Writing off 2010, but warning us Republicans that we’re going to get clobbered in 2012:

The Republicans who won in ‘94 mistakenly believed that Americans had ratified their right-wing philosophy, when voters had simply been using the GOP as a protest vehicle. When 1996 rolled around, the economy was stronger (thank you, 1993 budget), the Republicans’ brand was tarnished (voters came to loathe the Gingrich Congress), and Clinton was again able to charm the country with his sunny demeanor.

The story of Clinton’s first term, in other words, is the story of the difference between midterm and presidential elections.

Except that it wasn’t the 1993 budget but the 1995 budget which really got things rolling – and 2000 showed that even peace and prosperity doesn’t necessarily win continued power for the guys in charge. Gingrich was, indeed, loathed but that was because the New Media simply wasn’t there – we had Rush Limbaugh, a few magazines and that was it. You can’t quite as successfully vilify a Republican in 2010 as you could in 1996 – especially now that MSMers are held in increasing contempt by the electorate. And Clinton was charming – but he also adopted huge swaths of the GOP agenda in order to win re-election in 1996 (welfare reform – opposed tooth and nail by Democrats – was key to Clinton’s victory).

Can Obama be re-elected in 2012? Certainly. Its always very hard to get an incumbent out. In 1980 it was because we had the till-then worst President America ever had in office battling it out with the man who is arguably third after only Washington and Lincoln. In 1992, the ruling party’s vote was split (in 1996, as well – people forget that Clinton never won a popular vote majority; that Obama is the first Democrat to win such a majority since 1976). Prior to Bush I and Carter, you have to go back to 1932 to find a sitting President voted out of office. Its not something which happens on a regular basis. Anyone seriously handicapping 2012 has to put it “leans Obama”.

But, will he? That will depend upon a lot of factors:

1. Is the economy good or bad?

2. Is there a foreign crisis calling in to question the President’s leadership ability?

3. Has there been scandal?

4. Is there a third party to siphon votes away from the President?

In the normal course of events, the economy would be better, foreign affairs would be quiet, there wouldn’t be a major scandal and no third party…but these aren’t very normal times, and we might be wallowing with 10%ish unemployment for years, foreign affairs are getting brutal and not likely to calm down, there already is all sorts of scandal bubbling under the surface and already some leftists are exceptionally angry with Obama.

Lots can happen. Its a long ways away. But to try to extrapolate out from 1994/96 is foolhardy.

As Red State and Let Freedom Ring have reported, there is a movement afoot led by democrat representative Louise Slaughter to pass the Senate version of the Health Care bill without even having to vote on it. As Congress Daily reports:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

This end-around around the Constitutional intent of internal and external checks and balances is nothing less than appalling and dictatorial.

As the polls clearly illustrate, the democrats are now attempting to rule against the consent of the governed, and are doing so with an iron fist, regardless of the consequences. Although they know full well that their present course will invariably spell political disaster for them in November, they continue to press on and fall on their swords for their megalomanaiacal commander in chief. This brazen and blatant thwarting of the will of the people is illustrative of the democrat majority and President Obama acting not as elected representatives, but as overlords.

At least Bill Clinton had enough sense to read the tea leaves in 1994 that the public wanted no part of government-run health care, and let the issue go. In 2006, George W. Bush let go of his signature issue, the privatization of Social Security (which to this day I believe was a good idea) when the democrats convinced a majority of the people to reject it. But Barack Hussein Obama, being the narcissist and megalomaniac that he is, will have none of it. Tyrant and statist that he is, he will get his ‘legacy’ enacted, even at the expense of his underlings, and even at the expense of the well-being of the American people.

Well, we certainly have our ‘change,’ don’t we. I’m still waiting on the ‘hope’ part; but I won’t hold my breath.

Remember when the liberals said that when the Iraqi kook threw his shoes at President Bush it was a sign of how little respect the world had for us because of evil, rotten, nasty Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler’s policies? Well…

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta’s parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama’s head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008. (emphasis added)

The lesson to be learned here is that the people who hate the United States hate the United States, no matter who is President. The President can be as firm as Bush or as soft as Obama, it doesn’t matter – because they hate us for what we are, not what we do. To you liberals, Obama might be a shining light – to our enemies he’s just another infidel imperialist pig.

Keep that in mind….

That is the average deficit projected over the next ten years:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama’s budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.

Annual deficits under Obama’s budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama’s plan released Friday.

The reality is, of course, that we won’t be able to do this. There isn’t ten trillion dollars for us to borrow in the world – if we try to go with Obama’s plan, we’ll have to default on our debt in just a couple years as we become unable to borrow to refinance the current debt (when you’re in deficit, you really don’t have the money to pay off the debts coming due, ya dig?). We’ll wind up like Greece, or worse.

