Obama Shrugged

Add Ayn Rand to the list of things -- economics, governance, how to throw a baseball, humility -- that President Obama doesn't understand.  And hey, The Emperor's New Clothes is a children's fable, but it's still an apt analogy for the Obama Presidency.

He Probably Cheats at Mini-Golf, Too

Over at the Weekly Standard, Matt Continetti notes the President's lack of anything resembling a substantive second-term agenda...

The Republicans are now the ones offering ideas of progress or reform, while the Democrats fiercely fight to protect the established order of entitlements, tax hikes, and obeisance to unions, greens, and feminists. Even when Obama and Biden have been highly caffeinated, they have not stated their plans and goals for a second term. They are too busy painting a socialist-realist mural of Romney and Ryan as maniacal reactionaries. They are too preoccupied with protecting subsidies for Big Bird, Planned Parenthood, and windmills.

Four years ago, President Obama and Vice President Biden were bursting with plans. Obama said he would cut the deficit, middle-class taxes, and health care premiums, while also creating a new entitlement to health insurance. He said he’d revamp America’s energy, education, and immigration policies for the 21st century. He delivered a speech in the early months of his term saying he’d put America on a “new foundation.” His 2011 State of the Union address was devoted to “winning the future.”

But all of these big dreams have crashed against the granite wall of reality. The deficit is up, the price of fuel and health care premiums has increased, incomes are down, and tax increases loom. Obama is exhausted. His political capital is spent. The boldest proposal he’s put forward recently is hiring another 100,000 teachers. That doesn’t even rise to the level of small-ball. It’s mini-golf.

I think the strangest part of the campaign has been the media's obsession with trying to figure out the details of Romney's plan, while simply forgetting to ask Obama what in the world he might do with four more years. There is an answer, since he did tell Vlad Putin he would have more "flexibility" after the election.  We're just not good enough to hear it, and the media doesn't want to ask, since it might be inconvenient to get the answer and have the pesky voters decide they want someone else in charge. But hey, it's not like it's the mainstream media's job is to do something useful. Bottom line? Obama's an empty chair.

You know, someone might have said that at some point.

The Health Care Follies Continue

Well, put on your seatbelts, folks. It's on like Donkey Kong...

President Obama outlined his final version of a health care bill Wednesday and urged Congress to bring the plan to a conclusive vote within the next few weeks.
The president said his nearly $1 trillion proposal is a compromise plan that combines the best ideas of both Democrats and Republicans. He asked Congress to "finish its work" and end what has become a yearlong vitriolic legislative showdown over his top domestic priority.


"Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," he said. "Now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America's families and America's businesses."


He also came out in support of a controversial legislative maneuver known as reconciliation, which would allow changes to the health care bill to be passed by the Senate with only 51 votes -- a bare legislative majority.


The bill "deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote" that was used to pass President George W. Bush's signature tax cuts and welfare reform in the 1990s, Obama said at the White House.


"At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem," he said. "The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act."


He said he doesn't "know how this plays politically," but knows that "it's right."

Politically, Mr. President, it plays about as well as a wet fart on a first date. But let's get to the response and the reality in any case. Dan Riehl's hopping mad response is what I'd expect will be the response of the conservative base if this travesty passes. But to me, it's more important to examine what the Democratic arguments are for passing the bill and understand why they are mostly, if not all, BS.

1. "It's been a year of debate on the issue, and it's time to act; the staus quo sucks, and we can't let it go on like this." This is the Obama public position substantively, that we can't wait anymore, so it's time to do something. Of course, under the same logic, if your house is suffering from a radon problem, it might make sense to go with the solution where you burn it down for the insurance money.

2. "The Dems will lose at the ballot box in November anyway, so sacrificing a few moderate Democratic seats in exchange for accomplishing the Holy Grail of the Democratic Party is okay." This fails on two counts -- first, the moderates who might lose their jobs probably don't like being the sacrificial lambs for the Democratic Holy Grail -- noble political deaths aren't a concept politicians favor if there's a decent alternative. Second, the moderates may not be as wedded to idea getting comprehensive health care reform as a committed liberal.

