Why I am Depressed, Scott @ Powerline Blog, Mar. 22, 2009.
I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can't keep up and I can't stand to pay attention.
His aim seems to be to reduce us to government dependents. His inattention to rehabilitation of the financial system in lieu of vastly expanding the size and scope of the government is a dead giveaway, as is his lack of concern over the vast destruction of wealth his policies are working (and will continue to work).
Perhaps most depressing to me is the manifestation of his adolescent grandiosity in his stewardship of foreign policy and national security. …
Obama believes his cluelessness represents the higher wisdom. It is a source of his monumental self-regard. …
I am depressed because the President of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty to those who understand what they are about.
We were assured during the campaign that The One™ knew how to repair our economic woes, would hit the ground running, and would have an amazing first 100 days. He promised fiscal responsibility, a line-by-line review of appropriations to end the pork and earmarks (ignoring the small Constitutional matter that the President does not have line item veto power), and total "transparency" in spending, whatever that means. He had 3 months between the election and inauguration to assemble his economic team and decide on his fiscal solutions to our banking and credit problems.
What we got was a Treasury Sec., Tim Geithner, who was a tax cheat, still doesn't have a coherent plan, is unable to staff his Department, and is rapidly losing the trust of business, Congress, and the American people. The One™, a gifted student of FDR's handling of the Great Depression, comes to the profound insight that FDR simply didn't spend enough — his deep economic wisdom can be summarized as "federal spending = stimulus", with the corollary "massive federal spending = massive stimulus". He therefore tells Congress he wants around $800B in stimulus and lets them fill in the details (such minutia is apparently below his pay grade), and we get a bill full of all the pet projects the Democrats have wanted for the last 20 years, but little in the way of immediate economic stimulus. The Doommonger-in-Chief raved about the "crisis" becoming a "catastrophe" unless the stimulus bill was passed, all without the normal hearings, amendments, or other review, and certainly not any time allowed to actually read the monster before voting on it and him signing it.
Yet in the real economic world, the Stock Market has dropped like a rock and is still searching for its bottom, the bank and credit markets are still unresolved, and we face the prospect of +$1T deficits for the foreseeable future as we continue to pour more money into failing institutions. The One™ and his comrades in the Congress demonize corporate bonuses to distract from their profligate fiscal irresponsibility, and they continue to get even
worse:
The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said. …
The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving U.S. government bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, The One™ wants to move on to universal health care, green jobs and cap-and-trade carbon offsets, and other more "interesting" issues, and engages in continual campaigning, appearing on Jay Leno and 60 Minutes to keep his approval rating up. This has been the worst beginning of a Presidential term in my lifetime, and the One's™ incompetence makes it likely it will only get worse. It's going to be a long four years.
Labels: qotd