This is the insanity of our left – with this stark fact, national bankruptcy, staring us in the face their whole focus is on spending even more. They are just completely divorced from reality.

Our chance comes in November – we can prevent this.

By snatching away 10 million acres of land we, the people, could use to create new wealth:

You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

Here we are, flat broke and with a shrinking private economy and what to Obama and his liberals think a good idea? Grabbing land and turning it in to nature reserves. That’s just the ticket, Barry – we don’t need no stinking wealth!

Bunch of pinheads!

Now is not the time to make it harder for Americans to make, mine and grow things. We need a crash course of wealth creation in this nation – we shouldn’t be taking 10 million acres off the table but, instead, trying to find 10, 20 or 30 million acres we can put back on. We need room for farms; room for mines; room for factories – we need to be encouraging wealth creation and using as much of our own resources as possible as that keeps the money here, at home.

We need to toss these fools out – starting with Congress in November, and then Obama in 2012. The future of our nation depends on how fast we can change our government.

This seems to be spreading:

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush…

The author, Chris Hedges, goes on for a bit on how Obama was supposed to stop all those evil, wicked and mean Bush policies – you know, how we became this fascist dictatorship wantonly blowing up the world for no good reason. The usual tripe from “progressives” about Bush and the Republicans. But its clear that he’s disappointed in his man Obama – and as he puts Obama’s lies first (with, of course, a dig at President Bush – who didn’t lie, but such basic facts don’t matter on the left), prior to running down the list of alleged Bush sins to be corrected, I think we’re seeing a real crisis on the left.

What I’m wondering is if the people on the left are finally waking up to the fact that their leaders are only in it for the power, prestige and wealth it brings them? When you have people who devote their whole lives to politics – such as Obama, Reid and Pelosi – you naturally get people who will do just about anything to stay in power, and increase their power, and rake in a few bucks, in to the bargain.

Back a century ago, American progressives – they were more honest them, and called themselves socialists – were a much more respectable group. Their leader – Eugene V. Debs – was an honest man who lived the spartan life one would expect from a dedicated socialist. Today’s leaders of the left are either born to great wealth (Ted Kennedy) or mysteriously manage to amass great wealth (Harry Reid) while serving in office.

The progressives just don’t figure it out – never figure out just why most liberal leaders don’t go near leftist rhetoric in an election year: they want the votes and the donations, but only because they gets them in to power, or higher up in power. And, sure, they’ll fund liberal programs like no tomorrow – but only because buying votes with taxpayer money is one of their ways of winning election.

One wonders: did they really think that Obama was going to go after the banksters? Really shut down the magnificently successful Bush anti-terror policies just because some rank-and-file liberals had been conned in to thinking that the people were being spied on and terrorists were being tortured? Really conduct a transparent government when such transparency would spill the beans about just how liberal leaders conduct themselves?

Given the anger we’re seeing, I have to figure they did. They believed the Hope and Change mantra. They believed in Obama – that is hard for us on the right to understand, as we saw through his scam early on – and nothing is more heart-breaking than to have an icon collapse.

What will come of it? Hard to say – progressives do have a very sheep-like mentality and they may just gripe but follow…or, they may split the Democrat party. Time will tell.

You’re turning our Blue States, Red:

Barack Obama now has a negative approval rating in every state he flipped from the Bush column to his in 2008. In each of those places his level of support is now in the 44-46% range. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t have to run for reelection this year. He can only hope things start turning around for him once the midterms are in the rear view mirror, much as they did for Bill Clinton.

Only took a bit more than a year for our erring sisters to figure Obama out – and now these States are receding rapidly from Obama; and they won’t be back in 2012, even if the economy improves. All that political polarization is just going to get stronger, thanks to Obama’s relentless liberalism. Its very hard to switch a negative view back to a positive one.

This doesn’t mean Obama can’t win in 2012 – but it does mean that its back to Ohio and Florida calling the shots. For now. Obama keeps going like this and we might get a repeat of the last Carter Administration…

We all expected this explosion of spending under Obama, but could we really have predicted that he’d spend away the future while simultaneously pontificating about fiscal responsibility?

After he signed a law last week authorizing the U.S. Treasury to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion, President Barack Obama delivered a characteristically sanctimonious speech. It was about his deep commitment to frugality.
 
“After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility,” he said. “It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend.”

To put Obama’s Olympian hypocrisy in perspective, one need only examine the federal budget tables posted on the White House website by Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget.
 
