Tag Archives: Obama

Is it really that hard to understand that unproductive public spending lowers productivity?

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Is there anyone anywhere who actually believes that the present recovery in the US has anything to do with Obama? Actually there are lots of people just as ignorant as that, amongst whom is Obama himself. I get the same level of irritation when I read how economic “managers” here in Oz wonder why productivity growth is so pathetic and real wages are falling even as they see before their eyes the construction of streetcars in Sydney, trains in Melbourne and the diversion of tens of billions of dollars into preventing a non-heating planet from heating. Anyway, this is Trump v Obama on why the American economy has been rising since Obama left the presidency.

President Trump fired back Monday after former President Barack Obama, in a subtle swipe at the commander in chief, claimed credit for the economic gains in both their terms.

Obama tweeted Monday morning to note the anniversary of his signing the 2009 economic stimulus package.

“Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history,” Obama tweeted, alongside a photo of his signature on the bill.

But, the Trump campaign, in a statement to Fox News, countered that the economy was recovering only because of the actions Trump took to undo his predecessor’s policies.

“President Trump reversed every single failed Obama-era economic policy, and with it, reversed the floundering Obama/Biden economy,” Trump campaign national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “Obama and Biden orchestrated the worst economic recovery in modern history.”

Actually, everyone else did more or less the same as Obama, Australia included, with more or less the same results. Modern macro is about as disastrous as a policy can be, although we may yet see Modern Monetary Theory given a try by one of the socialists now running for President as a Democrat.

“Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work”

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This is from 2015: Obama Strikes a Deal–With Qassem Suleimani. It’s by Lee Smith from the Hudson Institute.

According to the terms of the Iran deal announced in Vienna on Tuesday, U.N. Security Council sanctions regarding nuclear-related issues will be lifted on a number of entities and individuals—from Iranian banks to Lebanese assassins, like Anis Nacacche. The name that most sticks out is IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani. Administration officials counsel calm, and explain that Suleimani is still on the U.S. terror list and will remain on the terror list. But that’s irrelevant. The reality is that Suleimani is the key to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

It is all incredible, but this is extraordinary.

Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work. As the president reportedly told a group of Arab officials in May, the Arabs “need to learn from Iran’s example.”

In fact, they need to take a page out of the playbook of the Qods Force — by which [Obama] meant developing their own local proxies capable of going toe-to-toe with Iran’s agents and defeating them. The president seemed to marvel at the fact that from Hezbollah to the Houthis to the Iraqi militias, Iran has such a deep bench of effective proxies willing to advance its interests. Where, he asked, are their equivalent on the Sunni side? Why, he wanted to know in particular, have the Saudis and their partners not been able to cultivate enough Yemenis to carry the burden of the fight against the Houthis? The Arabs, Obama suggested, badly need to develop a toolbox that goes beyond the brute force of direct intervention. Instead, they need to, be subtler, sneakier, more effective — well, just more like Iran.

Is it stupidity, incompetence or duplicity? Who can tell, but we should be very grateful it is gone for now. With foreign policy such a low-grade issue to at least half the American population, you never know who they will elect for president next. In the meantime, we have to hope they keep the one they now have for the next four years.

But where you will never unravel any of these questions is by reading the daily papers or watching the ABC. This is from the Australian Financial Review today, with this the heading in the paper, but not online: Trump scraps Obama legacy. This is the sub-head in the paper, but again, not the one used online.

“In confronting Iran, the president, driven by a desire to trash his predecessor’s foreign policy record, is determined to prove himself a superior commander-in-chief.”

And in the very middle of the page, the inset quote reads:

“I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say the root of much of this is Obama envy.”

It would be nice if these people would stick to foreign policy and lay off the pop-psychology. For what it’s worth, in my view Obama was the worst president in American history, both for domestic and foreign policy. Anyone who cannot at least understand why someone might come to this conclusion should be prevented from commenting on current events.

Toronto life

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I suppose something like it could happen in Melbourne. And then there’s this: A Call to Slaughter Jews at Toronto’s Al Quds Day March.

If you don’t understand the reference, go to the link. And it just so happens that something like it did just happen in Melbourne: WATCH: Melbourne Al Quds Rally Participant: “Hamas Should Be Here”.

