Barack Obama’s disastrous first 1,000 days
 

And to think that BHO may likely receive 40%+ of the country's vote in 2012 - despite his record of failed experiments.


Barack Obama’s disastrous first 1,000 days
UK Telegraph - online
Wednesday 19 October 2011
Nile Gardiner

Excerpt:

“Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the United States has embarked on the most ambitious failed experiment in Washington meddling in US history. Huge increases in government spending, massive federal bailouts, growing regulations on businesses, thinly veiled protectionism, and the launch of a vastly expensive and deeply unpopular health care reform plan, have all combined to instill fear and uncertainty in the markets.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ni...rst-1000-days/

If recent polls are any indication, it is doubtful that President Obama will enjoy another 1,000 days in the White House. And looking at his track record over the course of his first 33 months in office, it is not hard to see why. It is hard to think of a presidency in modern times that has done more to damage the United States both at home and abroad than the current one, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter’s. Like his Democratic predecessor in the 1970’s, Barack Obama has left the world’s dominant superpower on its knees, with faith in US leadership now being questioned across the globe.

Since taking office in January 2009, President Obama has ushered in a period of relentless economic decline for the United States. His administration has added $4.2 trillion to the national debt (now standing at $14.9 trillion), lost 2.2 million jobs, introduced a vastly expensive health-care albatross, and spent nearly $800 billion on a failed stimulus package. At the same time, house prices across the country have tumbled at an unprecedented rate, consumer confidence has plummeted, and millions more Americans are now dependent upon food stamps. International confidence in the US economy has fallen to its lowest levels in decades, with credit agency Standard and Poor’s downgrading of America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years in August this year.

As I noted in a piece at the time:
Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the United States has embarked on the most ambitious failed experiment in Washington meddling in US history. Huge increases in government spending, massive federal bailouts, growing regulations on businesses, thinly veiled protectionism, and the launch of a vastly expensive and deeply unpopular health care reform plan, have all combined to instill fear and uncertainty in the markets.

Is it any wonder that just 17 percent of Americans now believe the country is moving in the right direction, according to RealClear Politics? Or that 81 percent of Americans “are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed”, according to Gallup? As a series of major Gallup polls have shown, public disillusionment with the federal government has now reached an all-time high, with 69 percent of Americans now saying “they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government”, with 46 percent believing “the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

And President Obama’s record on the world stage has also been poor. Despite two high-profile successes in taking out al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and more recently Anwar al-Awlaki (both upon the foundations of President Bush’s war on terror), US foreign policy under Obama has been a confusing mess. The shameless appeasement of Iran has allowed the rogue state to advance perilously close to nuclear weapons capability, while the naïve “reset” approach towards Russia has only encouraged a more aggressive and assertive Moscow. At the same time, traditional alliances with Great Britain and Israel have been downgraded, and key allies in eastern and central Europe thrown under the bus to feed the Russian bear. While America’s defences have grown weaker, China’s military might has grown significantly stronger, as have the offensive capabilities of hostile regimes in both Asia and Latin America, including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

As Barack Obama approaches the remaining 14 months of his presidency, there is a distinct air of US decline. It is of course a state of decline that can be reversed with the right policies and leadership in place. There is nothing inevitable about the demise of the United States, but its renewal must rest upon a dramatic reversal of the most Left-wing agenda of any American presidency since 1979. As Gallup’s polling has emphatically demonstrated, Americans are overwhelmingly rejecting the Big Government agenda of the Obama presidency, which has spectacularly failed to create jobs, generate wealth, and instill economic confidence.

The biggest failure of this administration, and there have been many, has been its central belief that government knows best, and that the way to prosperity is to spend ever greater amounts of taxpayers’ money on the backs of hard-working Americans.

As a result, the United States is a nation on a precipice, facing towering debts and the threat of a double dip recession at a time when 14 million Americans are already out of work. Ultimately, it is economic freedom, minimal government intervention, and greater individual liberty that can put America back on its feet, rather than endless bailouts, higher taxes and suffocating government regulation, all hallmarks of the Obama experiment. Ultimately, the world needs a powerful United States that is a beacon of hope to the world, rather than a basket case of failed liberal policies.

