Obama's actions are disgusting

I'm so ticked off that the president would lower himself way beneath the presidency on the fiscal mess we are in. Let me set the stage:
On January 10th, 2010, Obama said both political sides need to come to agreements, not demagogue the other sides plans. Doing this, he said, would be unhealthy to our political process. And remember, this is from the former candidate who said he would change the poisoned political well.

Obama had several chances to discuss our fiscal crisis; all of the Continuing Resolutions the congress kept passing, the State of the Union Address, a response to his own debt commission's findings, his 2011 budget proposal, etc, etc, etc.... As you can see, he had ample opportunities to discuss his broad plan to tackle our fiscal problems.

Instead, it was reported in about every media outlet that the Obama plan was to "wait" for Budget Chairman Paul Ryan to come out with his proposal, a plan that would tackle our long-term problem of the entitlement programs. A solution that would protect those at or entering retirement age, and enabling the plans to continue. Obama's team thought that they would wait for Ryan's plan to gain the upper hand politically. After all, it's much easier to lambast the other persons proposal than coming up with a plan of your own.... especially when it hits on sensitive topics as Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. These of course, are our biggest drivers of our fiscal mess. And now, Standard & Poor's said yesterday we are on the verge of having our credit rating downgraded our debt from "stable" to "negative".

Here's the order of what happened when Obama FINALLY gave his address, weeks after Ryan's proposal:

1. Invites Paul Ryan to have a front row seat at his speech on our financial mess.

2. Spends more than half of his speech ridiculing Ryan's plan; essentially saying Ryan's plan didn't want to help kids with autism, down syndrome, the elderly, helpless, etc.; saying these people can fend for themselves under the Ryan plan. All the while, Ryan wanted to only protect the millionaires and billionaires (hello class warfare). Not only was this untrue, this was EXACTLY what Obama said in 2008, as well as in his speech on Jan 10, 2010 that is corrupting our political process. Nonetheless, Obama does this to Ryan. Very ugly!!
To the issue of Ryan's plan- According to Obama's own deficit commission (which he cites often in speeches, yet hasn't embraced much of it in policy), it says that there would be 3 different tax rates- 8,14, and 23 percent, all the while taking out many tax loopholes and deductions we are used to. In Ryan's plan, the top rate is actually HIGHER than Obama's commission's 23 percent (for the rich). However, Obama is either demogoguing without knowing the facts, or he is flat out lying!

3. Obama only gives broad strokes to his plan. In other words, he doesn't really have a plan; he's just used theories in a few speeches. This includes: taxing the rich (read: Small Business Owners), cut defense (although the Pentagon shot back the following day that this is a pipe dream that cannot happen right now), and cutting waste in Medicare and Medicaid (that's a cop out proposal, something that if it could be done, wouldn't it have been done by now?). He didn't mention Social Security, apparently thinking this has long-term solvency. Even many liberal commentators said his plans were all well and good, but did NOT offer specifics. If we're to get serious about our mess, shouldn't specifics have been offered?

As most Americans are clearly seeing, this president has more interest in getting re-elected, than tackling our country's problems. And two smart people can disagree on ideas, but at least Ryan showed the moxie to come out with real ideas with meat on them. Obama on the other hand, showed he's a flat wimp on this issue!

On the Paul Ryan front: Man, that guy has class. He sat through the whole speech, even though it distorted his plan from a to z. Nonetheless, he sat through the wreckage of the teleprompter in chiefs failed leadership on this issue. Here's hoping that Ryan would run for President. Not only would Ryan most likely win, but he would wax Obama's ass on the floor when the debate came to budget/fiscal matters. That would be incredibly satisfying to me, as someone who had his blood boiling during Obama's speech.

Finally, I can't help but once again think how a basketball or football coach would view Obama as a leader? Would you ever want to follow him into battle? He NEVER shows leadership aspects... never. Case in point: Punting on our fiscal crisis as mentioned above, saying the Libya leader HAS to go, yet also saying we WON'T force him out, failing to lead on the trainwreck known as Obamacare, the gulf oil spill, etc.

PAUL RYAN in 2012!!!

Polls and Obama

Team Obama is seeing some pretty bad poll numbers. Here's a look:

• He's under water in Gallup, Marist, Rasmussen, WashPo/ABC News polls, all disapproving by at least 3% more than approve.


• His overall approval is down to 46% average, and dropping.


• Obamacare is at its lowest support since inception, only 35% support it.


• 46% strongly disapprove of his handling of the economy; only 23% strongly approve.

On most polls, he's narrowly beating his Republican opponents. However, Romney is beating him by 2 points in a recent poll. Nonetheless, a sitting president SHOULD be beating any unnamed opponent, or named for that matter, even before the election season has started.