3. "The bill will be popular once it passes, because individual pieces of it are popular." Yes, because people love big changes, particularly when it forces them to make changes to their own plans that the President promised wouldn't happen (remember the "If you like your plan, you get to keep it" line?  That will show up in a few campaign ads if this passes).  This misses two more key points.  First, there's a committed number of people who are passionately opposed to the bill, numbering around 40%.  They will keep opposing it unless the bill suddenly creates leprechauns who drop off pots of gold at their house.  Second, the public has to get over the outrage of being told to take its medicine by politicians despite vocally and viscerally registering their discontent with Democratic obsession with this issue while the economy's in the crapper.  My guess is that this won't happen before November.

4.  "Reconciliation is just a process maneuver.  People will forget about the process as soon as the bill is passed."  This assumes the right will let it go, and that Independants will be allowed to forget about it.  By November, if the substance of the bill is still unpopular, the reconciliation method used to pass it will be toxic as hell. Remember these quotes from the now-President regarding what one needs to pass reform...

Change to Win Convention 9/25/07


The bottom line is that our healthcare plans are similar, the question once again is, who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk. That is not just a fifty plus one majority.


Obama Interview with the Concord Monitor 10/9/07


You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of fifty plus one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of fifty plus one. Then you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can’t deliver on healthcare. We are not going to pass universal health care with a fifty plus one strategy.


Center for American Progress Conference 7/12/06


Those big-ticket items: fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives, and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion, is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove where we identify our core base, we throw ’em red meat, we get a fifty plus one victory. See, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizeable majority.

I think using reconciliation in the weird way Dems plan to use it (have the House pass the Senate bill, then pass a reconciliation bill, then have the Senate pass a new bill via reconciliation) points out that this is an abuse of the process designed merely to get around not having enough votes. Put simply, the process is rigged now because of the loss of one Senate vote (thank you again, Scott Brown), which shows how precarious the reform deal was.  Liberals want to sell this as a done deal, saved by the President, but conservatives will have plenty of traction selling this as an underhanded, dirty deal, put together by the utterly corrupt Congress.  Even stuff that only looks bad and almost certainly isn't (like nominating the brother of a  House Dem with a swing vote to an appellate court) will get tossed around as part of a "culture of corruption" themre.  And if it were a done deal, they'd be voting by now, as even honest liberals acknowledge.  Which means they're still twisting arms.... which means more chances that there will be corrupt deals.

5.  "This bill may not have everything, like the public option, but there's enough there that makes it worth it.  And it will eventually lead to nationalized healthcare."  Perhaps the worst argument, and one that is aimed at liberals who might be hesitant to support it.  I'm in no position to tell liberals if this is what they want, but I'd caution them against accepting a half-baked proposition that is extremely unpopular.  The logic underlying the debate has been that once the bill passes, we have a new entitlement, and entitlements are impossible to kill.  Perhaps that has been true throughout history, but almost all large entitlement programs had popular support.  This one does not.  What happens if the unintended consequences of going halfway to nationalized healthcare makes the system worse and costlier (as I believe it will)?  Would the public later buy an argument for full  nationalization?  A public option?  Anything involving government?  If the liberal base doesn't buy the argument (and they don't like a bill with a mandate and no public option), they may not materialize at the ballot box this fall... which means a GOP tidal wave may become a tsunami.

6.  "We need to do this, or Obama's Presidency is toast."  This is perhaps the best political argument in favor of passing the bill (and maybe the best argument, which says much for the substance of the bill), except that the lie to this statement is recent history, in the form of the last Democratic President.  Clinton survived the death of his health care reform package politically.  Obama can as well, but the real question is whether his Presidency would extend beyond one term if he passes it.  I think the White House, liberal bloggers, and Democratic strategists are underestimating the public anger about what will happen if the bill passes through the clown show process being put in place, after a year's worth of bad press in what should ahve been a favorable climate.

If the bill does fail, Obama can lean on the Clinton example... although Slick Willie was much more capable of a rally.  The Comeback Kid had done it before -- we don't know whether Obama will cope well with political adversity.  Thus far, he certainly has not done so.

Now, the real question is simple -- does Pelosi have the votes in the House?  The Senate story is simple -- 51 votes is all that's needed, and they can lose up to nine Dems (assuming that Biden can break a tie on a reconciliation bill, which I assume he can... then again, I'd have to wonder if Biden would screw up and vote the wrong way), which seems hard to do in the Senate.  The GOP can delay via amendments, but they can do little else, although a public input amendment process driven by the blogosphere would be entertaining as hell.  Besides, the GOP would then be delaying things that would in part fix bad portions of the already passed piece of crap.  But the House is a different story. Tim Noah does some counting...

