDO’s, sold to investors as financially solid vehicles, would fail. This was all done without disclosure, of course.

Lew got a $1 million dollar taxpayer funded bonus in 2009.

Obviously Barack Obama highly regards such a person as this.

And here’s a beauty of a quote from Lew:

“[I don't] personally know the extent to which deregulation drove it, but I don’t believe that deregulation was the proximate cause.”

Barack Obama’s chief of staff does NOT believe deregulation caused the financial meltdown. Save that one for discussion with liberals about deregulation. Barack Obama cannot harp on Romney’s past without inviting scrutiny of his own choices.

A Southern evangelical declared that Romney was “not Mormon enough” for social conservatives.

A leading Southern Baptist figure predicted Friday that Christian conservative leaders won’t rally around an alternative to Mitt Romney until after next week’s South Carolina primary, while warning that the former Massachusetts governor is “not Mormon enough” for most socially conservative voters.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said during a newsmaker interview on C-SPAN that evangelical leaders hope that the Palmetto State primary Jan. 21 will whittle down the GOP presidential field and make it clear whether they should rally around Romney rivals Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry before Florida’s primary later this month.

But this reminds of George Stephanopoulos’ colossally stupid moderation of the Republican debate. The country is mired in economic doldrums, foreign tensions run high and what does Stephanopoulos ask? He presses Romney about contraceptives.

Social conservatism is not going to solve the big issues facing this country and social conservatism is not enough to win this election.

Mitt Romney is going to become the Republican Presidential nominee and he will beat Barack Obama in the election and in no small part it will be due to Barack Obama:

“It’s in many ways like the ’08 campaign when Barack Obama ran as a candidate to be an alternative to George W. Bush. That was true in his announcement speech in Springfield [in February 2007].

“This was true when Ronald Reagan ran [against Jimmy Carter in 1980]. We went back and looked back at his [Obama’s] speech. He closed it out offering an alternative to George W. Bush, much to John McCain’s frustration.

In 2012, the economy would be the “one big, dominant issue” as in 2008. “This race is about the economy and a referendum on Barack Obama.”

In terms of New Hampshire this week, however, the Romney campaign looked long and hard at what Obama did here in 2008 when he arrived in the state from Iowa with momentum from his win there and a poll lead in the Granite State. It all evaporated on voting day when Hillary Clinton won.

“We studied what Obama did wrong,” said Stevens. “A lot of people thought that Obama was going to win big. I would have bet you anything Obama was going to win big. So we went and said, ‘OK, what did Obama do wrong?’

“The best thing we could figure out was that he didn’t take questions, that he isolated himself in the bubble. I can remember being in Manchester on a Sunday. He had an event in mid-afternoon and there were people lined up. It was very moving actually. It must have been what it was like with Bobby Kennedy or something. And then he [Obama] lost.

“So we said, ‘OK we’re not going to do that. We’re going to do the exact opposite. We’re going to keep taking questions from voters’. If they sense that you’re on a glide path, that you’re not taking questions I think that’s really bad.”

Another reason that Romney will win comes from democrat flack Donna Brazile:

BRAZILE: Mitt Romney won tonight because no one touched him — and for Democrats, you know what? It was good news for us.

KARL: Why is that?

BRAZILE: Because we believe that the weakest candidate is the candidate that the Republicans are not attackin’, and that’s Mitt Romney.

KARL: Oh, come on.

Brazile is politicking. She is the canard. She knows that Romney has the best chance to beat Obama and so do most Republicans.

While the Republican presidential hopefuls continue to fight it out on the campaign trail, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the only GOP contender that most voters view as having a chance against President Obama.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Likely U.S. Voters think Romney is at least somewhat likely to beat the president in November.

Lawrence O’Donnell takes a more sober analysis:

“Romney is the one they don’t want. They know they can beat anybody else. Romney, they think they can beat, but it’s a harder road.”

Probably the best choice for a VP would be someone who appeals to the social conservatives and Rick Santorum fits that need rather nicely. Such a choice would shore up Romney’s right while Romney is free to court the middle upon whom this election depends.

Santorum has taken a far more gentle approach to Romney than have his rivals. Santorum may be thinking the same thing I am thinking. Santorum’s painting Romney as “not conservative enough” could be exactly what both Romney and Santorum need.

No candidate is perfect. None of us ever gets everything we want. But this election is much more than about getting the ideal candidate. It is first and foremost about getting Barack Obama out of office and this combination can achieve that.

Barack Obama is entirely predisposed to claiming that he inherited a an economic mess, and it in truth, he did. He did assert that he could fix the economy in three years and implied that he perhaps ought to be limited to one term if he did not deliver.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Back then he said he should be held accountable but today wants to be accountable for absolutely nothing save for killing Bin Laden.

As democrats controlled the entire Congress for the first two years of Obama’s term and were able to shove pretty much anything they wanted down the throat of the country it seems appropriate to judge this administration by the effects of the policies put in place by Obama and the democrats from after the time they were enacted.

