“President Obama may turn out to be a disaster, or he may rise to greatness. At this point, nobody knows what will happen. That is the great thing about democracy and capitalism. When done right, those things give people a fair chance to succeed, and there's nothing deranged about it. “
--Bill O’Reilly at http://townhall.com/columnists/BillOReilly/2009/05/02/obama_derangement?page=2
Of threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain—This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
--Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/246/246-h/246-h.htm
What exactly does President Obama propose that we hope him to succeed in? He threatens that if we don’t do what he says all hell will break loose. But that if we believe in him everything will be just peachy because he is the change we can believe in. They call that kind of talk in Rhetoric 101 as double talk. Why should I want him to succeed in that?
He has been buying up troubled assets: trillions of dollars of it. And he wants to cut cost by making cabinet departments shave 100 million in their respective budgets. That’s seven orders of magnitude. A President who tries to sell that kind of math to the nation must be thinking that the public is stupid. Maybe most of us were educated in the public schools, and the fact that he was elected president was proof positive that most Americans are stupid. But one does not lead the country out of an economic crisis just by counting on stupidity to work in your favor. There is such a thing as reality. To attempt to lead by deception is to deny that reality is a factor in determining the outcome of any venture.
The federal government buying up the private sector does not exactly promise greatness. The last time this was attempted by a national government, (Cuba and North Korea come to mind) the results were unmitigated failure. North Korea provides a very instructive example as it contrasts with its southern counterpart where the private sector has been allowed to flourish. Now North Korea exports counterfeit Viagra as a primary source of hard currency and depends on China to feed her people. South Korea meanwhile has been one of the main engines of what has been known as the Asian economic miracle.
The government (federal or state) running business enterprise does not have a track record of effectiveness, let alone success. The USPS is still subsidized by the taxpayers and Amtrak goes through its periodic cycles of bailout. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac left “toxic assets” in the national business lexicon as its main legacy. Meanwhile the Chris Dodds and Barney Franks and Charles Rangles still lord it over the corridors of policy making to cheat another day.
The contention that an auto industry run by the United Auto Workers Union under the tutelage of Capitol Hill would be the promise of Paradise to come is far worse than a triumph of hope and blind faith over experience. It is unmitigated political insanity. In suchlike ventures, if I had it in my power, I will do everything to stop it from happening.
As it stands, with both houses of Congress in Obama’s pockets and the main stream media in the tank for Obama, nobody has the power to stop him. It probably would take a generation or two for American Capitalism to recover from the criminal insanity that is being attempted by this administration.
“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!”
----Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/246/246-h/246-h.htm