Obama

Steve Chapman: Maybe Obama Should Quit?

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Yet more speculation that it would be best for Obama to not seek a second term – from the Chicago Tribune:

… there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he’s willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013.

That might be the sensible thing to do. It’s hard for a president to win a second term when unemployment is painfully high. If the economy were in full rebound mode, Obama might win anyway. But it isn’t, and it may fall into a second recession — in which case voters will decide his middle name is Hoover, not Hussein. Why not leave of his own volition instead of waiting to get the ax?…

Mostly he won’t because I suspect he doesn’t realize just how bad its getting…and even if he does, there still is that chance of a massive rebound in the economy and/or a complete implosion by the GOP.  Neither is very likely (in the end, we GOPers will end up nominating someone who can do all that is necessary:  merely be a credible alternative to Obama), but it won’t become crystal clear for months…perhaps too long down the road for Obama to quit and allow time for Democrats to pull it together and get a credible nominee.

To be sure, it would do Obama good to get out – as Chapman observes, even if Obama wins, second terms don’t tend to work out very well.  Obama’s second term would be harder than most – he would have managed to scrape to a win with an economy plunging back in to recession and he’d be dealing with a Congress likely completely controlled by his opponents.  The scandals brewing now would come to a head, then…nothing but a four year long headache for Obama.  Quitting now would mean an almost-certain Hillary nomination…and she could actually win next year; thus Obama would saddle her with all the headaches while he goes on to write his memoirs, make bags of money and perhaps become head of the United Nations in the by and by.

We’ll see how this comes out – it gets more interesting as more and more liberal voices join the Chorus of Concern.  But don’t mistake it – its not a worry about Obama:  it is entirely a concern that with Obama at the top of the ticket while Reid and Pelosi still lead the Congressional Democrats that the party is on the road to a blow-out defeat…the sort of crushing defeat which ushers in 50 years of the other guys running things.  The sort of defeat which could result in the dismantling of the liberal welfare State and the revival of an America that our grand-fathers knew.  Nothing can be more frightening for liberals than that…a confident, growing America running the world based on core, American values.  Makes ’em shudder just to think about it.

As of now, it is a million to one against Obama declining to run…but that is very different from “absolutely impossible” as it was just a month or so ago.  And its only a thousand to one against a serious primary challenger…far different from the million to one against a little while ago.

Solyndra Scandal Update

Mark Noonan23 Comments

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work…

Which is a rather stupid defense – because now we’ve got the 1,000 people out of work, plus an additional half billion dollar burden on the American taxpayer.  When you start making stupid defenses of your actions, it means you know you’ve really screwed up and are just hoping that it doesn’t entirely blow up in your face.

This scandal, though, is starting to show signs of getting legs – legs which will keep it walking through American politics for quite a while.  And legs which just might lead us to ever more scandals just like this.  It is clear from Solyndra that at least some in the Obama Administration were happy to make deals which were bad for the taxpayers and good for Obama donors…the only thing we don’t know is the “Watergate” question:  what did the President know, and when did he know it?

In a lot of ways, Obama had better hope he loses next year – the rising tide of scandal bodes ill for an Obama second term, and after the 2012 elections, even if Obama does win, he is likely to be faced with a Congress entirely controlled by the GOP…no friendly Reid holding back the Senate half of government oversight.  A re-elected Obama might be forced to do nothing but defend himself against scandal after scandal flowing out of his complete control of government 2009-11.

UPDATE:  More information emerging in the “LightSquared” scandal – seems that President Obama was an early investor in the company.  To remind, there is evidence that Administration officials pressed an Air Force general to change his testimony to be more favorable to LightSquared.  This is getting to be the sort of run-of-the-mill corruption we see out of Chicago…has Obama really been playing that particular game while in DC?  Only an investigation will settle the matter…

Obama Jobs Bill: Billions for ACORN and the Left

Mark Noonan27 Comments

From Pajamas Media:

ACORN and other radical left-wing groups would be eligible for up to $15 billion in federal funding if President Obama’s new economic stimulus package becomes law.

Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling the latest round of futile stimulus a “jobs bill.” In a sense it really is a jobs bill: a jobs bill for Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizers.

