
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 12, 2009
/ 18 Iyar 5769
Even a messiah loses his training wheels
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Disconnecting the training wheels is a scary prospect for every apprentice biker, even with Daddy standing close by. We can sympathize with Barack Obama's fright as his moment approaches. It's not easy suddenly being on your own, paying the price of falling with your own skinned knees and bruised elbows.
Nevertheless, the dreadful moment approacheth. Anticipating D-Day, Peter Orszag, the president's budget director, said Monday that the scarier than expected economic news - the deficit out of control, tax receipts down and costs of bailouts and "stimulus" plans up - is all the fault of George W. Bush: "It's an economic crisis President Obama inherited."
But Mr. Obama has already been president for more than a hundred days, and passing the hundred-day mark, irrelevant milestone as it may be, was cited as dead-solid proof that the president is the messiah he told everyone he was. Reality, however, has begun to cast a shadow over the White House, still as faint as the bright golden haze on the meadow but visible enough. "Blaming George" still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama's government now.
The White House on Monday said the new estimate of the budget deficit would nearly reach $2 trillion - that's trillion, with a "t" - and that's nearly 13 percent of the entire gross domestic product. Pretty gross any way you spin it, and the president's men (and women) are spinning it as best they can. Alas, the country's predicament, if not yet the president's, is probably worse than it looks.
The projected budget deficit is four times larger than the deficit record set last year. We can blame that one on George, but George, big spender that he was, turns out to have been a tightwad. Maybe this is the "change" Mr. Obama promised. Yes, he did.
The administration insisted Monday that by the end of this year the gross domestic product will be growing at a rate of 3.5 percent, which would be good news so good that it's likely to be too good to be true, and it's certainly more optimistic than any private economic forecast anyone has seen beyond the White House fence.
The White House flogged this news in a statement studded with more weasel words than usual: "Although the economic downturn so far in 2009 has been more severe than the administration expected when the forecast was finalized, if the financial system begins to function more normally, there is every reason to expect a somewhat stronger recovery, given the depth of the current recession." Translation: "Don't blame us, nothing is ever the fault of the messiah, maybe everything will get a little better if it actually does get better. We hope. But don't count on it."
What shines through the spinning, bright and bold, is that Mr. Obama no longer believes in the pie in the sky he promised. He has obviously learned a few things in his first hundred days. "Wow! So that's where babies come from." But he still can't give up his teleprompter, his training wheels and good ol' George. Good ol' George is the president's teddy bear. He can't go to sleep without Teddy. George is his imaginary person, too, on whom he can blame everything. He feels very close to imaginary George.
George the imaginary person threatens everything Mr. Obama has in store for us - higher taxes (whether disguised as "user fees" or "investments"), Al Gore's vast scheme to combat global warming whether the globe is warming or not, and a health-care plan guaranteed to eventually assure every American access to medical care equal to the quality health care now available in France, Canada, Britain and maybe even Lower Volta.
The good news, such as it is, is that the remaking of America in a way that a Chicago street "activist" of a generation ago hardly dared dream of may be of such potent poison that the body politic will reject it, as a healthy human body might reject a massive dose of arsenic (perhaps administered by someone in old lace). Several of the president's Democratic allies in Congress are already balking at his scheme to extract killer taxes, such as curbing deductions for mortgage interest, gifts to churches and charities, and state and local taxes.
Soaking the rich, so-called, is OK, but marinating the rich may not be helpful. More than skinned knees and bruised elbows are in prospect as Barack Obama finally discovers that ready or not, he's the president now.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2007 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|