Back on the campaign trail where he feels comfortable that he knows what he is doing, Barack Obama traveled to Las Vegas to stump for Harry Reid.  Harry Reid used to be a boxer and when he told Barack Obama this he said, “Barack, I wasn’t the fastest.  I wasn’t the hardest-hitting, but I knew how to take a punch.”  Based on all the legislation that has been passed since 2008 that an  overwhelming majority of the American people have opposed, makes one wonder if Harry Reid took a few punches too many.

Shortly after taking office and settling into his “bash business” mode Obama blasted businesses for their extravagant meetings held in places like Las Vegas.  Someone then whispered in the president’s ear that extravagant business meetings in Las Vegas were good for Las Vegas and Harry Reid. Oops.  And there you have the crux of the problem.

What, exactly, is government’s role to tell private companies how to spend their money?  What is the role of governments to say to a BP, “Give us the $20 billion, or we’ll take it from you,” as was attributed to Joe Biden, without first going to court?  What is the role of government to say to its citizens, you must buy this health care product or pay a fine?  Well in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, it is probably all fine and dandy, but in America?

Barack, the standup comic, used the analogy that he and Harry Reid had mud on their shoes, were pushing hard to get the car back on the road, and were making progress little-by-little and when they finally got one wheel on the pavement the Republicans want to throw the car into reverse.  Really?  I would compare it more to conservatives telling everyone to get out of the car and help push, instead of waiting for Nancy Pelosi to come back from Dunkin Donuts with free food for all the overweight union bosses jammed in the car squawking that they didn’t do manual labor.  Their contract didn’t call for pushing cars out of ditches. 

So, while this car should have been out of this ditch and well down the road by now, Harry and Barry will try to convince us that what they’re doing is absolutely brilliant; it’s just that we are too stupid to see it.  After all, it took the greatest president in history, FDR, over eight years and a World War to get us out of the Great Depression, so relax we have another 6 ½ years to go.

Imagine what would have happened if the ever resilient American economy was allowed to work on its own without all the government intervention in the 1930s.  Perhaps the Depression would have been shorter like the recession of 1920-1921, and perhaps we would not have had World War II, and Fannie Mae, and a bankrupt Social Security, and a couple of generations later all of us swimming in debt.  It’s time the tow truck of the most powerful economy on the face of the earth to come along and be allowed to do its job.  Tell Harry and Barry to go sit down on that stump over there, and watch how it is really done.  “You’re making a mess of yourselves and embarrassing the rest us.”

Obama's Sales Pitch for the Stimulus Bill

The latest unemployment numbers are in and you can forgive the fervent Obama supporters for having buyer’s remorse. The main stream media, that he holds in the palm of his hand, is playing down the darkening employment picture, focusing instead on the silver lining that it’s getting worse at a slower rate.  The jobless rate hit the highest level it has been since February 1983, hitting 9.4%.  The good news is that we only lost 345,000 jobs last month.  Here is how the spin-master puts lipstick on this pig, or should I say, pork?

“In these last few months, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs,” Obama said, touting spending on alternative energy, keeping teachers and police officers in work and small businesses. — Las Vegas, May 27, 2009

There is one small problem with this statement as pointed out by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal

As my former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto points out on his blog, the Labor Department does not and cannot collect data on “jobs saved.” So the Obama administration is asking that we accept its “clairvoyant ability to estimate,” and the White House press corps has let Mr. Obama’s ludicrous claim go virtually unchallenged.

So if the Labor Department, the keeper of the unemployment statistics, cannot collect data on jobs saved, where does President Obama get his figure that he saved 150,000 jobs?  We can only assume it is an outright fabrication, unless he can tell us otherwise.  Will we start hearing a chant “Obama lied, our future died”? Not likely from the obsequious press.

Buyer’s Remorse

In pressing for his pork filled stimulus package, Obama insisted that it was necessary, it was needed immediately, if not sooner, and if we didn’t do it, it would turn crisis into catastrophe.  I direct your attention to the graph above.  This graph was included in the stimulus package to point out that in the absence of the stimulus package the unemployment rate would rise to 9% by the middle of 2010.  However, get behind the stimulus plan and voila, the unemployment will top out at a mere 8% in the third quarter of 2009 and you get all of this for a mere $787 billion.

As conservatives pointed out at the time this made no sense, since the bulk of the stimulus spending, chock full of pork, would not be spent until 2011 and beyond.  As of today, less than 10% of the money has been spent, and the unemployment rate has past both the peak Obama sold to the American people, as well as what he predicted would happen without the stimulus.

Of course the statists will roll out their tired old argument that it wasn’t enough.  With every government program that fails they always tell us we didn’t spend enough…if we only spent enough…

Look back to February 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was this high, and what we see is Ronald Reagan in charge.  His solution was to cut taxes, cut spending, and reduce the size of government.  Today, President Obama’s plan is just the opposite.  It is to raise taxes on the most productive among us, spend our money like it has never been spent before, grow government without bound, and lay the burden of paying for it on generations to come.  We do know this, Reagan’s plan worked, ushering in the longest peacetime expansion in history.  Are we to believe that doing the exact opposite will also work, or work even better?

The slowing of the job losses and the advance of the stock market foretell that our economy is starting to turn of its own accord, as little of the stimulus has taken effect.  Conservatives said to get out of the way, reduce the tax burden and the economy will recover on its own.  The statists said no, now is the time to advance our agenda and our power grab.  Take advantage of the crisis.

Interest rates are starting to climb as massive government borrowing crowds out private borrowing.  The flooding of dollars into the economy is starting trigger inflation as can be seen in the increase in oil prices.  With Reagan, the best was yet to come, since Obama has chosen the exact opposite path, we can only fear for the future, when his programs take full effect.  As can be seen by the chart above, their plan is already way off course and with the massive inexperience of Obama and his team, how much confidence do you have that they can find their way back?