Ironic that yesterday, NY Times columnist Charles Blow, certainly an Obama cheerleader from way back, penned a column entitled Obama’s to Fix, in which he cautions the President to stop blaming George Bush for the “mess” he inherited. Clearly, our President, far from undoing such a mess, is daily making a bigger one of his own. Mr. Blow begins with this ominous phrase:

What a difference a year makes.

In October 2008, the candidate Barack Obama delivered a major economic speech in Toledo, Ohio. In it he said: “Right now, we face an immediate economic emergency, and that requires urgent action. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now — who don’t know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills. … We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class, and we need to do it not five years from now, not next year, we need to do it right now.

“So today I’m proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners. It’s a plan that begins with one word that’s on everybody’s mind, and it’s easy to spell: J-O-B-S.”

“Right now,” “immediate economic emergency,” “requires urgent action,” “can’t wait.” Wow! He gave the impression that job creation would be his top priority, that action would be swift and effective, that his solutions would not only stanch the hemorrhaging, but reverse the trend.

He has not made jobs his top priority. This health care debacle, bailing out Wall Street, getting into the car business and generally putting money into the pockets of everyone except those who need it have all taken priority over putting Americans back to work. And, no, putting an extra $13 a week into people’s paychecks is not going to do the trick when as Mr. Blow points out the new official labor statistics have us at 10.2 unemployment, which is an increase of “more than 50 percent from the time Obama gave that speech.”

“(By the way, the underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want to work full time and those who’ve given up searching, is a staggering 17.5 percent.)”

I am still at a loss to understand why there was such a great urgency to pass health care legislation that is not supposed to go into effect for more than three years. Someone on another blog made the observation that Obama and Pelosi et al are using the economic crisis and joblessness as a weapon to pass their agenda. As people are panicked at losing their jobs and their healthcare, they are more likely to look to government to bail them out – and more amenable. As Rahm Emanuel said, “never waste a good crisis.” What better time to ram this through. Mr. Blow continues:

Job creation has dropped from top priority to one of many, and President Obama has been remanded to pandering for patience and offering excuses. On the one hand, he argues the tortured rationale that there is good news in the awful numbers: Things are still getting worse but at a slower pace. On the other, he incessantly reminds us that he inherited the crisis. The implication: Don’t blame me, blame Bush.

But this president can’t keep deflecting to the last one. Pain is presently felt. The crisis that took form on Bush’s watch is being experienced on Obama’s. Fair or not, finger-pointing is not effective policy.

This is now Obama’s crisis, and it carries political consequences. During Tuesday’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, nearly 9 in 10 voters said that they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next year. And the majority of those who held that view voted for the Republican candidates. This could portend a flashback to 1994.

It isn’t President Obama’s fault that he inherited this mess, but it is his to fix, and he must make haste. To paraphrase his Toledo prelection: you need to do it not five years from now, not next year, you need to do it right now. J-O-B-S.

There were many options to put people back to work this year if that was really the priority. Clearly it was not. This President spent almost a billion dollars to get his job. I don’t want to hear complaints now. Obviously, he inherited a mess, which he has made worse with reckless spending. No one expects him to fix everything in the space of a year, but I thought his “good judgment” meant he knew how to prioritize. We need leadership and part of that involves sacrificing one’s ego to help those who need it most. That is far more important than pushing legislation just for the purpose of putting a check mark next to one’s name. You don’t not spend billions, even trillions, you don’t have at a time like this. Since this bunch so miscalculated on their $787 billion stimulus package, I am not inclined to trust them now by handing over 1/6 of the economy to their stewardship.

It is interesting that Mr. Blow, who played the race card on Mr. Obama’s behalf last year, is now joining the ever increasing number of his pundit supporters who are having problems with his endless campaigning, blaming and wrongheaded focus.

As to the health care debate, I called my Congressman’s office Friday morning to complain about the bill and his assistant debated the merits with me. At least she took the time to do so. It was a shame she was wrong on the facts. I told her to go back and read the thing. Now we have a 2,000 page beast that the Senate must contend with and we are told it will never pass in its current form. So why the rush? Why wouldn’t this Administration be in the same kind of rush to help get people back to work?

There are 237 millionaires in Congress. Perhaps that explains why they have difficulty relating to the urgent need to put millions of Americans back of work, instead manufacturing an urgent need to pass labrynthian legislation for the mere purpose of saying “Mission Accomplished.”

Hmm. Where have we heard that phrase before?

The American Idol president is running his own reality show and we are picking up the tab. Mr. Obama seems to think that he and his wife are the most fascinating part of the American narrative. Last Friday, the IOC clarified the butter for the Obamas. In the past months, we have published many articles reporting on Kool Aid drinkers who have lifted their heads from the pink trough, dazed and confused, wondering where the “Change” is. The list is long: Peggy Noonan, Frank Rich, Susan Estrich, Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, Robert Reich. Feel free to add your own. Today I add three more to that growing list.

First WaPo’s Richard Cohen complains Obama Doesn’t Seem Ready to Lead:

Barack Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome. But as it turned out (an airy dismissal would not be an unfair description), it poses some questions about his presidency that are way more important than the proper venue for synchronized swimming. The first, and to my mind most important, is whether Obama knows who he is.

This business of self-knowledge is no minor issue. It bears greatly on the single most crucial issue facing this young and untested president: Afghanistan. Already, we have his choice for Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, taking the measure of his commander in chief and publicly telling him what to do. This MacArthuresque star turn called for a Trumanesque response, but Obama offered nothing of the kind. Instead, he used McChrystal as a prop, adding a bit of four-star gravitas to that silly trip to Copenhagen by having the general meet with him there.

Mr. Cohen is blaming Gen. McChrystal for someone else leaking his report to the President. The more important point is, as Gen. Wes Clark or anyone else who’s actually been in this position will tell you (and as he did say in an interview this weekend), you’d better listen to your commanders on the ground. Cohen is right that the 25 minute meeting with McChrystal on Friday was merely a photo op. He’s still deliberating. How many more months of ‘deliberating” are required while our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan?

This is the president we now have: He inspires lots of affection but not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in international affairs, where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests await Obama. If he remains consistent to his own rhetoric of just last August, he will send more troops to Afghanistan and more of them will die. “This is not a war of choice,” he said. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

President Obama has the disastrous example of Iraq where Bush’s Generals told him from the outset that an overwhelming force was needed. They did not get it. You saw the result. Obama himself admitted that the belated 2007 surge was wildly successful. How much more evidence does he need? Define the mission, and either send the forces in to get the job done or pull all our men and women out of there. Choose. Lead. That’s the job description. Date night I don’t care about. Dog walking I don’t care about.

Cohen concludes:

But the ultimate in realism is for the president to gauge himself and who he is: Does he have the stomach and commitment for what is likely to be an unpopular war? Will he send additional troops, but hedge by not sending enough — so that the dying will be in vain? What does he believe, and will he ask Americans to die for it? Only he knows the answers to these questions. But based on his zigzagging so far and the suggestion from the Copenhagen trip that the somber seriousness of the presidency has yet to sink in, we have reason to wonder.

Has the seriousness of the presidency sunk in? Now there’s a question.

