A.J. DiCintio
Obama's year-end gift to the American people
By A.J. DiCintio
In a recent blog, investment strategist Ed Yardeni (yardeni.com) referred to Gallup Poll results showing that landslide numbers of the U.S. public (64%) regard big government as the country's most important threat, not big business (26%) or big labor (8%).
That poll, by the way, is all the more dramatic because of its finding that 48% of Democrats are worried about the harmful consequences of big government, a number that was 32% just two years ago.
Having presented Gallup's findings, Yardeni turned to the speech President Obama gave December 6th in Osawatomie, Kansas, found its purpose as "channeling" Teddy Roosevelt, who gave his "New Nationalism" speech in the same town, and concluded that the TR smokescreen notwithstanding, Obama's "version of the New Nationalism isn't resonating with the voters."
Now, given Gallup's report, Dr. Yardeni's conclusion is as unassailable as his advice about big government is wise when he quotes from the 1986 horror film The Fly to warn, "Be afraid, be very afraid."
But to his conclusion and his warning as they relate to Obama's perverting Thoreau to say, "That government is best which governs most," I would add that in its totality, the Osawatomie speech represents a hugely important gift to the American people for the following reasons.
First, together with Obama's record, which includes the rotten big government porkfest that was his stimulus bill and the Big Brother, '60s-welfare-style, no real reform, 2,000 page monstrosity that is his healthcare law, the speech reminds the public of the enormous disconnect between President Obama as a devotee of failed politics of the past and the illusion that was "post everything" candidate Obama of limitless hope and change.
Second, it turns the public mind to the reality of the true, life-long ideological Obama, revealing not a populist who loves common folks but rather a centralized government loving anti-Jeffersonian who employs vicious, simplistic generalizations to mock ordinary Americans as "bitter" yahoos who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
An anti-Jeffersonian who despises power wielded by citizens in states and localities in favor of rule by liberal elites who issue their edicts from the level of government most remote from and most fortified against the Constitution's "We the People."
An anti-Jeffersonian relentlessly pushing big government liberalism even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told the best of all possible worlds has them playing sheep to their elitist shepherd betters.
Even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told to subjugate themselves to elites whose alleged deep learning and far sighted wisdom prompted them to free banks to become subsidized casinos and mortgage markets venues for ridiculously stupid social experimentation.
Even as the American people are boiling with anger about the economic destruction caused by failed policies advanced by a bi-partisan mob of political/bureaucratic elites that includes the likes of Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, George Bush, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Jon Corzine, whose superbly elitist resume announces he was a CEO of Goldman Sachs, a U.S. Senator, the governor of New Jersey, and, until recently, the honcho of MF Global.
And even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told Jefferson had it all wrong with his idea that liberty is best protected and prosperity best nurtured not when power is held by politicians and perfectly oligarchical activist judges (whom an insidious Obama tried to defend with the anti-democratic, anti-intellectual nonsense of "judicial empathy") but when it is held close to the Constitution's "We the People."
Finally, in its vagueness, contradictions, and disregard for hard truths, the speech informs every open-minded citizen that despite the nation's crying out for real solutions to real problems, Obama intends to run his re-election campaign with the same shameless vacuity he exhibited in '08.
This devotion to the cheap political expediencies of the "eternal campaign" despite the reality that the public is in no mood to suffer the kind of insulting generalities Demagogue Obama dumped on the people of Osawatomie.
For instance, in no mood to hear a president running for re-election pompously pronounce that "We should be known for creating and selling products all around the world that are stamped with the proud words: Made in America" without admitting he has done absolutely nothing to wisely reform the nation's trade policies.
In no mood to hear a president running for re-election complain that "We should be a country where everyone has a chance to go to college [without incurring] $100,000 of debt" and yet fail to be honest about the perniciously ironic truth that for decades out-of-control big government involvement in higher education has caused college costs to hugely and dangerously outpace inflation.
Yes, as the Gallup poll shows, the public is in no mood to hear that the way to fix the nation's problems is to further empower the repulsively obese, disgustingly corrupt, shamelessly wasteful, arrogantly elitist sow that is Washington.
But as Ed Yardeni succinctly pointed out, Obama holds the opposite view.
The Osawatomie speech offers the public an additional opportunity to focus on the reality that the president is in love with the sow's every insatiable whim, for instance, if it helps citizens recall that with an astonishingly arrogant fidelity to the dogmas of liberal ideology, he proposed to improve not just the healthcare system but the overall health of the entire United States of America by hiring 15,000 additional IRS agents to enforce the abomination that is his healthcare law.
That's why it was the best present Barack Obama could give the American people as they close out yet another agonizing year.