The draft legislation, which had not yet been introduced in Congress at press time, makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding…

With the left getting rebellious over Obama’s failure to turn America fully socialist, Obama has to do something to recover their support…and there is nothing a leftist likes better than some taxpayer swag.  To be sure, this doesn’t mean that all $15 billion so earmarked would go to ACORN and similar groups, but with that much cash flowing you know that such groups would pick up at least hundreds of millions…and, perhaps, billions.

This is probably part of the reason Obama wants it passed as is – if he can’t payoff his supporters, there is simply no upside to the bill.  It won’t improve the economy, it won’t create jobs…it won’t, that is, do anything to help Obama in the larger sense, so it had better at least solidify his leftist support.  If the GOP is allowed a say, then the payoffs won’t be in the final bill.

Kill this bill – don’t even think about passing it.  Pass a GOP jobs bill out of the House and let Reid kill that in the Senate, or Obama veto it after passage.  We have no reason to work with the President and the Democrats, at all, because their efforts are not directed at helping America, but at helping themselves.  Let the people decide in 2012 what they want – legislation which is just a payoff for cronies, or legislation that will actually help the United States.

Will Obama Quit?

Mark Noonan15 Comments

PJ Tatler has a run down on the growing rumors that Obama  may quit – pull an LBJ and back out of running in 2012.  I don’t think this will happen.

First off, the only people on the Democrat side who might suggest this – Lieberman, Bayh, etc – are not the sort of people Obama will listen to.  Locked in to his array of sycophants, Obama is not about to allow some outsider to tell him that the game is over and its time to go home.  I can very much see some sensible Democrats wanting to do this – there is a chance with Obama on the ticket that a defeat in 2012 will turn in to an epic, blow out loss – but I can’t see any way for such people to reach Obama.

Secondly, and this ties in to why there won’t be a serious primary challenge, to move against Obama is to risk the Democrats’ hammer lock on the African American vote.  This isn’t just about the 2012 Presidential election – this is about whether or not liberals can retain any power to influence American policy.  A defeat in 2012 would be bad for them – but there is defeat, and then there is crushing loss.  Defeat is Obama out and the loss of 20 House and 5 Senate seats. Bad.  Means GOP controls things for at least two years.  Lots of conservative reforms can be implemented…but the chances of a major overhaul of the FDR/LBJ settlement are small.  Crushing loss is Obama out and the loss of 50 House and 15 Senate Seats.  Horrific.  Means GOP has the power to pretty much do whatever it wants…every liberal program is on the chopping block.  Just can’t be allowed to happen.

But that is what would happen if the Democrat party – by calling on Obama to quit or engineering a serious primary challenger – were to be perceived by African American voters as having betrayed Obama.  Its not that they would vote GOP, but that they would stay home on election day.  Without high African American turnout going 90%+ for the Democrats, the horrific scenario becomes a reality.  Of course, the Democrats might endure the horrific loss, anyway, but why make it a certainty by stabbing Obama in the back?  For good or ill, Democrats have Obama for 2012…in 2008, they jumped on his bandwagon presuming that he could initiate 50 years of liberal rule.  It hasn’t worked out that way.  Even if Obama manages to win in 2012, he has completely failed in that promise…but if the liberals want to have a future in America, they have to ensure that 2012 doesn’t work out as a blowout loss.  Easier to keep losses to a minimum with Obama than without.

I could be wrong about this – there might be a revolt of the remaining moderates in the Democrat party.  More than likely, though, there won’t be…and if there is, it will work out as a quixotic, third party alternative…which would help sink Obama, but wouldn’t destroy the Democrat party for the next 20 years.  That will all be as it may – none of us get a say in how Democrats do things.  Our job is to work for the blowout victory no matter what they do – because right now we have that chance to really do it:  to win so much power that we really can dismantle the Welfare State.

So, let’s just get out there and do it..

Solyndra II?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Not satisfied with having thrown hundreds of millions away on Solyndra, the Obama Administration is now going to throw billions – from a Department of Energy press release:

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the Energy Department finalized a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Mojave Solar LLC for the development of the Mojave Solar Project (MSP).  When complete, the 250MW solar generation project located in San Bernardino County, California will increase the nation’s currently installed concentrating solar power (CSP) capacity by approximately 50 percent.  Abengoa Solar Inc., the project sponsor, estimates it will fund more than 900 construction and permanent operations jobs…

Sounds great, huh?  But we’ve heard this before from DoE:

Vice President Joe Biden, appearing via satellite from Washington D.C., today announced the Department of Energy has finalized a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc., which manufactures innovative cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels that provide clean, renewable energy. The funding will finance construction of the first phase of the company’s new manufacturing facility. Annual production of solar panels from the first phase is expected to provide energy equivalent to powering 24,000 homes a year or over half a million homes over the project’s lifetime.  Solyndra estimates the new plant will initially create 3,000 construction jobs, and lead to as many as 1,000 jobs once the facility opens.  Hundreds more will install Solyndra’s solar panels on rooftops around the country…

Will the new loan guarantee prove better than the last, or is this good money after bad?  Also, did the people running Mojave Solar LLC donate to President Obama?  Other Democrats?  How often have they been to visit the White House?  Is this a hard-nosed, business decision or just another political pay off?

HAT TIP:  Zero Hedge

Obamunism! Americans Flee to Canada for Jobs

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Just how is that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?  From the Tucson Sentinel:

Usually, you hear stories of people fleeing to America, not the other way around.

But the jittery state of the U.S. economy is driving an increasing number of its citizens to seek better prospects north of the border.

Americans are the latest economic refugees, and they’re heading to Canada…

…Americans make up the second-largest group of temporary workers in Canada, only behind Filipinos, most of whom work as nannies…

It is only a small number of Americans, so far…but, my goodness, what a reversal of fortune?  Land of the Free, Home of the Brave…and off to Canada you go because you can’t get a decent job in the United States.  Not exactly carrying our national goal of allowing people to pursue happiness, now are we?

2012 can’t get here fast enough…

HAT TIP:  Instapundit

Obama Unveils $450 Billion Jobs Plan

Mark Noonan55 Comments

From the AP – first, bait the GOP with a tax cut:

…The newest and boldest element of Obama’s plan would slash the Social Security payroll tax both for tens of millions of workers and for employers, too. For individuals, that tax has been shaved from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for this year but is to go back up again without action by Congress. Obama wants to keep it and deepen the cut to 3.1 percent for workers…

Then get on to Porkulus II – from Hot Air:

…According to CBS, more than $100 billion will go towards infrastructure and a similar amount will be comprised of money to states to hire more teachers and first-responders and tax breaks for small businesses…

Don’t get me wrong, I like teachers – but how are teachers going to get us out of a recession?  What Obama is really doing here is shoveling more money at government-union enterprises to keep employment up in those areas, thus assuring a large and steady stream of union donations to Obama’s re-election effort.  As for the infrastructure stuff…first off, didn’t we already spend hundreds of billions on that?  Secondly, did thos hundreds of billions actually create jobs?

And all this will lead to a campaign meme:  “I offered them a middle class tax cut, but those obstructionist GOPers in Congress were more interested in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.  Let me be clear, I know that we have much to do and things are hard…but I need more time to get our do-nothing Congress motivated to work for the people”.

Its nothing but a campaign speech.  Obama knows that no policy he can use would help the economy, so now he’s just setting a blame-shifting stage and hoping we all sorta forget he’s been President since 2009.

UPDATE:  Bank of America may lay off 40,000 workers.

Obama’s Fat Cat Donors

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From Zero Hedge:

Before tomorrow’s 2012 pre-election speech in which President Obama’s vocal elocution will be earnest, and results – to put it mildly – tepid, about about how he could create jobs dammit, if only the Republicans would behave, it’s interesting to note who’s supporting Obama keep his job. A cursory look at the early stages of his campaign fundraising reveals that the same group of people that benefitted from policies (bi-partisan) that lavished them with cheap money, secret loans, debt guarantees and other forms of perks not available to the average citizen, are backing him for President… To date, Obama’s Presidential bid dosh comes largely from – wait for it – the financial sector. Yes, the same sector that screwed the country over, and that, despite some unpleasant lawsuits they will likely settle,  remains as powerful, unrepentant, unaccountable, selfish and Main-Street-destabilizing as before Obama took office…

You can read it and weep over at Open Secrets.  Now, to be fair, a lot of rich people will also be shelling out for the eventual GOP nominee – and we should find a way to discourage that…at all events, we won’t out-raise Obama in 2012 and, anyways, money won’t determine the winner – but Obama and his Democrats claim to be for the little guy.  Remember, one of the memes for Obama is how we nasty, mean, cruel GOPers are trying to destroy the middle class…on purpose, because we’re just such bastards.  We want everyone to die as long as millionaires and billionaires can get their private jet tax breaks…so go Democrat talking points.  But I ask you, do the 44 “bundlers” from the Securities and Investment industry who have ponied up $7.2 million for Obama represent the middle class?