The answer begins with the fact that since Nov. 7, when the bill passed the House quite narrowly, 220-215, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lost three votes. John Murtha, D-Pa., died; Robert Wexler, D-Fla., resigned to become president of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation; and Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, resigned to run for governor. Balanced against these yeas is one nay, Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who just resigned effective March 8 to run for governor. That narrows health reform's victory margin from five votes to three (217-214). If President Obama is serious about acting within six weeks, then the final House vote will come before special elections to replace Wexler (April 13), Murtha (May 18), and Abercrombie (May 22), and probably before any elections to replace Deal, too (though no date has yet been set). Even if the Democrats wait till late May, there's a pretty good chance the special elections will keep the victory margin at three votes (219-216), because Murtha's district tilts slightly Republican; McCain eked out a narrow victory there in 2008. (The other seats are unlikely to change party, judging from the Cook Political Report's partisan voting index.)


We will assume, then, that Pelosi starts with a victory margin of three.


Take away from that three Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joseph Cao, R-La. Stupak is the author of a House amendment on abortion that has the imprimatur of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Both Stupak and the bishops say they won't support the Senate bill's language on abortion. Neither will Cao, the sole House Republican to vote for health reform on the first go-round. Why not resolve the dispute by putting the Stupak amendment into the reconciliation bill? Because Senate rules won't allow it. To be included in a reconciliation bill, a measure must have some impact on the federal budget.


...Take away Stupak and Cao and the House health-reform bill lacks a majority if the vote is held before the special elections (215-216). It also lacks a majority if the vote is held after the special elections and Murtha's seat goes Republican (217-218). Health reform retains a one-vote margin of victory only if Murtha's seat stays Democratic (218-217). But before you whip out your checkbook and give all your money to Pennsylvania's Democratic party, read on, because health reform's troubles don't end here.


Stupak and Cao aren't the only pro-lifers in the House who will change their vote from yea to nay if health reform doesn't include the Stupak amendment. Stupak says he counts 15 to 20 Democrats who will do so. (Previously, he said there were 40.) Most calculate the Stupak bloc at about one dozen. A Feb. 24 memo by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., identifies, in addition to Stupak and Cao, 10 House Democrats who may bolt over abortion. In January Nate Silver of the Web site FiveThirtyEight.com calculated only 10 likely Stupak bloc bolters, but six of Silver's 10 (including three of those he deemed most likely) weren't on Cantor's list at all. So lets call it 12.


Take away a dozen votes and the House health-reform bill fails by a 25-vote margin before the special elections (203-228). If the vote is after the special elections and Murtha's seat goes Republican, it also fails by 25 votes (205-230). If Murtha's seat stays Democratic, it fails by 23 votes (206-229).


Pelosi needs to pick up a baker's dozen votes to pass health reform. Where will she get them?

This is really simple math. Pelosi needs to get to 216 votes.   She had 220 last time.  Three votes are gone, and a fourth (Cao) has said he will switch.  Either Pelosi placates the Stupak faction on abortion language (which is possible) or she flips one member who voted no last time for each member of Stupak's coalition.  While losing no one else.

Noah goes on to note that there are Dems who might flip, including committed liberals like Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa.  But Kucinich is smart enough and principled enough to actually think argument #5 is a load of BS.  And Massa now has other issues, which may or may not play into getting his vote. The AP had a rundown of nine potential members of what Jim Geraghty termed "Pelosi's Suicide Squad"...

The Associated Press did a head-count and concluded that “at least 10 of the 39 Democrats — or their spokesmen — either declined to state their positions or said they were undecided about the revised legislation, making them likely targets for intense wooing by Pelosi and Obama. Three of them — Brian Baird of Washington, Bart Gordon of Tennessee and John Tanner of Tennessee — are not seeking reelection this fall. The others are Rick Boucher of Virginia, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Frank Kratovil of Maryland, Michael McMahon of New York, Walt Minnick of Idaho, Scott Murphy of New York and Glenn Nye of Virginia. Several lawmakers’ offices did not reply to the AP queries.” After the AP article appeared, Minnick quickly issued a statement that he wasn’t willing to vote “yes.”

Those are the nine members who will likely face the most pressure in the next two weeks, along with the Stupak group. Of course, some of the nine are already folding, and some other yes votes now look like they're flopping to no.