They reveal these startling facts: When calculated by the average annual percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that he will spend during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the biggest-spending president since 1930, the earliest year reported on the OMB’s historical chart of spending as a percentage of GDP. When calculated by the average annual percentage of GDP he will borrow during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the greatest debter president since Franklin Roosevelt.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? How can someone so blatantly say one and do another and get away with it? One has to conclude that either Obama is a pathological liar, or insane.

Hell, I say he never deserved a first.

52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll.

44 percent of all Americans said they would vote to reelect the president in two and a half years, less than the slight majority who said they would prefer to elect someone else.

Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion.

It is unfortunate that he ever got to where he is in the first place. But it is somewhat comforting that American realize that Obama is just another fraud who talked the talk during the campaign, but has zero leadership skills, no bipartisan bones in his body, and an unpopular agenda.

Looks more and more like it:

More reports are confirming the Obama administration is preparing for a potential Supreme Court vacancy in the next few months. Reports surfaced weeks ago that pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens was considering retiring and today, CNN said more recent reports indicate that as well.

CNN indicates the White house has begun “quiet preparations” for a high court vacant but cautions that top Obama officials have not named any names of potential Supreme Court retirements.

It won’t change the make-up of the court because Obama will just replace one ultra-liberal judicial activist with another, but it will be a great opportunity for we conservatives to clarify issues heading in to November.

What is at stake this November is the vision of American government – a super-State or a democratic republic? Stevens has been legislating liberalism from the bench for decades and we can point out the baleful effects of the decisions he’s authored or concurred in – and then point out the dangers of Obama’s nominee, who will be a carbon-copy of Stevens.

Is anyone surprised?

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year.

He gave us his word – his most solemn promise. Of course, he’s already broken many such promises.

Naturally, Obama sees the middle class as a ripe target for taxation – they already strongly oppose him and he’ll call it “taxing the rich” to play up to the idiot envy of the poorer leftist base…meanwhile, Obama’s rich, bankster buddies will continue to rake it in.

Well, the new numbers are out… Unemployment remains teetering around ten percent – even though Obama said it wouldn’t go above 8 percent — and even the though the unemployment edged down a bit, 20,000 jobs were lost, we’ve still lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession. How many jobs “saved or created” does that come out to?

 Is Barry proud of this? Is this a solid B-plus economy? Is 16.5 percent underemployment the best this administration can deliver?

UPDATE: Past Deficits vs. Obama’s Deficits in Pictures

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Mish breaks down the job numbers:

In the continuing theater of BLS absurdities, the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% in spite of a 25th consecutive month of job losses. Some stopped counting at 22 months in November. However, I find November questionable.

This month professional services contributed 44,00 jobs to the plus side, but 52,000 of them were part-time jobs. Amazingly a table below shows the number of part-time workers decreased by 849,000 from last month. Go figure.

Moreover, the so-called 64,000 rise in November can be attributed to the seasonally adjusted hiring of 94,000 temporary workers…

Read the whole thing.

Me: I’m doubtful about this 9.7% number – it just doesn’t make sense given that we’re still shedding jobs and I can’t imagine that many people getting discouraged while there was a recent extension of unemployment benefits (once your benefits run out, you’re no longer counted as unemployed, even if you haven’t got a job). There’s always been a bit of BS in the unemployment numbers but it still has been a useful metric because it used the same methodology all the time, and thus you could at least spot the trends (ie, is unemployment going up, or going down?)…but now, I’m not so sure. I wonder if someone is playing around with the number of discouraged workers? The more such there are, the better the official unemployment rate looks…and who really gets to say who is “discouraged”? Given the rank dishonesty of the Obama Administration, its easy to believe they are faking the numbers.

I love it.

One sign that Washington, D.C., had been home to Obama Mania was the number of independent retailers selling all sorts of Obama merchandise. Every street corner, it seemed, had Obama wares (or Obama wear) for sale
. Now, however, most of the winter caps for sale are not emblazoned with the Obama logo. T-shirts depicting our president as a dunking Michael Jordan, a victorious Muhammad Ali, or saber-baring Luke Skywalker (yes, these shirts all existed) are nowhere to be found.

This time last year, the Obama Store was teeming with customers. Ideally situated in the basement of Washington’s Union Station, the store was filled with consumers eager to buy anything with Obama’s likeness while others took pictures of the life-size cut-outs of the president and first lady. Now, the Obama Store is boarded up.

How quickly things change in a year.