Democrats labeled last year “the recovery summer” but it did not pan out that way. Obama’s election campaign theme seems to be “It could be worse” but the fact is things are not getting better- especially not for the middle class.

Sentier Research has published data that show the middle class to be losing ground consequent to Obama’s policies.

Between June 2009 and June 2011:

- Real median annual household income for family households with a male or female head and no spouse present (many with children in the household) declined by 7.3 percent (from $39,321 to $36,465) compared to a decline for married-couple households of 4.5 percent (from $76,783 to $73,324).

- Real median annual household income for households with a head under 25 years old declined by 9.5 percent (from $32,123 to $29,060) compared to a decline for households with a head 45 to 54 years old of 5.5 percent (from $65,911 to $62,315).

- Real median annual household income for households with a head looking for work or on layoff (unemployed) declined by 18.4 percent (from $41,037 to $33,487) compared to a decline for households with a head working full-time of 5.1 percent (from $72,104 to $68,454).

- Real median annual household income for households with a Black (not Hispanic) head declined by 9.4 percent (from $35,072 to $31,784) compared to a decline for households with a White (not Hispanic) head of 4.7 percent (from $59,111 to $56,320). The decline for households with a Hispanic head was 4.9 percent (from $41,945 to $39,901).

Michael Barone points out that Obama knows how to do nothing other than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic:

So why should voters be leery of economic redistribution in times of economic distress?

Perhaps because they realize that they stand to gain much more from a vibrantly growing economy than from redistribution of a stagnant economic pie. A growing economy produces many unanticipated opportunities. Redistribution edges toward a zero-sum game.

They miss growth when it is absent. They don’t appreciate it so much when it is happening.

Roosevelt’s 1934 and 1936 victories were won in periods of growth. After the economy shifted into recession in 1937, New Deal Democrats fared much worse, and Roosevelt won his third and fourth terms as a seasoned wartime leader, not an economic redistributor.

Lesson: If you want redistribution, you’d better first produce growth. Which the Obama Democrats’ policies have failed to do.

Barack Obama is a community organizer. He knows how to grow division and class warfare. He knows nothing of growing economies. Left alone in control, democrats created policies that were not only not helpful to the economy and the middle class, they are harmful. The so-called “obstruction” by the GOP may be the only thing saving the middle class from Obama and the democrats.

There is no way anyone can argue that the ObamaCare waiver process isn’t benefiting Obama’s crony’s and supporters:

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

So it looks like most of the liberals who support Obama don’t want anything to do with ObamaCare.

Shocker!

So lets ask a few questions. If ObamaCare is so awesome, is so helpful and affordable, why are so many businesses, state and local governments, and labor unions seeking exemptions from it? And why did Obama grant the exemptions.

But with the newly released report from the Department of Health and Human Services revealing such a heavy tilting of waivers toward Big Labor, the Obama Administration’s move will give further ammunition to Republican presidential candidates like Gov. Mitt Romney who have labeled Mr. Obama a “crony capitalist.”

Hopefully the Supreme Court will issue us all waivers later this year

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Barack Hussein Obama took office in January, 2009, he identified 10 corridors appropriate for high-speed rail in the US. His stimulus bill earmarked $8 billion to jump-start the project. High speed rail is Obama’s “Holy Grail” of public infrastructure projects. Proponents originally said the LA-to-SF bullet train project would create more than 1 million jobs, but recently revised that downward to several thousand jobs. (That’s quite a revision!) Almost every state originally identified dropped out of the running because they couldn’t afford their share of the cost. Only California is still seeking money for its “high speed rail” project that is to go between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Since the project was first unveiled in 2008, officials have tripled its projected cost, delayed its start of service for 13 years, downsized ridership projections and increased ticket prices. Almost two-thirds of Californians now say they’d vote against issuing bonds to pay for a project they narrowly approved just three years ago.

Original cost estimates (2008) were $33 billion for the entire project, with California, the federal government (that’s us taxpayers), and private enterprise sharing costs equally. Recent cost estimates (2011) are $98.5 billion. Recently revised ridership figures show that a one-way ticket price could require a government subsidy of $100 per passenger per ticket. Estimated travel time between the cities is 2 hours, 40 minutes. Flying takes about 1 hour, 5 minutes. The original cost of $55 for a one-way ticket was revised in 2009 to be 83% of the cost of a similar airline flight, or about $105. So the question is, “Why would anyone pay 83% of a flight cost to make the trip in over twice the time?”

When the California legislature undertook the most expensive public-works project in American history, they also created an independent review board to ensure that the LA-to-SF high-speed rail project would have solid financial footing. The name of the review board is “The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group.” But in a report Tuesday, January 3, 2012, the review board, a panel of experts created by state law to help safeguard the public’s interest, raised serious doubts about almost every aspect of the project, concluding that the current plan “is not financially feasible.” As a result, the panel said, it “cannot at this time recommend that the Legislature approve the appropriation of bond proceeds for this project.”  Tom Umberg, chairman of the authority board, said in a letter to California lawmakers that the report is “deeply flawed, in some areas misleading and its conclusions are unfounded.” “As the report presents a narrow, inaccurate and superficial assessment of the HSR program, it does a disservice to policy-makers who must confront these decisions.”