You may be surprised to note that NY Times columnist Bob Herbert is wondering the same thing. A huge cheerleader for Obama, Herbert cried racism and even saw phallic symbols in the leaning tower of Pisa in a misguided attempt to defend his chosen hero last year. Now he wonders Does Obama Get It? Well, Mr. Herbert, don’t feel bad. This question has been keeping me up nights, too. He states:

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

Clearly Mr. Herbert, if you have to ask, then Obama does not understand the gravity of the situation. Where is his good judgment? How can one not understand 9.8 unemployment – in reality it is a much higher number when one includes Americans out of work for so long they have fallen off the rolls.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. …

Nearly one in four American families has suffered a job loss over the past year, according to a survey released by the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans is officially unemployed, and the real-world jobless rate is worse.

It is a nightmare. No one is blasé when they are worried how they are going to feed their families. What about the porkulus package? Is this administration waiting to release most of the funds in 2010 to help them at the polls? If that is the case, shame on them.

Why should Obama understand when he isn’t spending his own money? Half million dollar pizza parties, an obscene amount spent on the inauguration and several million on this reckless Copenhagen junket show a frightening disconnect between Obama’s priorities and his fiduciary responsibility to the American people. Herbert continues:

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

If that does not change, these staggering levels of joblessness have the potential to cripple not just the well-being of millions of American families, but any real prospects for sustained economic recovery and the political prospects of the president as well. An unemployed electorate is an unhappy electorate.

Mr. Herbert, they are already crippled, but instead of addressing the urgency of the economy and Afghanistan head on, we get what George Will calls The Obamas’ Narcissism on Display. Speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s speeches before the IOC last week,

…Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance.

Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about … themselves. Although the working of the committee’s mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds — unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

George Will suggested that since the Obamas used so many “I” and “me” references in their speeches, Obama’s genius speechwriters (Favreau et al) should have substituted the words I and me with “sauerkraut” to underscore the ‘antic nature of their excessive appearances.’ Someone needs to tell the Obamas that what is compelling about America is all Americans – all colors of the rainbow, all states, all social strata – together. All of us. Not just the two of them. And all of us are hurting out here. Our soldiers are hurting, too.

Will also points to Obama’s excessive use of cliché:

“At this defining moment,” a moment “when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations” in “this ever-shrinking world,” he aspires to “forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.”
…
Does our Cicero even glance at his speeches before reading them in public?

All this is indicative of a man not connected to his words or not caring enough about either his audience or the subject at hand to come up with anything better than patented brand phrases that some focus group told him “resonate” with the public.

Our soldiers and our economy need a coherent plan. Now. He has had ample time to figure this out, as has Congress. Too much energy is focused on infighting for a health care plan that is such an incoherent monstrosity that they should trash it and start over. This is not even supposed to take effect until 2013, after the next election. Hmmm I wonder why. All things considered, that leaves health care the least urgent issue of the three.

On Afghanistan and the economy, pressing matters where lives, jobs and homes are on the line – where is the president? Will concludes:

Unhappy will be a president whose defining adjective is “vain.”

In keeping with the vanity of this man’s administration, we also see that nothing President Obama does is his own fault. This is the job he wanted. And a majority of the electorate voted him in to do it. What is he waiting for? There is no one else to blame if he hems and haws so long that Afghanistan is lost. There is no one else to blame if he insists on focusing on parts of an agenda that are not helping put the American people back to work. This is his presidency now. So I’ll ask again.

Mr. President, why did you want this job?

H/T to Hot Air for this video. It is very short, so please stay with it.

Obama attempts to reassure “folks” at a town hall that health care reform does not mean long lines, nor does it mean the private insurers will be run out of business. How does he do it? He states that Fed Ex and UPS are still doing fine – it’s the post office that’s having problems.

Um. Isn’t the post office government run?

Does his “example” reassure you? Inquiring minds want to know.

Chat away.

Clearly Mr. Van Dyk was a huge fan of this President, thought his campaign “superb” and appreciated his promises of “reaching across party and ideological lines to get the public’s business done.” Van Dyk opines:

“You displayed an intellect and sense of cool that made us think you would weigh decisions carefully and view advisers’ proposals with skepticism.”

You know what I get from that phrase? Since the President acted “cool,” some mighty educated people actually believed this to be more than just a pose on his part. Not unlike Madonna’s use of “Voguing” back in the day. Now perhaps they begin to see that a pose has neither to do with governing nor an ability to adapt to the changing realities on the ground.

At that point, Mr. Van Dyk goes off the rails and we see that his blanket approval has come to an end:

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

He then complains of Obama stocking his White House with “Clinton administration retreads who had learned their trade in the never-ending-campaign culture of the Clinton years.” Again, blame Clinton. But who did Mr. Van Dyk think this man was going to hire? He faults Obama for his “reliance on these Clinton holdovers.”

Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an “opportunity” to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed.

The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

Does Van Dyk assume any Democratic president would have been this reckless? Hillary Clinton had different health care proposals, different proposals for helping homeowners in this crisis and a much better understanding of the economy. None of her ideas are being utilized, I’m afraid. She just may have exhibited the good sense Mr. Van Dyk longs for and put the financial floor back under us before attempting a more drastic change. But we’ll never know…

Van Dyk discusses Mr. Obama being unfairly compared to FDR & LBJ. Discussing President Johnson’s “Great Society legislation”…

…at every stage, congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you’re stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

President Obama is in over his head, so of course he “outsourced.” Why is this gentleman surprised? Mr. Van Dyk willfully ignores the fact that the biggest culprit here is not a “Clinton retread,” but the Queen Bee herself, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She crafted the stimulus package behind closed doors and the President willingly allowed her this control. Perhaps that was his devil’s bargain for her help in kicking the ladder out from under Hillary. Republicans were not the only ones to be shut out of the crafting of the Stimulus package. Many Democrats were as well. Van Dyk continues:

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans — not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries — independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

He then offers up a prescription for a fix:

- Cut back both your proposals and expectations. You made promises about jobs that would be “created and saved” by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

It’s time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all — badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

- Talk less and pick your spots.

Applause and adulation are gratifying. But the more you talk, the less weight your words will hold. Let voters see you at your desk, conferring with serious people about serious matters. When you do choose to talk, people will understand that it’s important and they should listen.

“Let voters see you at your desk!” Doing some “work.” Great ideas!

- Conform your 2009 politics to your 2008 statements. During your campaign, you called for bipartisanship and bridge-building. You promised to reduce the influence of single-issue and single-interest groups in the policy process. Yet, in your public statements, you keep using President Bush as a scapegoat.

You have ceded content of your principal proposals to Democratic congressional leaders who in large part have yielded to special-interest constituencies and excluded Republican leaders from policy formulation. This certainly was the case with the stimulus plan. It has been the case with health and energy legislation, with the notable exception of Sen. Max Baucus’s attempt in the Senate Finance Committee to develop genuinely bipartisan legislation.

He concludes by telling Obama

“You have an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Americans of all persuasions. They want you to succeed. Level with them and trim your proposals to what is practical in the current environment.”

But ironically, it is Mr. Van Dyk’s closing statement with which I most take issue:

You had things right in 2008. Take a timeout. Get back to yourself. Make a fresh start.

He did not have things “right” in 2008 because there is no “self” to ‘get back to’. His campaign was always “words, just words.”

