Keep on Engaging- the Fairy Tale is Over

Right now I'm listening to Obama try to scare us into giving him more power, and I'm shaking my head in sad laughter- did I understand correctly that he said that the debates about the role of government in general and the role of government in the Great Depression were settled long ago? Did I black out or did he say that there are no earmarks in this pork bill? Did I blink into bizzaro world or did he say that government is the only option available to create jobs and that capitalism has failed? Poke me in my eye- the failed theories of the last 8 years have horribly failed and so we're going back to the failed theories of communist Russia?

Even though Obama claims we can have a 'respectful debate,' he immediately dismisses entirely with my philosophical ideas and uses his power to try to shut me up- that isn't respectful to me, and so my tone isn't going to be respectful here.

Moving on, it is quite obvious that the fairy tale is over with this guy- midnight struck and this guy has been shown to simply be a dangerous pumpkin. As Charles Krauthammer writes in the Detroit News this weekend:

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." -- President Barack Obama, Feb. 4. Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress' own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama (said he) came to Washington to abolish.

Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Who voted for this moron? Did people really just imbibe the silly juice for a couple of months, and elect this inexperienced left-wing blather because the wool was pulled over their eyes, or am I missing the hope and change here?

Look, to be perfectly honest, I'm going to continue in my bad habits of the past and think logically through things and vote Republican- my philosophy is screw the new age of Washington where they throw you in the gulag for disagreeing with liberal Democrat policies. Obama is talking right now about how it is so awful that he inherited a trillion dollar deficit- he is doubling it in a week! What a hypocrite- who can respect this guy? I can't. I can't. Why do you?