NEOAVATARA

I am a conservative, and a proud one.  But back in January during the inauguration, I was a proud American watching Barack Obama becoming the first non-white American to hold the highest office in the land.  I did hope that he would be successful, unlike others on my side.

But now, I think he is almost certain to fail.

The lack of world knowledge from Mr. Obama is staggering.  Despite all the media commentators and liberals coming to his defense on Iran, North Korea, and other foreign affairs, his policy really has been a mess.  The rogue nations are clearly pushing Obama to see how far he can be pushed…and so far, they have met no resistance.  I asked a liberal friend last week:  If North Korea, by pure luck alone, hit Honolulu with a traditional ICBM, what would Obama do?  My honest liberal friend’s answer?  “Probably nothing…why would he want to start a war with North Korea?”  Classic liberal thinking…who said Obama would start the war, when Honolulu just got nailed?  And although no one is paying attention, his handling of the Honduran situation has been just this side of a disaster.

But as bad as his foreign policy has been, it is no where near the idiocy displayed by Democrats on domestic affairs.

First was the Obama Stimulus Plan.  By every prediction from Peter Orzag, Timothy Geithner and others, we should have topped out at around 9.4% unemployment, we should have already created 500,000 jobs (Obama himself said that), and the economy should be hitting bottom.  The White House won’t admit it, but every prediction they made (just 4 short months ago, mind you) has been wrong.  Unemployment already is at 9.4% andclimbing; by CBO estimates less than 50,000 jobs have been created by the stimulus (despite Obama’s strange calculation of ‘jobs saved’); and even those that were positive a month ago on the economy (the term ‘green shoots’ to describe early recovery was becoming very popular) are now backing away from those claims.

I am really not sure how long you have to way to call a stimulus plan, which was supposed to act immediately, is absolute failure.  And now, Obama advisors are proposing to have Stimulus II…yes, follow failure with more, bigger failure!

Then we had cap-and-trade last week.  I am not against the concept of cap-and-trade, in theory, unlike many of my conservative bretheren.  But this bill was not a simple cap-and-trade bill.  It was a mess of payoffs, boondoggles, new taxes, and liberal idiocy.  The liberals will never learn that no matter what they do, India and China are going to pollute far worse and far more than anything we have done.  And worst of all, the Democrats didn’t even give people time to read the bill, just like the stimulus.  That should always have people worried.   Especially the media right? I guess not. But the polls agree… 42% of Americans think cap-and-trade will economically hurt the country.

c/o Michael Ramirez, IBD Editorial

What was even worse for the bill was that it showed every dysfunctional thing wrong with Washington.  The bill was not even written when it was voted on.  There were the equivalent of bribes and haggling on the House floor.  It was everything that is wrong with Washington in a crucible…and Barack Obama supported the whole mess.

Obama almost called cap-and-trade a stimulus plan, which is laughable because of the failure of the stimulus.  But that said, could Democrats point to other countries that have implemented cap-and-trade that created a ‘green economy’ stimulus?  That part of the projections from countries like Spain and Australia has been an abject failure.  I would like them to show some proof, instead of hyperbole, to prove that.

The public doesn’t appear to buying it.  Consumer confidence, despite every moron expert saying otherwise, plummeted in June.  The Conference Board, an industry group, said Tuesday its index of consumer attitudes dropped to 49.3 this month from a downwardly revised 54.8 in May. Markets were expecting a reading of 55.0 for June.  The markets followed suit downward.

Why the plummet in consumer confidence?  Consumer confidence is ultimately a psychological market, no more, no less.  When it is high, people are in good spirits; when not, people are depressed…and right now they appear to be depressed.  Why?  Frankly, they had hope that Barack Obama had some magic bullet to solve the economic ills of this country.  And their hopes, after the debacle of the stimulus and cap-and-trade, as well as increasing unemployment, has burst that bubble.  And this, in turn, has made Obama’s popularity numbers to fall.  Rasmussen now has Obama in negative numbers in its approval index.

You want even worse news?  The conservative prediction of jobs moving overseas…it is starting.  Numerous financial institutions are moving higher paying executives overseas to avoid Obama’s cap on executive pay.   And the employees here are being paid more than before…because otherwise those people are leaving those jobs for better paying ones.  Tim Horton’s, the breakfast restaurant, has decided to move from Delaware to Canada.  Why?  Because the corporate tax rate in Canada is 15%, or half of what it is here.  There is simply no reason to stay in the United States.   Just like Sarbanes-Oxley, these kind of restrictions placed on businesses ultimately can lead to predictable results.

At least Mr. Obama is apparently willing to take resp0nsibility for his actions.  Robert Gibbs  stated today that the simulus should be judged now, and said so on MSNBC today, as can be seen above. Well, one day after Gibbs said that, unemployment worsened…and the Obama Administration blamed it on Bush.  Oh well, so much for responsibility.  But this is Obama’s economy now, no matter what they say.  So, let’s see…unemployment at 9.5% (which is even lower than Obama predicted without the stimulus), no job production, decreasing GDP…how would you judge it?  Heck, even liberal fanatic Paul Krugman is now predicting a jobless recovery.  You know what a jobless recovery means?  Let me simplify it for you:

JOBLESS RECOVERY=REPUBLICAN COMEBACK.

My biggest fear of the Obama policies is that there are absolutely no pro-growth initiatives; none; zero.  Can you name one? Nothing Obama is doing is promoting businesses from expanding business, whether it be regulations, taxes, and increase employee costs.  And what I fear is that Obama’s actions are actually worse, than if he had done nothing at all.