While I graduated college with high honors, I am no genius, yet I figured this out from my living room couch back in January of 2008. I watched this man at a debate and his “performance” told me everything I needed to know. I then looked at his voting record and the corporate interests with whom he surrounds himself, his addiction to pretty sound bytes and an over reliance on canned speeches rather than a resume that indicated he had worked even on a smaller level to achieve his stated goals. His current proposals are loaded with top heavy payback for special interests that arguably got him elected in the first place. Wall Street has gotten bailed out. Not Main Street. He lives in support of an oligarchy, like his immediate predecessor. If these are true Democratic principles, its the first I’ve heard of it.

The obscene amount of money spent on his inauguration, expensive “dates” and pizza parties and his hiring not less than 30 “czars” all of whom require staff and total salaries in the millions are more accurate indicators of the man than any of his campaign rhetoric.

Like Obama’s other supporters, perhaps Mr. Van Dyk has yet to understand that speeches will never equal governing ability. He too, blamed the Clintons for being “polarizing” as Bush was, but how true is his claim? Clinton passed true bi-partisan legislation. He had to, as he was working with a Republican Congress for 6 of his 8 years and did very well in that regard. But in his case, he also had deep knowledge of the economy and a willingness to reach across the aisle and conform to the existing reality. He certainly left the country in better shape than he found it.

President Obama, by contrast is the “salesman in chief.” That is what the DNC wanted. How is he supposed to pull us back to “reality” with his proposals when he clearly did not have these reasoned intentions in the first place, or a true understanding of how to get us there?

Apparently, Mr. Van Dyk has yet to travel the last mile in his awakening.

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Palin points that “American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy”…

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

As with everything the Obama Administration is doing, cap and trade also employs the ram-rod technique of shoving legislation down the gullet before anyone has had a chance to give it a second thought. Palin then makes a point I’m sure Obama would rather she gloss over:

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”

Governor Palin urges us to move in a new direction and states we can achieve energy independence if we:

…responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

Whether one agrees with her or not, one thing Governor Palin can speak to with authority is energy, given her service at the Oil & Gas Commission:

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can’t afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama’s energy cap-and-tax plan.

Loved the “Yes, we can” reference. What is your reaction to her position? I do not pretend to know that right answer here, but certainly she raises issues worth discussing.

Everyone else out there is having quite a big reaction. In a few hours, her op-ed in WaPo has attracted over 3,000 comments. All over the blogosphere and on news sites, people are reacting and as usual, Governor Palin is a lightning rod for both love and hate. HuffPo, typically, cannot kill the message, because she does have a point, so they shoot the messenger, claiming she is “too stupid” to have possibly written this piece. I thought the piece was pretty coherent myself, and yeah, I’m sure she wrote it. By the way, did I mention that I despise elitists. You can her article it in its entirety here.

Further, since the surprise announcement of her resignation on July 3rd, Palin has raised over $200,000 for her PAC, in addition to over $700,000 raised in the five months since its formation. CBS just put out a poll saying 65% of those asked think Palin would not make a good president and most pundits left and right are harping about the fact that her political career is effectively over. Wishful thinking, perhaps. I have no idea what Palin’s actions will be or what her political career will look like going forward, but one thing is assured — as long as these ridiculous attacks continue, her following will grow and she will get plenty of free press that she may use to her advantage.

As for the “chattering class,” as Palin calls them, I can only say, gee fellas, that’s an awful lot of copy to devote to someone with nothing to say, no platform to say it, no following and no hope of making a dent. Evah.

Somebody seems awfully scared of this lady.

Just sayin’.

Colin Powell, one of President Obama’s most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern Friday that the president’s ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much.

“I’m concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them,”

Um, now he’s concerned?

During the campaign, President Obama made a plethora of pie in the sky promises. While he has certainly abandoned the left in cuddling up to President Bush’s lack of transparency, signing statements and the like, he has certainly trumped the Bush Administration in terms of spending ridiculous amounts of money, particularly bailing out Wall Street before Main Street. While Mr. Powell noted that

‘health care reform and many of Mr. Obama’s other initiatives are “important” to Americans…’ “one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all.” …”And we can’t pay for it all…”

Mr. Powell’s comments represent the growing concern that began with hard-line fiscal conservatives but is now spreading to moderates about the rate of government spending and debt under President Obama, and the long-term impact on the country’s fiscal sustainability and national security.

The national debt stands currently at $11.5 trillion and the deficit for the current fiscal year is projected to be close to $2 trillion.

Mr. Powell expressed alarm at “budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars” and “a huge, huge national debt that, if we don’t pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great-grandchildren will have to pay for it.”

He’s not alone in expressing alarm. I am very curious as to why he is making these statements now…

“So, I think the president, as he moves forward with his initiatives, has to start really taking a very, very hard look at what the cost of all this is. And, how much additional bureaucracy [will] be needed to make all of this happen?” Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Powell also noted that he does “stay in touch” with the Obama Administration, particularly recently.

“The federal government has become too large and too intrusive in our lives,” Mr. Powell said then. “We can no longer afford solutions to our problems that result in more entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, more bureaucracy to run them, and fewer results to show for it.”

Mr. Powell said that now that he still believes what he said then, but that he would put it in different terms now.

“I don’t like slogans anymore like ‘limited government.’ That’s not the right answer. The right answer is, give me a government that works,” he said. “Keep it as small as possible. Keep the tax burden on the American people as small as possible, but at the same time, have government that is solving the problems of the people.”

Gee, is Mr. Powell planning his own campaign sometime in the future? Sounds like some sound advice and some pretty good campaign slogans to the bargain. It’s too bad he didn’t give President Obama that advice back when he was a candidate last fall.

How odd the Mr. Powell chose to endorse the gentleman anyway without first stopping for a moment to listen to all Obama’s campaign promises and looking carefully at the price tag. As American Girl in Italy noted in her excellent article about President Obama’s reversals on health care, he is now looking at adopting some of the very proposals he vilified Senator McCain for suggesting last year. Guess he’s finally been looking at the price tag, too – and the sticker shock is mighty big indeed.

With all due respect to General Powell, I really find it irritating that he is continually reversing himself in order to rescue his reputation. Perhaps he felt his good name and many honorable years of service were somewhat tarnished by making the case to go to war with Iraq. Who knows if his decision to endorse Mr. Obama was part of a mea culpa in that regard. Now that VP Biden acknowledged that the stimulus is sort of a bust and that their team underestimated our economy’s problems, Colin Powell is distancing himself from the President with these statements?

Gosh, I sure wish he would make up his mind.

[Scheiner] worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. “I’m not sure [Obama] really understands what we face in primary care.”

…Looking at Obama’s team of health advisors, Scheiner doesn’t see anyone who’s actually in the trenches. “I have a suspicion they pick people from the top echelon of medicine, people who write about it but haven’t been struggling in it,” he says.

Scheiner is critical of Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary–Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who used to work as the chief lobbyist for her state’s trial lawyers association.

Odd that President Obama would choose to throw Howard Dean under the bus and not give him the HHS appointment. It also seems SoS Clinton is not being consulted here. With her earlier efforts and deep dedication to this issue and her latest proposals, I’m sure she has much insight to offer.

