Barack Obama -- March 21, 2009

March 21, 2009

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From $1 trillion in debt
to $4 trillion in debt
in six weeks

event	description
Comandante Obama	"But you don't understand," the Colombian said. "We've seen this before." "He's right, my good friend," the Cuban said. "We Latin Americans know the pattern. Believe me we do." The American tried to shrug off the Latin Americans' warning. To his consternation, he found that he couldn't. Peron, Fidel, now Chavez, they insisted. The emergence of misrule, corruption and economic stagnation in Latin American nations follows a particular sequence or progression. Now the sequence was unfolding in the United States. "It starts with a cult of personality," the Cuban explained. "One man declares himself the jefe, the caudillo, the big leader." Had Obama attempted to instigate something like a cult of personality? The American found the charge impossible to refute. During the campaign, Obama had failed to advance a genuine agenda, instead campaigning on "hope" and "change." In effect, he had asked Americans to turn the nation over to him on blind faith. He would, he promised, transcend racial and partisan divides in his very person. The One had thrived, moreover, on addressing vast gatherings. In Berlin, he had addressed a quarter of a million Germans. At the Democratic convention, he had given his acceptance speech not in a convention hall before a few thousand supporters, but in a stadium before 80,000. In some subtle but palpable way, the American had to admit, Obama had transgressed our political tradition. He had reduced his supporters to facelessness. And to an astonishing extent, the American had to grant, the elites -- Congress, academics, the mainstream media -- had proved only too willing to place themselves in thrall to Obama. On Feb. 17, for example, the president had signed an $800 billion "stimulus" bill, at least three-quarters of which was devoted not to stimulus but to political payoffs. Less than a week later, he had hosted a White House "summit" on fiscal responsibility. Had the press noted the contrast? Had it objected? The very idea. Let George W. Bush mispronounce a word, and the press would howl for a month. Let Obama offend against language itself -- let him suggest that he signed perhaps the most reckless fiscal act in American history as an instance of "fiscal responsibility," engaging in an almost Orwellian example of doublespeak -- and the press utters scarcely a murmur. "After the cult of personality," the Colombian explained, "what comes next is nationalization." Fidel had nationalized the Cuban sugar mills, Chavez the Banco de Venezuela, Morales the Bolivian oil and gas industries.
It's Obama's Crisis Now	You might have missed it, but a key moment in Barack Obama's young presidency occurred Wednesday afternoon as he began his trip to California to become the first sitting president to appear on a late-night comedy show. Heading for his helicopter, Obama made a statement about the AIG bonuses, and he didn't use the word "inherited," as in "we inherited this crisis." "Ultimately, I'm responsible, I'm the president of the United States," Obama told reporters. "The buck stops with me." That makes it official: Barack Obama didn't start the financial crisis, but he owns it now. Before anyone gives the president an award for political courage, remember that provisions regarding the bonuses -- and who knows what else -- were buried deep inside the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that Obama and his fellow Democrats rushed through Congress. Every single Republican in the House voted against it, and all but three GOP senators did the same. There's no way Obama can blame the stimulus, and its contents, on anyone other than himself. "What's beginning to happen is his actions are starting to have consequences," a Republican pollster told me. "And this is one of those. He hurried everybody through that process, and it's now his actions that are causing things that people are unhappy about."
Stop The Insanity	Obama's budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of George W. Bush's presidency, congressional auditors said Friday. The new Congressional Budget Office figures offered a far more dire outlook for Obama's budget than the new administration predicted just last month -- a deficit $2.3 trillion worse. It's a prospect even the president's own budget director called unsustainable. In his White House run, Obama assailed the economic policies of his predecessor, but his eye-popping deficit numbers threaten to swamp his Marxist agenda of socializing health care, bankrupting the energy industry, and enacting scores of left-wing domestic programs. The dismal deficit figures, if they prove to be accurate, inevitably raise the prospect that Obama and his Democratic allies controlling Congress would have to consider raising taxes after the recession ends or else pare back his agenda. By CBO's calculation, Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year of red ink over 2010-2019. Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama's policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level. "I think deficits of 5 percent (of GDP) are unsupportable," said economist Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "It will lead to higher interest rates to the point where it will force policymakers to make changes." White House budget chief Peter Orszag said that CBO's long-range economic projections are more pessimistic than those of the White House. but, remember, the CBO has been in business for many years -- Orszag has been in business 8 weeks (and is an Obot) -- who are you going to believe?
Priorities	After getting his usual White House briefing on the world's problems, Obama headed to Camp David for a long weekend with his family. His daughters Sasha and Malia have begun their spring break, and to spend more time with the girls and first lady, the president is skipping a Washington tradition, Saturday night's Gridiron Club dinner. A weekend off in the middle of the worst economic crisis in generations and Obama goes on "spring break." Well, it is "March Madness," and Obama does have his priorities. Can't watch the games if you're running the country.
Witch Hunt	Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions. Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the "anti-American" measures smacked of "a McCarthy witch-hunt" that would send the country "back to the stone age." There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks. "Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it," said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. "This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG." The banker added: "It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt...This is the most profoundly anti- American thing I’ve ever seen." Not to mention that these measures are probably unconstitutional.
Iran Ignores Obama	The Iranian government brushed aside a Persian New Year's message on March 20th, from Obama, offering to resolve years of hostility, saying it wants concrete change from Washington before it's ready to enter a dialogue. Obama released the video to coincide with the major Iranian festival of Nowruz, a 12-day holiday that marks the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year on the Persian calendar. In the video, which has Farsi subtitles, Obama said the U.S. is prepared to end the strained relations if Tehran tones down its combative rhetoric. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also has said Iran would welcome talks with the U.S., but only if there was mutual respect. Iranian officials say that means Washington must stop accusing Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism. On Friday, an Ahmadinejad adviser played down Obama's video, saying "minor changes will not end the differences" between Tehran and Washington. "Obama has talked of change but has taken no practical measures to address America's past mistakes in Iran. If Mr. Obama takes concrete actions and makes fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy toward other nations including Iran, the Iranian government and people will not turn their back on him," press adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr told the state-run English-language Press TV satellite station. Transcript of Obama's appeal -- amplified by images. There was a female Iranian expatriate on FOX News last night who said Obama’s appeal would be interpreted as a surrender. She implied that had Obama delivered this message in person the Mullahs would have taken turns mounting him.
Tampering?	Dr. Orly Taitz, a California attorney battling on a number of fronts to obtain documentation of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president is asking the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to investigate suspected "tampering" at the U.S. Supreme Court. She says the issue of Obama's eligibility to meet the Constitution's demand for a "natural born" president has been before the Supreme Court at least four times. But she wonders whether the justices actually were given the pleadings to review. "I believe … that there was tampering with documents and records by employees of the Supreme Court and the justices never saw those briefs," she alleges in a letter to the FBI's Robert Mueller, the Secret Service's Mark Sullivan and Attorney General Eric Holder. Taitz raises questions about "forgery of court records, tampering with court records, cyber crime, erasing of court records from the docket, fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and other related crimes." Specifically, she points to the handling of her own case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, which was submitted to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. Although it was scheduled for a conference, no hearing ever was held. Taitz notes that references to the case were erased from the docket of the Supreme Court on Jan. 21, shortly after Obama, the defendant, met with eight of the nine justices behind closed doors. It happened just two days before her case was scheduled to be reviewed in conference. More . . .