Your right on target with this,excellent post..........:D:D:D

Big Teddy :munchin

Generation 'O'
 

Thought this was interesting as it discusses the younger generation that was seen as one of the driving forces to seat the current Administration....

Pulled this off of Drudge... (article from RealClearMarkets)

The closing put it best:

Speaking of failed presidencies...
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...is-is-good.php

What is the definition of insanity?

Read through an article this morning titled "Obama defends American faith amid GOP critique" (AP) which is now everywhere in the MSM. (BTW the title of the article is not reflective of content)

Interesting quote from an earlier O speech in San Francisco:

So the Depression is now an example of how to stimulate a population to be ambitious and imaginative? :munchin

I think the Golden Gate Bridge project is a great 'ambitious and imaginative' example of what a regional community effort can accomplish when they agree the need is valid.

http://goldengatebridge.org/research/construction.php

Many ffolkes make the mistake of 'lumping' a project like the Golden Gate into the myriad Federal Government WPA style 'make work' or 'pump priming' or 'stimulus' projects of the Great Depression, and although it necessarily had some of those aspects to it, it wasn't the same thing.

FWIW - Charles A. Ellis was a cousin of my maternal grandmother, Helen Ellis Murray (nee Helen A. Ellis).

And so it goes...

Richard

I wonder if.....
 

I wonder if it or any of the big projects from that day could be built today? I don't think so.

What are the big projects of today that enrich mankind? A few billion here and a few billion there for grants to get state and local public workers on the Federal tit? Somehow I just don't see them as being equal.

You can't get an environmental impact approval to build a flat range, no way you can get one for a project of that scale.

Then the union workers would cause the price to triple over the duration of construction.

Lawyers would tie that up for decades and in the end, you would have nothing to show for it.

TR

A dam project of that size would certainly impact the lifestyle habits of some obscure bottom dwelling fish...

No dam projects will be built without the proper level of bureaucracy to insure that the bottom feeders get something out of the deal.

...maybe some choo-choo trains could be built instead of some dam project that interferes with a bottom dwellers lifestyle. The administration did want to build some choo-choo trains at one point if I remember correctly.

Choo-choo trains are fun.

You mean this little train?

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov...money-20111123
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...2IN_story.html
http://laist.com/2011/11/30/californ...m_analysis.php

Is it just me, or does the logo on this train look strangely familiar?

Richard,

Thanks for the alignment...and piece of family history. I believe the discussion leads to what is pointed out in the follow-on posts where the "community" wouldn't be able to do the things that are claimed as "needed", "necessary" or "positive" for the country to move. ANY community project will have enviro-nutjobs and lawyers flying in from across the country to make money on other peoples ideas...with the hopes of crushing those ideas in the process so they will be able to crush the next "good idea" or "regional project" that comes up (as that helps keep the country-club dues paid and the stock of granola and Prius batteries at appropriate levels) (Check out Arizona Clean Fuels, West Virginia coal...Pennsylvania wind...etc..you know better than I)

Unless of course (as Billy points out) the brain trust in DC comes up (or latches onto) an idea, in which case vast sums of money can be flushed. High-speed rail was a hot commodity in Kalifornia because the masses demand it???? Amtrak is such a model of how high the demand for rail passenger transit is...

The very government the POTUS represents is mostly to blame for the inability of such projects to take shape and succeed.

BTW - Nice to see the Seasonal Avatar return. :D

R/10

Obama's Policies Kill Jobs
 

In this economy how could he not pursue the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline ?

Actions speak louder than words.


Obama Policies Seem Calculated To Kill Jobs

IBD
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW

Posted 12/15/2011 06:55 PM ET

http://news.investors.com/Article.aspx?id=594923&p=1

The payroll-tax-cut debate is not really about the payroll tax, which is a very weak-kneed economic stimulant and a lackluster job creator because of its temporary nature. Without permanent incentives at lower tax rates, these rebates don't do anything for growth and jobs.

Instead, the key to understanding the payroll-tax debate is to grasp President Barack Obama's leftist vision of taxing successful earners (the millionaire surtax) and his obsession with clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels.