“He doesn’t see all the pain, it’s so tragic out here,” [Scheiner] says. “Obama’s wonderful, but on this one I’m not sure if he’s getting the right input.”

But this is typically the issue. “Experts” are assigned to fix the problem without a clear understanding of what it is. Scheiner recommends

…”Medicare for all,” a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. “A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won’t starve.”

Scheiner thinks that Obama’s “public plan” reform doesn’t go far enough. He supports the idea of that option for people who don’t like or can’t afford their HMO. But he worries that it will be watered down or not happen at all. “It’s nonsense that the private insurance companies need to be protected,” he says. “Why? Because they’ve done such a good job?”

He thinks that Americans have been scared into believing that they will lose the coverage they already have if a public plan is created. And he worries that nobody cares about the 50 million uninsured. “I have people who have lost their jobs and come to me and I give them drug samples,” he says.

Scheiner says he thinks that Obama probably sees the virtues of a single-payer system but has decided it would be politically impossible to create one.

Well, that’s where the dig your heels in and fight part comes in. As much as I want health care reform, once again I get the sense that we are rushing into something without having thought through the options properly. The President as already worried about re-election and wants to get his “agenda” passed as quickly as possible, but during this frightening economic time, it would seem that building a better floor under us would build confidence not only in our economy but in the President’s leadership abilities and might make his “impossible fight” a little more possible down the road.

Reid Cherlin, an assistant White House press secretary who covers health issues, wrote in an e-mailed statement, “The President has been clear that while a single-payer system may work in some countries, it makes the most sense for us to build on what works in the system we have and to fix what’s broken.

“He would certainly agree that there’s too much waste in the system–where families, businesses and governments pay too much for too little,” he added, “and that’s why he’s committed not just to expanding coverage but to reforming the health system to provide high-quality care at a lower cost to more Americans.”

“I once briefly talked to him about malpractice, and he took the lawyers’ position,” [Scheiner] says.

Obama reiterated his opposition to caps on medical malpractice before the AMA this week.

Scheiner, like most others in his profession, thinks that it should be harder to sue doctors and that awards should be capped. He says that he and other doctors must order too many tests and imaging studies just to avoid being sued.

The article further states that Scheiner, a graduate of Princeton who got his start at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, had “watched his income decline over the years to what he calculated to be $22 an hour ($2,100 every two weeks after withholding for taxes, health insurance and malpractice insurance.)”

Scheiner thinks that any health reform should involve paying primary-care doctors better so they don’t have to rush through appointments to make ends meet. He says that the medical students he encounters are no longer even taught how to do a patient history and physical exam. Patients get imaging studies and lab work instead of actual work-ups. “It’s like in Star Trek where Bones had the thing he would wave up and down. They don’t even talk to patients,” he says.

In an interview with Reuters today, Senator John McCain commented:

Efforts to overhaul America’s costly healthcare system need to begin anew after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said a draft bill would cost $1 trillion and insure only 16 million of the 46 million uninsured people, McCain said.

“They just took a body blow,” he said of Obama’s Democrats. “Whether they recover from it or not, we will probably know in the next few days.”

McCain had some stark advice to Democrats writing the legislation: “I think that they should start over.”

Further a PEW research study published on June 18th had this to say:

As health care reform legislation moves forward in Washington, the political environment is somewhat different than the last time a major overhaul of the health care system was attempted sixteen years ago. In early 1993 the sense of a health care crisis was far more widespread than it is today – a 55% majority in 1993 said they felt the health care system needed to be “completely rebuilt” compared with 41% today. Health care costs were also a broader problem in 1993 – 63% of Americans said paying for the cost of a major illness was a “major problem” for them, compared with 48% currently.

The issue of limiting overall health care spending is also more prominent in 2009 than it was in 1993. Somewhat fewer today say the country spends “too little” on health care, and a larger share believe that limiting the overall growth in health care costs is a higher priority than expanding coverage. But overall, public support for guaranteed access to medical care for all Americans remains widespread.

I find this rather odd, with health care costs spiraling out of control and so many Americans without coverage. Here is an overview of the study’s findings: I encourage you to read the entire article here.

On health care spending:
Relatively few Americans believe the country as a whole is spending the right amount on health care at this point, but there is no consensus on what the problem is. Just as many Americans say we are spending too much on health care (38%) as too little (40%).

Most Back Overhaul; Fewer Than in 1993 See Crisis
Most Americans believe that the nation’s health care system is in need of substantial changes. Four-in-ten (41%) say the health care system needs to be completely rebuilt, while 30% think it needs fundamental changes. About one-in-four (24%) believe that the health care system works pretty well and needs only minor changes.

Health Reform Priorities
Most Americans favor ensuring health coverage to all Americans, and most also say it is very important to limit the overall annual increase in health care costs. Neither of these objectives, however, receives as overwhelming support as they did in early 1993. When Americans are asked to prioritize between these two goals, most continue to say that expanding health insurance to all is the more important goal. But the share who rate costs as the more important concern is nearly double what it was in 1993.

The public’s overall support for expanding health insurance to cover all Americans remains widespread, though more sharply partisan than in 1993.

And Fewer See Cost of Care as Major Problem than was thecase in 1993.

Any health care reform is going to be a huge fight. Both sides are already digging in their heels and I sincerely hope anyone with a reasonable proposal to bring to the table will be heard. It would be disastrous for this administration to push through health care reform in much the same way they did the Stimulus package earlier this year.

I appreciate Dr Scheiner’s comments as I understand how painful it is when those who are actually going to be on the receiving end of the government’s overhaul are not getting enough consultation on the matter. He’s offering a physician’s point of view. I’d certainly like to hear from others “on the ground.”

Where do you fall in the debate on this one? Your insights would be greatly appreciated.

The irony of the Prez spending his day at a Town Hall Meeting in Missouri (after a quick trip on Air Force One, of course) while the CDC has just confirmed the first death in the US of Swine Flu cannot be overlooked. Why wouldn’t his slipping poll ratings be the first thing on his mind? Why should the Prez be concerned that the first death is not even an American, but a Mexican that “travelled” here to visit family? His response to this is starting to resemble that of Paris Hilton. It’s not as if we should be surprised – he is a celebrity, after all. Besides, with the newly sworn in Kathleen Sebelius on watch, we can be assured no child will be born with H1N1.

Even the most committed Obamabot must admit that these first 100 days have been anything but the glorious ascension of The One that was predicted just six months ago. His European Victory tour was hardly that. We still have combat troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan is on shakier ground every day. Our Secretary of State has been sent to China to grovel for money and the Middle East to grovel for time and tolerance. Our Attorney General is jet setting around the globe begging for sanctuary for the terrorists the admin has promised to release next year – well, those we don’t want to keep ourselves. And while the stock market bounces up and down regularly, GDP numbers this AM are abysmal – something that makes our $12 trillion deficit look even more daunting. But never fear, the admin says that after the $400 “tax credit” and $250 “retirement benefit” hits home, we’ll bounce back. It should only be another six months or so before we know whether the stimulus worked or whether we need to do more.

I know the media is slobbering all over the airwaves declaring Obama’s First 100 Days some sort of miraculous transformation. And it is true that there have been some changes. I just can’t help wondering if they understood Obama meant changing the Constitution, drastically increasing powers of government, and taxing away freedom and liberty (and salaries) when he said he would “change” things. This is not what I was led to believe. I was expecting transparency, professionalism and competence, all the traits the Bush admin was supposedly lacking.