So what's the bottom line?  Megan McArdle is astute as ever when she notes that conservatives/libertarians and liberals seem to be on different planets on the likelihood of this passing, but she's also right in noting that there is no middle ground.  To that end, I think conservatives have been cautious on pronouncing the thing as dead, in part because they know the last rites need to be administered by Democrats, and relying on them to be prudent is tough.  Liberals have a different motivation -- if you keep saying the deal is done, people might believe you, and the self-fulfilling prophecy becomes true. Or they might be telling the truth. Maybe the best thing about all of this is the final line in Peter Suderman's piece...

On the other hand, at least it's almost over. (Maybe!)

Hope and change. Catch it.

Reasons I Might Move TO New Jersey

You have to admire a Governor with the cojones to follow through on his promises...

You know, at some point there has to be parity. There has to be parity between what is happening in the real world, and what is happening in the public sector world. The money does not grow on trees outside this building or outside your municipal building. It comes from the hard working people of our communities who are suffering and are hurting right now.


I heard someone in the legislature say two days ago that they wanted no fare hike in New Jersey Transit, no cuts in service, and no cuts in subsidy. And I was thinking to myself, man I should have made this guy treasurer. [Laughter] Because if you can pull that one off, you're obviously magic.


This is the type of awful political rhetoric that people sent me to this city to stop.


I would love to be able to do that, but I can't. I would love to tell you that municipal aid will stay level, but it's not. And it's not because we don't have the money. So you need to prepare. You need to prepare for what's coming down the line because we have no choice but to do these things.


And so we need to get honest with each other. In this instance, the political class,for which unfortunately all of us are a member of, the political class is lagging behind the public on this. The public is ready to hear that tough choices have to be made. They're not going to like it. Don't confuse the two. But they are ready to hear the truth.


In fact, they find it refreshing to hear the truth.


They are tired of hearing, don't worry I can spare you from the pain, because they have been hearing that for a decade, as we have borrowed and spent and taxed our way into oblivion.


We have done every quick fix in the book that you can do. And now we are left, literally holding the bag.


Leadership should be about making tough decisions. I'm not hear to tell you that anything you are going to have to do as mayors, council people will be easy. But I firmly believe after spending the last year traveling around the state of New Jersey, talking to regular citizens, that this is what they are expecting us to do.


...We need to understand we are all in this together. And you know, all of you know in your heart, what I am saying is true. You all know that these raises that are being given to public employees of all stripes, we cannot afford. You all know the state cannot continue to spend money it does not have. And you all know that the appetite for tax increases among our constituents has come to an end.


And so the path to reform and success is clear. We know what it is. We just have to have the courage to go there. What we are doing is showing people that government can work again for them, not for us. Government has worked for the political class for much too long.


There's no time left. We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax. So we merely have room left now, to do this. We are all reaching the edge of a cliff. And it reminds me a bit of that part of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where the had a seminal decision to make. So what did they do? They held hands and they jumped off the cliff.


We have to hold hands at every level of government, state county, municipal, school board. We have to hold hands and jump off the cliff.


I firmly believe we will land and we will be fine. It does not mean it will not be a scary ride on the way down. And it does not mean there won't be moments of fear and moments of apprehension.


But for certain, the troops of the decades of overspending and overborrowing and overtaxing have gained on us. So the ruination of New Jersey's economy, and of the quality of life we want all our citizens to have, is certain if we do not take this course.


It's time for us to hold hands and jump off the cliff. It's time for us to do the difficult things that need to be done and to stop playing the petty politics of yesterday, of lying to the people telling them they do not have to pay for it because someone else will.


We are going to make the leap because that's what people elected me to do. We are going to make the leap because it is the responsible thing to do. We are going to make the leap and we are going to do it together because that is what leadership demands for us. That is what the responsibility of the offices we hold requires of us.

As Moe Lane notes, that is from the Governor of New Jersey.   Maybe hope and change does exist.

This Is Why You Watch Old Episodes of Your Favorite Shows

So I'm watching an old episode of South Park last night from 2004. It's their classic parody of the 2004 Presidential campaign, entitled Douche and Turd. By way of background, here's the Wikipedia summary...

During a pep rally at the South Park Elementary School, a group of local PETA eco-terrorists protests the use of a cow as a mascot (for "the 47th time"). The school agrees to pick a new mascot, and the students are told to vote for said new mascot. Embarrassed by the bland choices, the kids decide to fill in a joke candidate but disagree as to whether it should be a "giant douche" or a "turd sandwich." Kyle rallies his friends to fill in the giant douche, and Cartman gathers support for the turd sandwich. Cartman wins Butters' support (by slanting the question when asking Butters which of the two choices was funnier). The result is the two joke candidates get the most votes and the students must choose between the two in an election.