So while reading about that, I was also reading this: Spinoza and Friends about seeing the world as God might Himself. And then most unexpectedly, right in the middle came this.

I have followed Israel’s situation for nearly two decades now. I see what the Palestinians are up to and I see what the Israelis are up to and I conclude that peace will only come about when Israel extends sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza and kicks out the Palestinians who refuse to recognize the Jewish state. Which means most of them. People call me right-wing. Most of my friends call me right-wing or worse. I barely talk to them now. I do not understand how they can believe in a two-state solution when the Palestinians, in word and by deed, proclaim their desire to liquidate the Jewish state and murder its people. Has not one Holocaust been enough? I understand people’s predilection for peace. It is an expectation normal to a democratic society. But the Arab Muslim world is not a democratic society and is not going to become one anytime soon. Why observe their world through western eyes? Do not excuse what they say or do by claiming it is a response to western arrogance, colonialism, or any of the other sins which so many have so wrongly laid at the doorstep of the West. As if peoples and countries have not been conquering and plundering each other since time immemorial! My friends would do better to read the Bible, but they don’t do that anymore either.

If you want peace, prepare for war, and if war comes, kill your enemies. Is that really the message? Whether it is or not, it is the message our enemies have in store for us, but one we cannot use ourselves.

AND THERE IS ALSO THIS: Toronto Muslim: Executing gays may sound “unfair,” but that’s sharia law and “it’s coming to Canada”.

You cannot trust a party of the left with the management of an economy

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From New Data Shows Absolute Economic Destruction During Obama Years. And these figures are not from some ratbag bunch of observers. This is where they are from:

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis just released this single snapshot of economic performance over the Obama years.

And what do the figures show:

Federal debt went through the roof as we added more debt than all other previous periods combined.
We printed lots of money to paper over the monetary effects.
Health costs went way up when we were told they would drop. Obama care was a flop.
Labor force participation went down as unemployment increased and many just dropped out of the workplace altogether.
Inequality went up and up, as the rich got richer and the middle class shrank.
Median income dropped.
Home ownership also fell way down.
Overall, Americans were far worse off than before and we were told there was NO hope.
The country was losing to China and our children and grandchildren would not live as well as their parents and grandparents had.
Jobs would never return.

Venezuela is all that parties of the left know since they know nothing about allowing a market economy to work. Politically totalitarians and economically socialists. Yet they are the almost-governments everywhere and are only stopped because the damage they create causes a backlash before they can go much farther. But eventually they return and carry their projects a little further along.

Did McCain and Romney purposely lose to Obama?

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It’s a thought that has always stayed at the back of my mind but never gone away. McCain was ahead early on, and then decided to put his campaign on hold. Remember this: McCain Suspends Campaign, Shocks Republicans?

The sound of jaws hitting the floor reverberated in Washington this afternoon when Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced that he would suspend his campaign and asked that Friday’s debate be postponed. Why? Because of the “historic crisis in our financial system,” said McCain, who intends to return to Washington tomorrow to participate in Wall Street bailout negotiations on the Hill.

He then selected as his running mate, the untried and untested Governor of Alaska, who no one would have thought would have been much of a political asset, until she was. And then, when she became the sensation of the season, he cut her dead and pushed her away rather than drawing her in. And as Palin said not long ago: Sarah Palin: McCain admitting he’d rather have had Lieberman as running mate was ‘gut punch’.

Speaking with NBC News and the Daily Mail, Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate, talked about her relationship with the Arizona Republican who is battling terminal brain cancer.

McCain’s new book, which chronicles his career and bid for president in 2008, reportedly includes his regret with not choosing Joe Lieberman, then an independent senator from Connecticut, as his running mate in the 2008 race, which he lost to Barack Obama.

McCain writes in the book that advisers counseled him against choosing Lieberman because of his past as a Democrat.

He cuts dead a star in the making and regrets he didn’t choose a Democrat! He really did not want to win.

Then Romney in 2016. Beats Obama pointless in the first debate without even trying. Still almost wins after lying down in the next two debates and is even ahead at the turn when along comes “Superstorm Sandy”. This is his self-assessment seven months after the election:

Among the things Romney thinks might have actually changed the election appears to be his own comments. He repeatedly referenced his own “mistakes” in the CNN interview. He said he “regrets” his comment about 47 percent of Americans refusing to take responsibility for their lives. He said of Clint Eastwood’s empty-chair moment, “Clint didn’t hurt my campaign, I hurt my campaign a couple times.” He said dealing with the press is hard. “Jokes, for instance, will get you in trouble,” Romney said. “Any time you’re trying to be funny.”