I wish I could say I was disappointed but I never believed the hype. I just don’t believe that anyone charged with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the safety, security and prosperity of the free world and beyond should be given a free pass because he’s more “hip” than the last guy, based on the pop culture standards of 22 year olds, of course. But I’ll sit through the Town Meeting – somehow – and listen to yet another campaign speech full of dire warnings and mile high promises of future action, knowing full well nothing has been delivered yet.

The A.P.’s Spin Meter notes in “SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way,” that the “thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.”

Hot Air’s Allahpundit sets his tongue firmly in his cheek …

And he points out, in “Gibbs: Obama’s tiny, tiny budget cut is big money where I’m from“:

Note Tapper’s follow-up about how Gibbs, just weeks ago, found the idea of $8 billion in earmarks — 80 times the size of this budget cut — “minuscule” in the context of the appropriations bill. Oh, and also the footage of Obama urging his cabinet to cut another $100 million from each of their agencies. Using Greg Mankiw’s analogy, that amounts to … what? A week’s worth of Starbucks?

Tapper has the amusing transcript:

I interjected in an exchange between White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and another reporter today, so I’ve included their exchange (with my interruption) as well as my own.

JENNIFER LOVEN, AP:  The $100 million target figure that the president talked about today with the Cabinet, can you explain why so small?  I know he talked about — you know, you add up 100 million and 100 million, and eventually, you get somewhere, but it would take an awfully long time to add up hundred million (inaudible) in the deficit.  Why not target a bigger number?

GIBBS:  (Smiling) Well, I think only in Washington, D.C. is a hundred million dollars…

LOVEN:  The deficit’s very large.  It’s not a joke.

GIBBS:  No, I’m…

LOVEN:  The deficit’s giant.  $100 million really is only a step.

GIBBS:  But no joke.

LOVEN:  You sound like you’re joking about it, but it’s not funny.

GIBBS:  I’m not making jokes about it.  I’m being completely sincere that only in Washington, D.C. is $100 million not a lot of money.  It is where I’m from.  It is where I grew up.  And I think it is for hundreds of millions of Americans.

LOVEN:  The point is it’s not a very big portion of the deficit.

TAPPER:  You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being minuscule — $8 billion in earmarks. We were talking about that and you said that that…

GIBBS:  Well, in terms of — in…(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER:  …$100 million is a lot but $8 billion is small?

GIBBS:  Well, what I’m saying is I think it all adds up just as the president said, just as Jennifer was good enough to do in her question. If you think we’re going to get rid of $1.3 trillion deficit by eliminating one thing, I’d be — and the administration would be innumerably happy for you to let us know what that is.

LOVEN:  Why not try to get a bigger number so you can get a…

GIBBS:  Well, let me explain sort of what has happened.  Let’s walk through this so that everybody understands this. The president has laid out cuts, large and small, in both the administrative costs and in the program costs of the federal budget. Some of the examples that we were — we provided you all will add up. For instance, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs either cancels or delays 26 conferences that can be better or more effectively and more cost effectively done by video conferencing that saves almost $18 million.

A lot of these administrative things will add up.  This is a short-term goal to come back with over the course of the next few weeks to identify further administrative savings that secretaries haven’t already both identified and eliminated.

The president has also proposed savings on a much larger scale. The president has proposed ending the bank middle man for college loans, saving $94 billion over a ten-year period of time.  The president has attacked, in his budget, the subsidies that we provide insurance companies to provide the same Medicare coverage — private insurance companies the same type of Medicare coverage that’s already being offered at a savings of over $200 billion.

Jennifer, the reason that the president can stand up with the backing of the Congressional  Budget Office and talk about cutting the deficit in half over the course of four year’s time is because there are cuts that are large, student loans and Medicare Advantage, as well as small. This is the part of the president’s promise and proposal to go line by line through the federal budget deficit.  Will we enumerate programs that don’t work that we’re going to eliminate in the future? Yes.  Some of those cuts will be large.  Some of those cuts will be small.

But we’re not going to put ourselves back on a path toward fiscal sustainability if we don’t look at each and every item in this federal budget and make some of the cuts that are necessary to get us on that path.

– From “Today’s Qs for O’s WH – 4/20/2009 – Political Punc,” ABC News, April 20, 2009

As they say, you can fool some of the people … but …

Memeorandum.com has an excellent list of more bemused reactions to Obama’s silly exercise which, seriously, is an insult to the American people’s ability to detect bull-oney from substantive budget vigilance.

Americans United is going after Democrats who are skeptical of Mr. Obama’s plans to double the national debt in five years and nearly triple it in 10. The White House is taking aim at lawmakers in 12 states, including Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. MoveOn.Org is running ads aimed at 10 moderate Senate and House Democrats. And robocalls are urging voters in key districts to pressure their congressman to get in line.

I refer to Americans United, Karl Rove and MoveOn as idiots, as all of them are hopelessly misinformed.

Rove believes the coordinated effort of the White House to pressure moderate Democrats through various advocacy groups will backfire. He is partially correct, but his reasoning is flawed. I quote Rove:

Every White House is faced with finding ways to nudge Congress without antagonizing it. But this overt campaign could infuriate members who won’t appreciate being targeted by a president of their own party. They could react by becoming recalcitrant. Should that happen, team Obama will have to recalculate its efforts, especially as the public sours on big spending plans.

Members of Congress will not simply become “recalcitrant” as a result of their personal disdain for Obama’s tactics; they will become recalcitrant as a result of all the Republican support they will receive from their constituents. Hence why I believe MoveOn and Americans United are idiots: attempting to incite certain Democrats to pressure certain Democratic moderates, their efforts will simply alert Republicans who probably never supported these Democrats that their Senator or House Representative is indeed a moderate. And not only will this engender Republican support for the moderate Democrats in question; it will also compel the Republicans and Democrats who voted against Obama in certain states to oppose Obama’s budget in a more active and vigorous manner. Moderate Democrats in Congress will then have electoral justifications to oppose Obama, and Republicans, Independents and Democrats who oppose Obama will have a new political signifier around which they can mobilize.

Consider Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln, two Senate Democrats who represent southern states. Mary Landrieu beat her Republican opponent John N. Kennedy by 6 points last cycle, warding off a Republican surge that delivered a 59-40 victory to John McCain. The reaction against Obama in Louisiana almost derailed her reelection efforts, but she managed to win by citing her centrism and independence. Not only has that centrism and independence been confirmed by the ads Democratic organizations are launching against her; the Republicans who opposed her will now support her out of sympathy. As a result, she will receive supportive telephone calls from Louisiana Republicans who will urge her to oppose Obama’s budget. Moreover, her approval ratings will increase, complicating liberal advocacy groups’ efforts to render her unelectable. And yes, many Democratic groups would be satisfied if Mary Landrieu lost a reelection. Some Democrats, in fact, believe she deserves no respect. But to the chagrin of these Democratic activists, their botched efforts to make her political life difficult will only garner her more support from the Republicans who would otherwise oppose her.