So, we got Democrats in reelection battles distancing themselves from Barry, and now Obama merchandise is becoming dollar store junk items. Hard to believe? Well, given the absolute failure of his administration, it is actually quite understandable. After all, in 2012, when he runs for reelection, his new slogan will have be “No, We Couldn’t” and that just doesn’t have the same appeal as “Yes, We Can.”

I never expected this to happen… After Obama’s blasphemous victory in 2008, I figured his adoring supporters would never turn on him, and his party would sitck by him loyally as he destroyed the country.

Well, it appears that Democrats are actually distancing themselves from Obama as a they desperately try to cling to their elected positions.

In office only a year, and he’s already a liability. Gotta love it.

Change we can believe in, huh?

The Obama administration wants to increase taxes on Americans earning more than $200,000 by almost $970 billion over the next decade and take in an additional $400 billion from businesses even as it retooled a proposed crackdown on international tax-avoidance techniques.

The budget released today would reinstate 10-year-old income tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 percent for single Americans earning more than $200,000 and joint filers who make more than $250,000 as part of a broad $1.9 trillion tax increase proposal. It proposes to eliminate preferences for oil and gas companies, life-insurance products, executives of investment partnerships and U.S.-based companies that operate overseas.

This, of course, would be more taxes on “the rich”. Now, I know that some of you might think of “the rich” as being people like, well, President Obama, Senators like Kerry and Rockefeller, zillionaire leftists like George Soros and such. Well, you’re wrong – they are not part of “the rich”. “The rich” is a very select group of people – those who earn $200,000.00 or more per year. If you have millions or even billions of dollars you’re sitting on, you’re not “the rich”…if you’re a plumbing contractor who grosses $500,000.00 per year by the sweat of your brow, congratulations – you’re “the rich”.

What Obama is really taxing is the middle class – because that is where income taxes can be levied. The real rich don’t make a lot of income – what they make is hidden away in various funds and used by various dodges which allow them to live fabulous lives while paying as little as possible in income taxes. And, of course, the vast wealth they have is mostly untaxed by the Federal government. But Obama has to feed the maw of government and pretend he’s working towards fiscal discipline.

He could have proposed a tax on wealth – say, asking Senator Kerry to sell one of his mansions in order to pay a “you have a lot of mansions, Senator” tax. But that wouldn’t work. That would cause opposition from liberals, like Kerry, who are always taking about “the rich” having to pay their “fair share”, but who never seem willing to sacrifice their own wealth. Wealthy people don’t like to be taxed – its such a bother, ya know? Better to tax the middle class.

And thus is laid bare the dishonesty of the left – they are the party of the real rich, and they protect their own. While leftist rank-and-file people are spoon fed anti-capitalist propaganda, they never realize that what they’re doing is punishing the hard working people who get things done, while the idle rich run the liberal show and never pay the piper.

I’d ask them to wake up and smell the coffee, but I think their stupor has gone on too long.

This clueless:

Let’s go through the president’s fascinating logic here, shall we? The Republican nobility has completely misrepresented the king’s intentions, thereby creating a most unfortunate situation where the peasants don’t trust him and his Democratic court anymore. And what’s more, these common folk are in such a tizzy that they have left the Republican noblemen in Congress with absolutely no wiggle room; for if these Republicans concede anything now in an effort to improve the lot for all, they will be in hot water back home.

Earth to Barack Obama: It isn’t the Republicans on Capitol Hill that have blocked your attempts to put America on the path towards government-run health care. It was the American people — the same people that punished your party in 1994 when they tried to pull this stunt the last time. And it wasn’t because they were told that it was “some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of [their] lives,” or that “this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.” They figured that stuff out on their own.

Obama – and the rest of the Democrats – do seem to be laboring under the assumption that the TEA Party was created and controlled by the GOP. The believe this because they know that no one on the left is permitted to form a grass roots organization without the specific permission of leftist leaders. Not understanding how the people can self-organize, our Community Organizer in Chief is all at sea about what is happening.

Obama seems to have gone to that GOP retreat in the hopes of getting the GOP to call of the dogs. To get our side to calm down the TEA Party people and allow some version of Obamacare to go through. Sorry, Barry, it can’t be done. Two reasons:

1. We don’t want to do it – or, at least, those in the GOP who want real reform rather than “bi-partisanship” don’t want to do it.

2. Couldn’t do it, even if we wanted to. If you’ve got a phone number to the Grand Poo-Bah of the TEA Party movement, you let us know…as far as we can tell, its a disparate group of patriots working independently on a common cause. If it has a leader, its Sarah Palin – but even she doesn’t call the shots.