General Electric and Taxes

As most now know, GE made billions in profits, yet didn't pay ANY taxes last year. Do we hear the populous Obama, or his liberal friends decrying this? Of course not! Reason being, GE has a stake in MSNBC (liberal network), and GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, is working now for Obama. Change we can, ummmm.......never mind!!

Obama's lack of leadership

As hard as I am on Obama, I truly do not blame him for his lack of leadership skills. The fact is, his resume showed him community organizing, being a little known state senator, and a US senator, who really didn't lead on any issues. In other words, it was his soaring rhetoric, not leadership ability, that got him elected. So why are conservatives torching him so much for his failure to lead? It's kind of a double-edged sword. We know he's not a leader, yet he wanted a job that by definition is the top leadership job in the world. Go figure! Anyway, here's some areas where is lack of ability to lead has definitely hurt him:

1. Health care Reform- It surely wasn't popular then, at it's surely not popular now. Fact is, Obama said he wanted huge changes in this system, then gave the baton to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (both VERY unpopular figures in our country) to write legislation on health care. Obama really didn't get involved, which showed by his lack of clarity when he didn't know if many aspects would be in the bill.


2. Libya/Egypt conflicts- In Egypt, he basically sat on his hands without saying anything. On Libya, he waited for France and England to take the lead.


3. Libya continued-- Instead of letting congress know that we were sending cruise missels into Libya, he notified the UN. Breathtaking!


4. Gaddafi- In one swath, Obama said Muammar Gaddifi must go (as in be overthrown). The very next day, he said the United States policy was to NOT overthrow the evil dictator. Fine, but which is it? For some reason, I believe President Bush would have shown more leadership, one way or the other.


5. Failure to shown interest in deficit three times- In the continuing resolution last December, his State of the Union Address, and the last minute continuation of the government from a shutdown last week. In neither case did he mention ways we can get out of our mess.


6. Attacking Paul Ryan's plan during his "fiscal speech", instead of laying out a plan of his own. He didn't give specifics as to how he would reduce our deficit on entitlements, which everyone knows are the big drivers of our debt.


7. Promising to punish the rich with taxes0 He did say that he was going back on last December's passage of the Bush tax cuts. Agree or disagree with lower taxes on the ones who create jobs, he can't have it both ways.

Raising the debt ceiling

Here's Obama's flip-flopping on raising the debt ceiling. Of course now that he's president, he thinks it would be irresponsible for Republicans to vote against the raising of the debt ceiling. Here's what he said on the issue when he was a senator: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It's a sign that the US cannot pay its own bills.....Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here". Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren." Apparently, Obama's minnions are now saying Obama regrets that vote 5 years ago. Ummm, damage done, Mr. President. There are certain things you can regret, but how can you go from principled...... to unprincipled..

Government shutdown and whose fault?

The government may be coming to a shutdown within the next several hours. Of course both sides are blaming the other. But whose fault is it really? I'd go out on a limb and say the 111th Congress (we are in the 112th now). In the 111th congress, they failed to enact a budget. How incredibly disappointing is that? And the kicker is, Democrats controlled the White House, House of Reps, and the Senate. So where's their excuse? It's nice and refreshing to see the House Republicans hold the hard line on having 61 Billion in cuts, which was promised when they were elected in the 2010 landslide. If our government cannot cut 61 Billion (when we are in the whole 1.65 Trillion alone this year), we've got problems. Problems similar to Greece. Finally..... Didn't Obama say that in his first term, he'd reduce the size of the deficit in half? Instead, he's pushed it up another 5 Trillion or so (he's been around 1.5 Trillion each of his three years).

Libya and Obama's response

It isn't really surprising that a President who has such little experience with anything other than teaching and community organizing has everybody confused as to what the Libya mission is.
He has the left ticked that he lifted a finger at all with airstrikes.
He has ticked the right off because, despite many in his administration (including Clinton) saying the time for Gaddafi to go is now with regime change, they are walking back on that statement. I presume because Obama's left flank is throwing a hissy fit because we've used force at all. Nonetheless, can anyone explain the mission coherently?

Finally, he has legislators from the left and the right upset because he thought going to the UN for its approval was more valuable than filling congress in on what he was doing. Oh, he did. But that was without asking for input, and minutes before the strategy was set in motion on the battlefield...

Now just stop and ponder... What if Bush decided not to notify congress of these plans before striking a country? Man, what a scene that would be.

Finally, remember Biden and Obama saying in the 08 campaign that without congressional approval, a US President cannot go to war. Well, I guess Obama's being a hypocrit now! I think the constitution grants the commander these authorities....maybe Obama had a change of heart once Bush left office and he got into office... insert sarcasm here.

My heart is pondering the thought of us having a president who is an actual leader!!!