Blanche Lincoln will run for reelection in 2010, and the results of the 2008 Presidential election in Arkansas are certainly not in her favor. In fact, McCain clobbered Barack Obama by a margin of 20 points in Arkansas, a margin that would make any Democratic incumbent nervous. Republicans are targeting her for her potential support of Card Check, while some Democrats derisively characterize her as the Democrat of Wal-Mart. This is certainly a stressful position for a Democrat who hopes to cobble together the coalition required to win in 2010 in a state that rejects the current Democratic President to whom she will be tied. But now that liberal advocacy groups are airing advertisements and complaining about Lincoln on the telephone lines of Arkansans, Republicans will rally behind her, and they may even cast votes for her in 2010. Americans United and MoveOn think they are blackmailing Lincoln with the threat of political death, but they are in fact increasing her popularity in her state, thereby handing her justification to oppose Obama’s budget and agenda. Some actions have inadvertent consequences.

Rove is incorrect when he claims moderate Democrats will react personally to Obama’s efforts to manufacture grassroots opposition to their centrism, and MoveOn and Americans United are incorrect when they believe their Washington, DC, advocacy will yield results in Louisiana and Arkansas. All of them are idiots, as all of them are misinformed, and all their efforts are misguided. But at least Democrats who struggle to win south of the Mason-Dixon line will remain in office as a result of the idiocy of some groups’ version of advocacy. For similar to Bill and Hillary Clinton, these Democrats understand the predicaments and the paradoxes that sustain the Democratic Party in the South. Republicans and the operatives surrounding Obama, on the other hand, do not. Obama, after all, admires Reagan, and Reagan, to be sure, is anything but an expert on Democratic politics.

You silly fools who praised the speech and writings of Rep. Paul Ryan! Honestly! What’s WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE??? Here’s what TPM’s Josh Marshall has to say about Rep. Ryan and the idiots (that’d be you too) who applauded the fiscally cautious budget:

I realize that it doesn’t afford me a lot of opportunities for personal or spiritual growth. But I’m nonetheless comforted by the fact that the Republicans running things in the House GOP caucus are still as clinically insane as in years past.

There are plenty of others including the Washington Monthly’s sage Steve Benen,

Besides, what is WRONG with a debt of a few trillion dollars? Huh? Well, about nine years ago, the left-swinging writers for the drama, The West Wing, thought the cost required for equitable slave reparations was so huge that we’d have to sell “Texas and the U.S. Navy”!

In this scene, “Josh (Bradley Whitford) is assigned to talk with the administration’s controversial nominee (Carl Lumbly) for assistant attorney general for civil rights who advocates that African-Americans receive financial reparations for slavery.”

The nominee tells Josh how much slave reparations will cost, which is … well, you watch the video … and you’ll KEEL OVER at the total amount:

But that was nine years ago. Today, a trillion here, a trillion there … come on, people. Times change! Those West Wing writers must be MORTIFIED that they wrote that line that Josh utters.

Oh, you want to know what those other leftie writers said about you and yours today? Steve Benen titled his post, “A BUDGET PERFECT FOR APRIL FOOLS’ DAY….” Ouchie. And what an ORIGINAL LINE! WOW! What a writer Benen is!

Rumor has it that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, is one of the House GOP Caucus’ sharper members. He has a reputation for knowing what he’s talking about, and doing his homework. So, when I saw that he’d written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about the GOP’s budget alternative, I was anxious to see what he’d come up with.

To be sure, the roll-out for the alternative budget has been a rather humiliating fiasco, as evidenced by the Republican decision to unveil a budget with no numbers in it. And we won’t really be able to scrutinize the proposal until the caucus decides to release some, you know, data.

[...]

the “borrow-and-spend philosophy” did not create the crisis, so Ryan’s prescription is automatically based on a misdiagnosis. But even if we put that aside, the alternative budget reflects a political party that embraced a breathtakingly radical worldview.

[...]

It’s almost as if Ryan and his Republican colleagues are trying to destroy the economy. As Pat Garofalo recently explained, “The economic stimulus package’s main purpose is to close the GDP gap and jumpstart the economy by spurring spending by households, government and the private sector. A spending freeze would act as an ‘anti-stimulus,’ cutting spending precisely when it’s too low and the economy is moving too slowly.”

[...]

And if Paul Ryan is what passes today as a sane partisan, the Republican Party has a long way to go before it can sit at the big kids’ table.

See? With you people acting like a trillion here, a trillion there is a big deal, we’re never gonna get out of this recession.

What, you say? Recessions are cyclical and go away on their own? But, but … we have an opportunity here! Carpe diem, people! Spend, spend, spend! China loves us, and wants to give us lots of money. (I wonder why they love doing that so much. Huh.)

Let me pile on some more Josh Marshall, in case you need it:

We see today from their House GOP ‘budget’ that their new-found allegiance to fiscal discipline has them lowering the top marginal tax rate to 25% (it’s currently 35%, with the Bush tax cuts), which for anyone who knows anything about the federal budget would pretty much inevitably lead to gargantuan federal deficits and the Treasury exploding probably some time early in the next decade. They manage to still have the deficits coming down by bunch of nonsense hokum about oil rigs and other foolery.

Treasury is going to explode?!?!?! Wow.

This part I just don’t understand. Do you?

As you can see, predicting ideological stances over as yet unborn Democratic members of Congress, the GOP scoring appears to have us on track for the government owning about 90% of the economy in the early-mid-22nd century, which if I remember is about the time period of the invention of the warp drive. So I don’t know if they’ve figured that in too.

Then Marshall added an update, which I also don’t understand because, well, I am not a Trekkie. So? What’s it to ya?!?!?!?

(ed.note: Alas, I’m not the Star Trek aficionado I once was or flattered myself to be, I guess. Turns out warp drive is invented in 2063, almost two decades before the current House GOP budget projections.)

I think I’m supposed to laugh.

But mostly at you.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Ha!!!

Axelrod puppet Barack Obama studies Axelrod puppet Deval Patrick as the latter offers empty slogans and gestures

David Axelrod manufactures commodities, not politicians: they don suits; they read teleprompters; they promise something new and unprecedented; but these newfangled objects cannot govern. No, I am not referring to Barack Obama, although this news does not bode well for Axelrod’s latest product; I am discussing Deval Patrick, who according to a 7News Boston poll has lost all credibility with the voters of Massachusetts.

Readers of No Quarter recall how Obama and Patrick read from the same script penned by David Axelrod.

I guess the voters of Massachusetts are finally experiencing a moment of disenchantment. Perhaps they now realize that all Axelrod’s commodities cum politicians can offer are “just words.” I quote the Boston Herald:

The survey of 400 registered voters – Democrats, Republicans and unenrolled alike – shows angry Bay Staters quickly losing faith in the state government, with Patrick taking the biggest hit.

Only 34 percent of those surveyed in the poll conducted for 7News by Suffolk University say the governor deserves re-election, while a stunning 47 percent say it is “time to elect someone else.”

Voters gave Patrick a 43 percent unfavorable rating and a 44 percent favorable rating. The rest are undecided….

Asked about Patrick’s job performance, 49 percent disapproved, 40 percent approved and 11 percent were undecided….

Patrick’s dismal poll numbers come after battering in the press over his naming of a senator pal to a costly plum post, raises for sheriffs, addition of two pricey staffers to the Pike payroll, embarrassing comments by his transportation secretary and his own dismissal of the controversies as “trivial.”