These are ideological positions. They support the Obama vision of class warfare and his attachment to radical environmentalism.

And the key to understanding this state of affairs is the disposition of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which Republicans cleverly threw into the payroll-tax debate as the only real job creator.

By siding with the radical greenies and standing against the Keystone pipeline, Obama has turned his back on the most traditional voting bloc in the Democratic Party: blue-collar, hard-hat workers.

Manufacturing workers. Construction workers. Truckers. Pipefitters. Plumbers. The Keystone opposition coming out of the White House is completely alienating all these people, the folks who work with their hands. And it's these workers who have been decimated in the recession far more than any other group in the economy.
David Barnett, head of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, told me on CNBC that unemployment is currently running at 20% to 25% in this blue-collar sector.

He has repeatedly lobbied the White House to allow the Keystone pipeline to go through, and he notes high environmental standards in the work his men do.
And yet even now, three years after the initial Keystone reviews began, the issue is still unresolved.

How can you have a jobs bill without putting blue-collar workers back to work? Answer: stubborn ideological insistence.

The Teamsters support the Keystone. So does the AFL-CIO. So do the machinists. And along with the plumbers and pipefitters, so does the Laborers' International Union of North America.

And we're not just talking about the 20,000 jobs that would accrue directly from the pipeline, but the secondary and tertiary jobs from a long supply chain that total well over 100,000.

As of this writing, the White House may dump the millionaire surtax. But that's not much of a concession, since it never would have passed anyway.

Republicans are adamant. It's a nonstarter in the House, and probably the Senate too. Meanwhile, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell told me the Keystone pipeline is the key to the payroll-tax-cut deal.

Both practically and symbolically, Obama's obsessive stance against the pipeline rips a huge split in the Democratic party, and in the country as a whole.

His manic support of clean energy — just think Solyndra — has blocked out any rational evaluation of the ongoing importance of oil and natural gas — including the oil-and-gas-shale fracking revolution that has become a huge jobs creator in North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere.

The Obama administration recently shut down the Utica shale field in Ohio because of an Agriculture Department objection. Two-hundred-thousand jobs are at stake. A field in Wyoming may be shut down.

New York state desperately needs jobs and growth, but is wavering because of EPA actions elsewhere.

And with the Keystone ruling delay now extending for another year, the Keystone folks might give the whole project up in the U.S., in favor of a Pacific Ocean pipeline in Canada that will sell oil to the Chinese.

While the U.S. dithers, the Canadians are taking action.

As a shot across the unbalanced environmental bow, the Canadian government is opting out of the Kyoto global-warming treaty. As energy analyst Daniel Yergin writes, while the unstable Persian Gulf countries represent 16% of U.S. oil imports, Canada represents 25%.

Yergin also writes that by the beginning of the next decade, Canadian oil sands could double production to 3 million barrels per day. That means an even higher share of U.S. imports coming from our friendly neighbor and largest trading partner.
So in addition to being an economic-stability issue, this becomes and energy-independence issue, and even a national-security issue.

Obama's decisions on the pipeline and other new energy breakthroughs are inimical to U.S. interests. They also are hostile to Democratic-party hard hats who may desert the president in droves come next November.

On top of all that, what may be America's leading new source of job creation will be stifled.

Thanks for the post.
 

I was just going to mention this pipeline. Your source writes much better then I.

You’re welcome - Obama’s policies appear designed to secure as many people as possible to become dependent on government largesse.

Moreover, he has already appointed 2 Justices to The Supreme Court - if he succeeds in obtaining another term, his legacy will (when combined with the monstrosity ObamaCare) IMO burden our country for decades.

Re: Obama Policies and His Enviro Types Killing Jobs
 

http://news.investors.com/Article.aspx?id=594923&p=2

Here is another editorial by Kudlow. He is spot on as a friend told me about Wyoming and possibly losing those jobs. Sad as I recall the last few years on our flights to Vegas we have had a man or two going on to Wyoming after a few days in Vegas for an oil job. This is not just Wyoming. We are talking about a number of states here plus a lot of lost jobs due to one man's politics. Go to page 2.