California Governor Jerry Brown last week reiterated his commitment to the project, and the Rail Authority today blasted the Peer Review Group’s report. Brown spokesman Gil Duran said in an e-mail that the Peer Review Group’s report “does not appear to add any arguments that are new or compelling enough to suggest a change in course.” So if Governor Brown thinks that a project whose costs have tripled from original estimates, the estimates on which voters relied when approving the project in 2008, presents no fiscal problems, then why should he worry when the state-mandated review board tells him that the project can’t work?

But that’s just my opinion.

Access to other articles like this one can be found at RWNO, my personal web site.

Ben Franklin warned government with his clever sayings. I expect several would apply to Obama devastating the military ground forces today. We may be saving a few billion dollars now, but is may cost us 100’s of billions in the near future.

The current administration currently plans to reduce US Army ground forces by as much as 20 Brigade Combat Teams. This is the equivalent of 5-6 Divisions. To put this in perspective, this is more combat power than the US had in Iraq at any one time.

So, what does this mean to non military people? It means we cannot sustain a ground battle like Iraq unless the US keeps the troops in theater until the fighting is complete. There will only be enough troops to replace them with no reserve. In the event there is fighting in Korea and somewhere in the middle east, the US will not have the capability to fight and win in both theaters.

While Obama explains he is planning on increasing air and sea power, history has showed that no war has ever been won without taking and holding the ground. Air and sea power project power but cannot by themselves win.

I remember the Carter military reductions. There was no money to maintain the bases. At FT Benning, there was money for painting buildings, but not repairing buildings. Remember the Clinton “peace dividend”? The Democratic Congress and Clinton made major force reductions to pay for domestic programs. A great number of excellent soldiers were released. After 9/11, their expertise was needed but absent.

If the US must fight a foreign war, will there be adequate assets left to defend the homeland? There are currently more than known 80 Hezbollah cells already in the US. Only God knows how many terrorist cells there really are in the US. Can we fight China’s expanding military and the terrorists at home? If the military is so greatly reduced, will there be the capability for them to “defend the country against all enemies foreign and domestic”? Just like the Carter and Clinton administration, it looks like we again are using a strategy that is penny wise and pound foolish!

In “The Wrath of Khan” Spock saved the Enterprise and in so doing was mortally injured. As he lay dying he reached out to Kirk and said

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”

Barack Obama is the anti-Spock.

Prior to the 2008 election, Barack Obama promised he would “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. Since then we have come to understand what he meant. He meant that he would disdain the Constitution and implement regulations and directives on his own in order to fulfill his personal agenda. He plans to force policies through the EPA and when that’s not possible he will issue executive orders with the likely justification that anything and everything he wants is a matter of national security.

Aside from the Constitutional violations and elevating the Presidency to a dictatorship, the problem is that Obama’s aspirations are not the needs of the nation. And there is no question which comes first.

Obama’s failed stimulus threw billions away on “green” failures that are backed by his big name donors. In an astonishing move Obama subordinated the US taxpayer to his donors during liquidation of assets of those green failures. Why Republicans sit on their rear ends and allow that to happen still boggles my mind. The failed stimulus paid lip service to the infrastructure needs of the nation, which would have created real jobs and seen this country actually get something for its investment. Obama chose to throw money at his donors instead. A nice summary of the Obama disasters can be seen here.

Obama did what he wanted to do, he did not provide what the country needed.

Now there are more threats to do the same.

Obama tests go-it-alone steps for U.S. economy

President Barack Obama launched the first in a series of executive actions on Monday aimed at bypassing Republicans in Congress to show American voters he is serious about tackling a jobs and housing crisis that endangers his re-election.

Obama: “Where Congress Is Not Willing To Act, We’re Going To Go Ahead And Do It Ourselves”

In an interview with KOAA-TV, a local news channel from Colorado Springs, Colorado, President Obama says if Congress is not willing to pass legislation he wants, he will do it himself in order to win another term.

In 2012, Obama to press ahead without Congress

In focusing on executive actions rather than ambitious legislation, the president risks appearing to be putting election-year strategy ahead of economic action at a time when millions of Americans are still out of work.

In each case, it’s all about him and his re-election. It is not about the good of the nation. It never was.

This is the guy who already considers himself a greater President than George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, behind only Johnson, Lincoln and FDR.

“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.”

Note: “Possible exceptions.”

Every now and then Obama hints darkly at what’s really in his mind:

“If only I was a dictator”

No kidding. And the Journal also made this observation:

Ego aside—or super duper ego aside—Mr. Obama’s claims are instructive because they explicitly reject any connection between his “accomplishments” and the economy that Americans elected him to fix.

Exactly.

When it comes to Obama, the needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the One.