Aloof and oblivious to the cronyism of his administration, the incompetence of his Cabinet members and the apparent lack of ethics and fiscal responsibility he and his operatives are exhibiting, Deval Patrick is the ominous reflection of his political semblable Barack Obama.

No wonder why the NRSC has created the following advertisement:

The NRSC now knows what we have always known: Obama is just another Patrick. Indeed, he is just an updated version of a model everyone now knows is failed. He is, in other words, just so many ethereal words.

I am sure Obama will dismiss all the contradictions highlighted in the NRSC advertisement as so much trivia. He will probably claim that we cannot hold him accountable for what he promised during the campaign. After all, all he had uttered before the desperate crowds were “just words.” And I am sure he will become as aloof and oblivious as Patrick has as more and more voters lose confidence in his ability to lead as controversy compounds controversy. Commodities are alluring during a campaign, but they prove to be defunct the moment one tests their ability to govern. All that once appeared to be solid evaporates into so much hot air, I guess. The object that seemed so tangible in its promise provided nothing more than an impalpable mirage.

Obama is quickly becoming a Patrick, who from all indications is dead on arrival in 2010. Certainly if Obama continues on the path he has forged thus far, he too will be a flash in the pan, a wonder who lasted one term. This should be of no surprise, for he and Patrick are cut from the same cloth, hewn from the same block of wood, carved by the same Axelrod. And besides, his/tory has this tendency to repeat itself, rendering the past, the present and the future all into one grand, temporally suspended farce. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, would have made her/story. For she was not assembled in Axelrod’s toxic factory.

BELOW, Judd Gregg and clips from CNN’s “Senate Dems propose cutting Obama budget by billions“:

From CNN’s “Senate Dems propose cutting Obama budget by billions“:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Hours before President Obama was to hold a prime time news conference — in part to boost his $3.6 trillion budget plan — a key Democratic senator Tuesday unveiled a scaled-down budget proposal.

Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said the Senate Budget Committee, which he chairs, will vote on his version Wednesday.

“We’ve made hundreds of billions of dollars of changes to make this work to get down to the deficit goal and at the same time maintain the president’s priorities — education and energy and health care,” Conrad said as he left a closed meeting in the Capitol, where he briefed Senate Democratic colleagues on his plan.

Conrad and other centrist Democratic senators — whose support is critical to passing the legislation — have raised concerns about the long-term impact of the president’s spending plan on the deficit.

HOWEVER, Republicans are blasting Conrad’s compromise plan as well as Obama’s astonishing @ $4 trillion budget:

Republicans who blasted the Obama budget proposal for spending, taxing and borrowing too much also criticized Conrad’s proposal because some of the items Conrad stripped from the spending blueprint might have to be funded anyway.

For example, Conrad’s budget strikes Obama’s proposal to set aside $250 billion in case more money is needed for the financial sector rescue, an aide said.

Conrad’s budget also curtails Obama’s fix of the costly alternative minimum tax and doesn’t account for increased payments for doctors who care for Medicare recipients, said Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.

“You can get these presidential numbers down by using a lot of gimmicks that the president didn’t use. That would be a mistake. Let’s be honest with the Americans,” Gregg said Tuesday.

“It’s certainly not a gimmick,” Conrad responded. “We faced up to changes.”

Republicans were also critical of Conrad’s plan to calculate the budget deficit over five years instead of 10, meaning a common measure of government spending, the 10-year cost, wouldn’t officially be part of the price. Gregg accused Conrad of trying to hide the true cost of the plan. …

Obama campaign mum on NAFTA contact with Canada. Despite repeated requests, Barack Obama’s campaign is still neither verifying nor denying a CTV report that a senior member of the team made contact with the Canadian government — via the Chicago consulate general — regarding comments Obama made about NAFTA.

- Snip -

On Wednesday, CTV reported that a senior member of Obama’s campaign called the Canadian government within the last month — saying that when Senator Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t worry. The operative said it was just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously.

The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.

However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser — Austan Goolsbee — and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

Earlier Thursday, the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations have taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government on the NAFTA issue. On Thursday night, CTV spoke with Goolsbee, but he refused to say whether he had such a conversation with the Canadian government office in Chicago. He also said he has been told to direct any questions to the campaign headquarters.

During a candidates’ debate Tuesday, both Democratic party leadership contenders — Obama and Hillary Clinton — suggested they would opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if core labour and environmental standards weren’t renegotiated.

- Snip -

On Thursday, the Canadian embassy in Washington issued a complete denial.

“At no time has any member of a presidential campaign called the Canadian ambassador or any official at the embassy to discuss NAFTA,” it said in a statement.

But on Wednesday, one of the primary sources of the story, a high-ranking member of the Canadian embassy, gave CTV more details of the call. He even provided a timeline. He has since suggested it was perhaps a miscommunication.

The denial from the embassy was followed by a denial from Senator Obama.

“The Canadian government put out a statement saying that this was just not true, so I don’t know who the sources were,” said Obama.

Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government — who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp — have reconfirmed their position.

- Snip -

However, Harper had a warning to anyone contemplating renegotiation of the trade deal.

“If a future president actually did want to open up NAFTA, which I highly doubt, then Canada would obviously have some things we would want to discuss,” Harper said.

My, my – was that really only a year ago? Oh, yes – Obama was saying one thing to people in the Midwest, and apparently, saying something quite the opposite on the down low in Canada.

Lo and behold, it seems the Canadian report was right, at least according to this NY Times article regarding Obama’s recent trip, Nafta Looming Over Obama’s Canada Trip :

As a candidate, Barack Obama courted votes in the Rust Belt by suggesting he might renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact he criticized as not “good for America.”

Now Mr. Obama is about to make his first foreign trip as president to Canada, the United States’ largest trading partner — and he is sounding a strikingly different message.

With Canadians up in arms over “Buy America” provisions in President Obama’s economic recovery package, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper warning the United States not to back away from its international treaty obligations, Mr. Obama, who will make a day trip to Ottawa on Thursday, is no longer emphasizing the idea of reopening Nafta.

Instead, he and his senior advisers are talking up the booming trade relationship between Canada and the United States — the largest trade partnership in the world, the White House says — and limiting their Nafta message to revamping side agreements on environmental and labor protections.

Well, golly gee. Yet another campaign promise proven to be a lie. Raise your hand if you are surprised! Yeah, I thought not.

The article continues:

In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday, the president said there were “a lot of sensitivities right now” about renegotiating trade pacts “because of the huge decline in world trade.” As he tries to right the struggling American economy, Mr. Obama pledged to do so in a way that would enhance, rather than suppress, trade between the two nations.

“It’s not in anybody’s interest to see that trade diminish,” he said.

Trade is an issue that has long bedeviled Democrats, and this is especially so for Mr. Obama. Trade has split the party along regional and economic lines, pitting those who see a globalized economy as inevitable and productive against those in economically depressed areas of the nation, like Ohio and Michigan, who see the price of free trade, in lost jobs and declining wages, as simply too high for the American worker to bear.

The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, fought hard to pass Nafta (sic), and made many in his party uncomfortable — including, eventually, his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who like Mr. Obama talked of reopening the pact when she was running for president.

Interesting.