Which leads to the following scene. Make note of the campaign theme Cartman uses for the Turd Sandwich (about 1:30 or so into the clip), and keep in mind they did this in 2004, four years prior to Obama's victory in 2008.



Who knew Parker and Stone were inspirations for President Obama's campaign team?

Shedding A Little Light

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer does a little sleuthing on one of President Obama's more ardent supporters...

A well-traveled letter writer who has used dozens of different addresses to publish a pro-Obama letter-to-the-editor in at least 40 newspapers around the country in recent weeks denies allegations that she's secretly a White House official or is part of an organized propaganda campaign.

But the Internet has been buzzing about Ellie Light since The Plain Dealer posted a story Thursday to cleveland.com that revealed her prolific letter-writing credits in newspapers ranging from the Philadelphia Daily News (which said she lived in Philadelphia) to the San Francisco Examiner (which said she lived in Daly City, Calif.).
In comments, online readers speculated on her identity and hypothesized that she's part of an organized astroturf campaign designed to artificially boost the president's standing around the country.

Bloggers began compiling a complete list of her publication credits. A Who is Ellie Light fan page formed on Facebook and a Wikipedia page was drafted about her.

...The letters Light published throughout the country were virtually identical. Nearly all of them listed her residence in towns that are in the newspaper's circulation area, though versions of the letter published in USA Today and the Washington Times cited her residence as Long Beach, Calif.

Other papers listed her as living elsewhere in California, as well as in Ohio, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

"Today, the president is being attacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning," said a version of Light's letter that ran in Ohio's Chillicothe Gazette, claiming a Chillicothe residence. "He never made such a promise. Its time for Americans to realize governing is hard work and that a president can't just wave a magic wand and fix everything."

...In a Sunday morning e-mail to The Plain Dealer, Light denied speculation that she's actually President Obama, his wife, Michelle, or National Security Council member Samantha Power.

"I'm flattered, and I must give the Tea Partiers credit for even knowing who [Power] is," Light's e-mail said. "But what I want to point out is that, if I were a person trying to imply this huge groundswell of support for our beleaguered president, then I would have signed the letter with different names. However, as you may have noticed, my main point is that absence of support for the president.

What's hilarious is that Light's email fails to address the fundamental question of why the same letter was sent to so many publications (see the count thus far here) and claimed to be from so many different locales. Light tries to refute the idea that she's trying to deceive anyone by noting that she could have signed the letter with different names if she wanted to do so, but barring the possibility that she's a real estate mogul, she was trying to deceive people working for the local papers who printed her missives.

I have no idea if this is being orchestrated by people who work for the White House. I tend to think not, because it's incompetent, arrogant, and one would hope they have better things to do. And we all know this White House is competent, humble, and focused on important issues.

Um, yeah.

Let's Change The Slogan In 2012 To "Hope, Change, and Stupid Gaffes"

Maybe I don't need to read Game Change, since the press is giving away the best parts...

“The relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden grew so strained during the 2008 campaign, according to a new book, that the two rarely spoke and aides not only kept Biden off internal conference calls but refused to even tell him they existed…

“[W]hen Biden, at an October fund-raiser in Seattle, famously predicted that Obama would be tested with an international crisis, the then-Illinois senator had had enough.

“‘How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?’ he demanded of his advisers on a conference call, a moment at which most people on the call said the candidate was as angry as they had ever heard him…

“Speaking to his own staff, Biden insisted that it hadn’t really been a gaffe. And feeling a bit defensive, he invoked one of the worst memories of Obama’s primary campaign.

“‘I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything about bitter people who cling to their guns and religion,’ Biden cracked, the authors paraphrase.”

I love that Obama quote about Biden -- I'm pretty sure the answer would have to be "Would you like that measured in times per hour or per day?"

Hope and Change Becomes Fear and Loathing

And he can't even blame this on media bias...

Barack Obama’s approval index number dropped to a new low today. Rasmussen reported:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
Forty-six percent(46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21
That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

At the end of his second term President George W. Bush had a 43%
disapproval rating.

In less than one year Barack Obama managed to pi$$ off more people than
George W. Bush.

(hat tip: Instapundit) Yup, it's clear that W. is nowhere near as good a politician as Obama. It took W. eight whole years to have 43% of Americans strongly disapproving of him.