The bankers are deathly afraid of one thing – a government which won’t bail them out.  So far, Obama has proven ever willing to screw everyone to bail out the banks.  In fairness to Obama, I doubt he fully understands what he’s been doing…completely insulated from day-to-day American living and never having had to struggle to make ends meet, Obama may not know how a bail out eventually causes higher food and energy prices for average Americans.  But whether Obama understands it or not, the fact is that he has been the bankers best friend since January 20th, 2009; and the amount of money the bankers are lavishing on Obama indicates they believe he’ll continue to be their friend if re-elected.

The middle class really has only one bulwark these days – the TEA Party.  Sure, a lot of TEA Partiers are Republicans, but even the GOP – from olden times the party of the middle class – has not fully grasped just how bad things are getting out there.  Only the TEA Party – being made up mostly of middle class Americans – understands.  The battle of 2012 is a battle of the Ruling Class against the Middle Class…with Obama and his bankers defending the Ruling Class while the TEA Party defends the Middle Class.

We’ll see how it comes out – we’ll find out, once and for all, who runs this nation.

 

Boehner: No Response to Obama Speech

Mark Noonan6 Comments

From Fox News:

Republicans have decided they’re not going to give a rebuttal to President Obama’s jobs speech later this week, a decision House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi took as a high affront to the White House.

At least three GOP lawmakers also have announced they’re not going to show up for the presidential address. House Speaker John Boehner’s office then confirmed Tuesday evening that nobody from the party would deliver an official televised response…

Nancy thinks we’re being mean…actually, we’re just being indifferent.  Unless Obama pulls out something really surprising – ie, a complete shift to GOP ideas on the economy – there is just not much to say about his speech.  From what we can tell, the speech will be some hundreds of billions in stimulus – more spending of money we don’t have in service of a policy which has already failed.  Maybe this is all just a strategic smokescreen and Obama will wow us and the whole world with a big policy change…but I’m not counting on it…and I’ll be able to read the speech afterwards if necessary.

As it stands right now, President Obama is a leader who has lost the respect of the American people…even the left is getting testy with him.  Obama has no one but himself to blame for this state of affairs…and if he hadn’t spent the last two and a half years routinely insulting us, things would be different.  Now it is up to Obama to show us different…and if he can’t do it, there is no need for us to try and burnish his image by pretending he’s doing anything worthwhile with this jobs speech.

Nooooo, there’s no room to cut!!!

tiredoflibbs7 Comments

I am so glad the pResident has not rested since taking office and promising to fix the economy, create jobs, heal the earth…  ok he did not say he will not rest on the last one.  But the first two he did and we have seen NOTHING from this so-called “leader” but more of the same failed liberal policies of the past.   I know… I know…you drones can’t wait to cry “Republicans do it too”.  That was before the last election.  We now have some TRUE CONSERVATIVES working against the RINOs.

Here is a collection of government outrage stories from the last few weeks.  It’s just too easy to come up with this BS. There is more…. a lot more.  After next week’s “jobs plan” errrr “jobs summary” errr “reasonable list of policies” speech, there will be even more…

Environmental Enforcement Leaves Gibson Guitar Makers in Fear

Feds Give 4 States $5.8 Million to Protect Insect Habitat

USDA Gives $73,824 Grant To Connect Food With Bed And Breakfasts

DHS Giving $2.1B in ‘Preparedness Grants’ to Cities, Indian Tribes, Non-Profits, Etc.

Postal Service spent $4.3 million on union employees who did “nothing”

$500,000 for a windmill in Milwaukee

Pentagon pays $720M in late fees for storage containers

Gov’t Paying Farmers, Ranchers $112M to Protect Bird Too Numerous to be Threatened

HIV/AIDS group charged with diverting tax dollars to strip club

Taxpayer-Funded App Makes You Look Like a Neanderthal

$245 million for a desalting plant in Arizona that has never been used and still costs $6 million a year to maintain

Taxpayers Foot Bill For an App To Tell Workers It’s Hot Outside

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns

Are you tired of hope and change yet?  Still waiting for the change from someone who was “a new kind of politician” and not “an insider”.  His actions have said otherwise.