But I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until this: Romney casts lone GOP vote against Trump judicial pick because of a ‘disparaging’ comment about Obama.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted to confirm Michael J. Truncale of Texas as the United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas by a vote of 49-46.

The vote was mostly along party lines in the upper chamber, with Sens. Cassidy, R-La., Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Hirono, D-Hawaii, Kennedy, R-La., Rounds, R-S.D., not voting; there was, however, one party defection, as Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, voted with Democrats against the nominee.

For Romney, it wasn’t a matter of jurisprudence or legal qualifications, but remarks made about former Democratic President Obama Truncale made in 2011, calling him an “un-American imposter.”

He must be the last man alive on the Republican side not to know that this is absolutely true. And it does make me think he really didn’t want to win the election since he never even came close to taking a hard line on Obama and the horrors of his first four years as president. The comments thread at Instapundit says it all.

The Obama State Department was a lethal danger to us all

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Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Vol. 19, No. 1

  • Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi has said that Iran will continue with its activities at the heavy water plant in Arak. Iran has purchased equipment for the facility and did not even fill in the core of the reactor with cement to render it unusable in January 2016 in accordance with the nuclear deal.
  • He claimed on Jan. 22, 2019, that images published at the time showing that Iran had completely sealed the core of the reactor were photo-shopped, and that Iran was never required in the agreement to seal the core of the reactor with cement.
  • Salehi said he was “thankful to Allah for the way in which the discussions relating to the technical aspects of the nuclear talks were conducted, as they left so many breaches in the agreement that Iran was able to exploit.”
  • ”Iran has lost nothing as a result of signing the agreement,” Salehi continued, “and history will prove this. We have preserved our capabilities in the field of enrichment. We are…continuing to manufacture new centrifuges. We are doing everything we need to do.”

From Iran Continues with its Nuclear Activities Unabated. Read the whole thing. You wonder why PDT doesn’t trust any of them. Why would he, and why would you?

Guess who: “I think I was a thug while growing up”

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WATCH: Old Interview With Heavy-Drinking ‘Thug’ Obama Puts Wild-Man Brett Kavanaugh To Shame. Where you will find this text:

Remember all the hubbub about Brett “Party Man” Kavanaugh? The guy who was a boozer loser in his teens and, therefore in part, has no business being on the Supreme Court in his 50’s? Well, move over bacon — now there’s something meatier.

A video of the Left’s savior, Barack Obama, has resurfaced. And Barry is talkin’ up a storm about his partying days as an adolescent. The hits:

–Trigger Warning–

“I think I was a thug for a big part of my growing up.”

A THUG!

“[I] reacted by engaging in a lot of behavior that’s not untypical of a lot of black males across the country.”

What? That’s racist.

“I didn’t take school that seriously.”

Say it ain’t so!

“I got into fights.”

That sounds a lot like toxic masculinity.

“I drank and consumed substances that weren’t always legal.”

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

“Some of my behavior was self-destructive — I might drink a six-pack in an hour before going back to class.”

Certainly unfit to be president, but that we know because he was president and showed just how unfit he was. As in:

obama accomplishments

The Obama legacy disposal team

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And at the link.

On Inauguration Day, 2017, President Donald Trump’s first act in office was to mobilize the military’s “Legacy Disposal Team” to undo the damage caused by Barack Obama. In this video, you’ll see and hear the run-up to the team’s action as stockpiles of Obama’s broken promises, failed policies, and unconstitutional executive orders are collected in isolated areas…followed by the explosive beginnings of what will surely be a very long process.

But there are still places he can show his face and feel he’s among friends: ‘Obama! Obama!’: Barack Obama is back on Martha’s Vineyard. Everywhere else he is Mister Zero.