The American people are in revolt against the government – Rasmussen’s latest polling for Presidential job approval shows a marked improvement for Obama on the “Strongly Approve” metric since the SOTU. The problem is that all he’s done is win over Democrats – Independents are less supportive now than they were before the SOTU. No one is buying the liberal line any more – and no one is fooled by MSM attempts to paint the TEA Party as some sort of extremist fringe.

The times, they are a-changing. Get used to it, liberals.

Hammering Obama quite hard:

…He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.

He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit…

Gotta be hard on Obama to understand that the better man to be President is a woman – and a conservative woman, at that..

I didn’t plan to watch. But I did… I felt dirty afterwards. It was so partisan, full of lies… This guy is such a narcissist. He still is trying to convince people he saved jobs when we’ve lost millions and the unemployment rate is in double digits.

I really can’t say more now… I am still so disturbed by Obama’s lack of respect for the office of the presidency.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Anyone who wants an alternative to Obama’s blather can do no better than Governor McDonnell’s response:

The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper, limited role of government at every level.

Without reform, the excessive growth of government threatens our very liberty and prosperity.

In recent months, the American people have made clear that they want government leaders to listen and act on the issues most important to them.

We want results, not rhetoric. We want cooperation, not partisanship.

There is much common ground.

All Americans agree, we need a health care system that is affordable, accessible, and high quality.

But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government…

UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan: Uh, Barry, you shouldn’t be ripping the Supreme Court during a SOTU speech while they’re all sitting there – ’cause now you got another “you lie” moment.

UPDATE III, by Mark Noonan: If you’d like to see how a good President does it.

And never was a President more deserving of a ripping:

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) tells National Review Online that the spending freeze is a “long, long way from the medicine we need to cure our government’s addiction.” A day before President Obama’s maiden State of the Union address, McCain also says that he is disappointed with the president’s recent mea culpa to Diane Sawyer.

“I was flabbergasted by that interview,” says McCain. “Instead of that, what I’d like to see tomorrow — and won’t — is the president saying that he promised to change the climate in Washington, but hasn’t. That he promised to broadcast health-care negotiations on C-SPAN, but didn’t. And that he promised to sit down with Republicans and work in a bipartisan fashion on issues like the economy, then decided not to. That interview was transparent. He’s looking to avoid any blame.”

“While I’m glad to hear about the freeze, and that he decided to change his position from the campaign trail, it’s only part of the solution,” McCain says. “Anything like this is better than what he’s been doing.”

I know a lot of my fellow conservatives still have a problem with McCain but let’s face some facts here: he would be a much better President than Obama is being. Sure, he’d tick us off by lurching to the left on some things, but we wouldn’t have this amazingly dishonest, hard-left government wrecking America, day by day.

Obama has lied to us again and again and now expects us to believe that his so-called spending freeze is something other than eye wash. The budget is to be frozen at current levels – ie, at the level where we’re bankrupting the nation. Additionally, Obama has given himself all sorts of wiggle room to increase funding on liberal, pet projects. And we can top that off with the concern that Obama is just flat out lying – saying he’ll freeze, when he really has no intention of doing so.

We need not a freeze, but at least a 25%, across-the-board reduction in spending – and if this means that more than half the government employees have to be fired, then that is just what we’ll have to do because we can’t starve the troops nor cut SS benefits to the elderly. But we’ve got a lot of chair polishers who can be shown the door – or they can agree to a 50% reduction in pay, whatever they prefer. Bottom line: we have to stop borrowing. Today.

Unless and until Obama does the right thing, he’ll just be digging us further in the hole and all his populist rhetoric will be just so much nonsense designed to sucker people in to ignoring reality.

UPDATE: While they talk fiscal responsibility, they are set to have deficits which will never be less than $1 trillion over the next ten years.

Because we have to make certain that the people who created this mess – in and out of government – are protected from the consequences of their actions:

The White House stood firm on the renomination of Ben Bernanke Monday, saying a second term for the Federal Reserve chief was vital to demonstrating stability in the US financial system.

“Chairman Bernanke helped the president and the economic team steer through some very turbulent times and rough waters,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“I believe that it sends a signal to greater and overall stability to have his nomination approved without political games. And that’s what we expect will happen later this week.”

What is it with liberals and their demand for “stability”? Its like they’re chicken. Look, we don’t need stability and we don’t need “too big to fail” banks to continue existing. We need to clear away the mess, cut taxes, spending and regulation, and just let the people get back to work.

Well, we won’t get any of that while Obama is in office – he’s too beholden to the liberal, corporate fat cats. I don’t know if he’s just in awe of rich people or that he’s hoping for a cushy job once out of the White House – whatever it is, it is the people who will pay the price for keeping Bernanke and those like him in office.