© A.J. DiCintio
December 31, 2011
In a recent blog, investment strategist Ed Yardeni (yardeni.com) referred to Gallup Poll results showing that landslide numbers of the U.S. public (64%) regard big government as the country's most important threat, not big business (26%) or big labor (8%).
That poll, by the way, is all the more dramatic because of its finding that 48% of Democrats are worried about the harmful consequences of big government, a number that was 32% just two years ago.
Having presented Gallup's findings, Yardeni turned to the speech President Obama gave December 6th in Osawatomie, Kansas, found its purpose as "channeling" Teddy Roosevelt, who gave his "New Nationalism" speech in the same town, and concluded that the TR smokescreen notwithstanding, Obama's "version of the New Nationalism isn't resonating with the voters."
Now, given Gallup's report, Dr. Yardeni's conclusion is as unassailable as his advice about big government is wise when he quotes from the 1986 horror film The Fly to warn, "Be afraid, be very afraid."
But to his conclusion and his warning as they relate to Obama's perverting Thoreau to say, "That government is best which governs most," I would add that in its totality, the Osawatomie speech represents a hugely important gift to the American people for the following reasons.
First, together with Obama's record, which includes the rotten big government porkfest that was his stimulus bill and the Big Brother, '60s-welfare-style, no real reform, 2,000 page monstrosity that is his healthcare law, the speech reminds the public of the enormous disconnect between President Obama as a devotee of failed politics of the past and the illusion that was "post everything" candidate Obama of limitless hope and change.
Second, it turns the public mind to the reality of the true, life-long ideological Obama, revealing not a populist who loves common folks but rather a centralized government loving anti-Jeffersonian who employs vicious, simplistic generalizations to mock ordinary Americans as "bitter" yahoos who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
An anti-Jeffersonian who despises power wielded by citizens in states and localities in favor of rule by liberal elites who issue their edicts from the level of government most remote from and most fortified against the Constitution's "We the People."
An anti-Jeffersonian relentlessly pushing big government liberalism even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told the best of all possible worlds has them playing sheep to their elitist shepherd betters.
Even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told to subjugate themselves to elites whose alleged deep learning and far sighted wisdom prompted them to free banks to become subsidized casinos and mortgage markets venues for ridiculously stupid social experimentation.
Even as the American people are boiling with anger about the economic destruction caused by failed policies advanced by a bi-partisan mob of political/bureaucratic elites that includes the likes of Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, George Bush, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Jon Corzine, whose superbly elitist resume announces he was a CEO of Goldman Sachs, a U.S. Senator, the governor of New Jersey, and, until recently, the honcho of MF Global.
And even as the American people are boiling with anger about being told Jefferson had it all wrong with his idea that liberty is best protected and prosperity best nurtured not when power is held by politicians and perfectly oligarchical activist judges (whom an insidious Obama tried to defend with the anti-democratic, anti-intellectual nonsense of "judicial empathy") but when it is held close to the Constitution's "We the People."
Finally, in its vagueness, contradictions, and disregard for hard truths, the speech informs every open-minded citizen that despite the nation's crying out for real solutions to real problems, Obama intends to run his re-election campaign with the same shameless vacuity he exhibited in '08.
This devotion to the cheap political expediencies of the "eternal campaign" despite the reality that the public is in no mood to suffer the kind of insulting generalities Demagogue Obama dumped on the people of Osawatomie.
For instance, in no mood to hear a president running for re-election pompously pronounce that "We should be known for creating and selling products all around the world that are stamped with the proud words: Made in America" without admitting he has done absolutely nothing to wisely reform the nation's trade policies.
In no mood to hear a president running for re-election complain that "We should be a country where everyone has a chance to go to college [without incurring] $100,000 of debt" and yet fail to be honest about the perniciously ironic truth that for decades out-of-control big government involvement in higher education has caused college costs to hugely and dangerously outpace inflation.
Yes, as the Gallup poll shows, the public is in no mood to hear that the way to fix the nation's problems is to further empower the repulsively obese, disgustingly corrupt, shamelessly wasteful, arrogantly elitist sow that is Washington.
But as Ed Yardeni succinctly pointed out, Obama holds the opposite view.
The Osawatomie speech offers the public an additional opportunity to focus on the reality that the president is in love with the sow's every insatiable whim, for instance, if it helps citizens recall that with an astonishingly arrogant fidelity to the dogmas of liberal ideology, he proposed to improve not just the healthcare system but the overall health of the entire United States of America by hiring 15,000 additional IRS agents to enforce the abomination that is his healthcare law.
That's why it was the best present Barack Obama could give the American people as they close out yet another agonizing year.
© A.J. DiCintio
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