Ah, yes, Obama continues to renege on campaign promises made, now that he’s actually in the White House. His latest is yet another stand with a Bush Doctrine, Siding with Bush, Obama says Afghan detainees have no U.S. rights. Oh, what a surprise!!! Just like the Extraordinary Rendition and State Secrets part Obama kept – I have been saying this for MONTHS and months – Obama is Bush III. This is why he voted for FISA, too. He wanted all the same “tools” available to him that Bush managed to secure. Here’s the nitty-gritty:

The 600-plus detainees at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their imprisonment, the Justice Department said today in a two-sentence court filing.

Last summer the Supreme Court gave al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detention. But the Justice Department argues that Bagram is different: it’s in a war zone and the prisoners are the result of continuing military action.

“They’ve now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union, who has represented several detainees.

“The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we’d hoped,” said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram. “We all expected better.”

The decision also disappointed Amnesty International, which issued a report calling for judicial review of the detentions.

Uh, yes. Again, groups are “disappointed” – the ACLU, Amnesty International, HRC, and on, and on. All “disappointed” that Obama is not doing what he said he would do.

They SHOULD be disappointed in themselves for believing his lies, for pretending that his “hope and change” message was a substitute for certifiable experience and an actual RECORD on which to base his claims. They’re “disappointed.” Yeah. Join the club. I’m “disappointed” that all of these groups bought this crap in the first place, and stuck us with this guy.

Sigh. Once again, though, there is one bright light, one adult in the room who DOES instill some faith. Oh, and she actually HAS a record on which to base her actions. Oh, yes, Sec. Clinton. She is winding up her first trip abroad as the Secretary of State, and has been doing a fine job of it. Here she is arriving in China:

And while in China, Secretary Clinton has been focusing on a number of issues, particularly Climate Change. Hopefully, this will be an issue on which our two countries can work together successfully (Sec. Clinton did mention Tibet, but for now, the Obama Administration is keeping a low profile on the issue of human rights).

Hmmm – I wonder what will be next on Obama’s list of promises to break? Oh, that could be a whole new party game, come to think of it! We already have the drinking game Jon Stewart proposed (taking a drink whenever Obama pauses while talking), so why not have a “Which Promise Is Going Down The Toilet Next?” game? Hey, it’s one the whole family can play together! What a uniter!! Which one do you think is next?

The American populace knows that the primary architects in the formulation of the Stimulus Plan working its way through Congress are Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. This contingent, along with President Obama, have not been bashful in stating they view the November election results as effectively a mandate to change policies emanating from Washington.

Against that backdrop, the initially proposed Stimulus Plan was so loaded with pork that the Republicans and the American population at large slammed it as more a promotion of the

Martin Feldstein

I will give President Obama credit for formulating a Panel to Advise Obama on Economy.

This panel will be known as the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The Board will be headed by former Fed chair Paul Volcker. He will be joined by Jeff Immelt of GE, James Owens of Caterpillar, William Donaldson, former SEC chair, Roger Ferguson Jr. of TIAA-CREF, Richard Trumka of AFL-CIO, Anna Burger of SEIU, and Martin Feldstein, renowned Harvard economist. The group will be guided by Austan Goolsbee, an economic adviser to the White House.

Do you think President Obama and his economic team would listen to Mr. Feldstein or is that a “mere courtesy” having him on the board? Let’s review what Mr. Feldstein said about the Stimulus Plan just last week.

Regarding the proposed Stimulus Plan, Martin Feldstein offered that it is far better to go back to work and do it right versus merely doing it fast:

An $800 Billion Mistake

By Martin Feldstein
The Washington Post
Thursday, January 29, 2009

As a conservative economist, I might be expected to oppose a stimulus plan. In fact, on
this page in October, I declared my support for a stimulus. But the fiscal package now
before Congress needs to be thoroughly revised. In its current form, it does too little to
raise national spending and employment. It would be better for the Senate to delay
legislation for a month, or even two, if that’s what it takes to produce a much better bill.
We cannot afford an $800 billion mistake.

Start with the tax side. The plan is to give a tax cut of $500 a year for two years to each
employed person. That’s not a good way to increase consumer spending. Experience
shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used
to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year’s tax rebates led to additional
spending.

The proposed business tax cuts are also likely to do little to increase business investment
and employment. The extended loss “carrybacks” are primarily lump-sum payments to
selected companies. The bonus depreciation plan would do little to raise capital spending
in the current environment of weak demand because the tax benefits in the early years
would be recaptured later.

Instead, the tax changes should focus on providing incentives to households and
businesses to increase current spending. Why not a temporary refundable tax credit to
households that purchase cars or other major consumer durables, analogous to the
investment tax credit for businesses? Or a temporary tax credit for home improvements?
In that way, the same total tax reduction could produce much more spending and
employment.

Postponing the scheduled increase in the tax on dividends and capital gains would raise
share prices, leading to increased consumer spending and, by lowering the cost of capital,
more business investment.

On the spending side, the stimulus package is full of well-intended items that,
unfortunately, are not likely to do much for employment. Computerizing the medical
records of every American over the next five years is desirable, but it is not a cost-
effective way to create jobs. Has anyone gone through the (long) list of proposed
appropriations and asked how many jobs each would create per dollar of increased
national debt?

The largest proposed outlays amount to just writing unrestricted checks to state
governments. Nearly $100 billion would result from increasing the “Medicaid matching
rate,” a technique for reducing states’ Medicaid costs to free up state money for spending
on anything governors and state legislators want. An additional $80 billion would be given
out for “state fiscal relief.” Will these vast sums actually lead to additional spending, or will
they merely finance state transfer payments or relieve state governments of the need for
temporary tax hikes or bond issues?

The plan to finance health insurance premiums for the unemployed would actually
increase unemployment by giving employers an incentive to lay off workers rather than
pay health premiums during a time of weak demand. And this supposedly two-year
program would create a precedent that could be hard to reverse.

A large fraction of the stimulus proposal is devoted to infrastructure projects that will
spend out very slowly, not with the speed needed to help the economy in 2009 and 2010.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that less than one-fifth of the $50 billion of
proposed spending on energy and water would occur by the end of 2010.

If rapid spending on things that need to be done is a criterion of choice, the plan should
include higher defense outlays, including replacing and repairing supplies and equipment,
needed after five years of fighting. The military can increase its level of procurement very
rapidly. Yet the proposed spending plan includes less than $5 billion for defense, only
about one-half of 1 percent of the total package.

Infrastructure spending on domestic military bases can also proceed more rapidly than
infrastructure spending in the civilian economy. And military procurement overwhelmingly
involves American-made products. Since much of this military spending will have to be
done eventually, it makes sense to do it now, when there is substantial excess capacity in
the manufacturing sector. In addition, a temporary increase in military recruiting and
training would reduce unemployment directly, create a more skilled civilian workforce and
expand the military reserves.

All new spending and tax changes should have explicit time limits that prevent ever-
increasing additions to the national debt. Similarly, spending programs should not create
political dynamics that will make them hard to end.

The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big but that it delivers too
little extra employment and income for such a large fiscal deficit. It is worth taking the
time to get it right.

The writer, an economics professor at Harvard University, is president emeritus of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.

Barack, how about you and Martin go for a little walk. Take your time!!

LD