And then there’s this: Barack Obama Gets Another Peace Prize: Here Are 5 Reasons He Doesn’t Deserve It. This is Number 5:

5. Praising South Africa’s Newest Dictator

While the media slobbered all over him…again…there were a few remarks he presented at a recent speech in South Africa—that the media naturally ignored—that revealed the true nature of Barack Obama:

In a highly controversial speech in South Africa, a nation on the brink of catastrophe amid racist land grabs and brutal massacres that experts have linked to the ruling regime, former U.S. President Barack Obama showered praises on President Cyril Ramaphosa (shown here with Obama) and other highly controversial figures. The adulation poured out on Ramaphosa went far beyond normal diplomatic courtesy. In fact, Obama claimed the radical left-wing strongman, who is right now leading the charge to steal land from minority farmers without compensation, was “inspiring new hope in this great country.” In reality, critics say he is driving it over the edge of a cliff.

Perhaps even more alarming, Obama appeared to praise Ramaphosa’s dangerous efforts to supposedly reduce inequality in South Africa — efforts that mimic the disastrous land-expropriation schemes pursued in neighboring Zimbabwe by genocidal Marxist dictator Robert Mugabe that practically destroyed the nation. Touting the Marxist Goal 10 in the United Nations Agenda 2030 scheme, which calls for national and international wealth redistribution, Obama told the crowd in Johannesburg that “we’re going to have to figure out how do we close this widening chasm of wealth and opportunity both within countries and between them.”

Irony and self-reflection are obviously not characteristics of the left. On the other hand, there is this: Saturday Was Obama’s Birthday. Here’s The *Best* Card He Got.

Jesse Kelly®

✔@JesseKellyDC

Happy birthday @BarackObama. Thank you for all you did.

Like millions of Americans, you probably did not know that Saturday was Obama’s birthday. With the economy booming, and unemployment numbers at historic lows, people were either relaxing on the weekend, or shopping…with the extra money in their paychecks, thanks to the Trump tax cuts.

Although Obama’s fans sent him birthday greetings, this one has got to be the best 🙂

And then there’s this: Top Ten Reasons to Be Nostalgic for Obama. Here Number 10.

10. Debt

Ahh, remember when massive, unsustainable debt was cool because Obama did it? When he took office in 2009 his answer to the recession was to spend, spend, spend… and spend he did. For the next three years America had deficits over $1 trillion with very little to show for it. The recession officially ended in June 2009, but the actual recovery was the slowest since the Great Depression. Wages remained low and flat. Who wouldn’t miss that?

Now go read the other nine.

Feather duster

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Eight years on top but as gone as any politician has ever been. But I have to say, his supporters are more insane than is truly believable. This is the moronic Maureen Down writing in the NYT more than a year into the Trump presidency: Obama – Just Too Good for Us. I looked everywhere for a trace of irony but none I could find. Try yourself, read through the whole article, but this really is what she believes:

We just weren’t ready for his amazing awesomeness.

Let us hope we can also add his kind shall not pass this way again. And then this as a keepsake.

Ben Rhodes on election night hearing that DJT is about to become PDT. How detached these people are from reality is possibly the strangest revelation this election has brought to light. But savour this while you can. In about a year I suspect you will be unable to find this video no matter how hard you look. On the other hand, it may become the most common parody video of all time, beating even Hitler’s Downfall. For example:

Alas eight years goes by really quickly, and four years even more quickly. With such people everywhere, you never know just how badly things can turn out.

AND LET ME NOW ADD THIS: I realise how hard it can sometimes be to believe that those on the left believe the things they do. Satire is impossible since they are more unintentionally satirical than anyone could make up about them. There is no irony on the left. So let me therefore bring your attention to this article by the great Roger Kimball: A Clueless “Final Year”. To be read through yourself, but this gets to the point:

The breathtaking presumption of virtue, the unshakeable confidence in one’s moral election, is patent throughout this documentary. It is also vividly on view in a New York Times story from a couple of days ago about Obama’s reaction to Donald Trump’s triumph in the 2016 election: How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’. The irony in the title is that no one involved in the story, not Obama, not Ben Rhodes, not the Times reporter seriously entertains the question “What if we were wrong?”

Yes, Obama wonders whether “we pushed too far.” “Maybe,” he says, “people [though not, of course, his people] just want to fall back into their tribe.” But there is no suggestion he might not think he is traveling in the vanguard of history. “Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” he said. If only the world were elevated a little higher towards my plane of enlightenment, then people like me would still be in power and all would be right with the world! Amazing.