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Jewish World Review
April 11, 2012/ 19 Nissan, 5772
Obama is not bonkers
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There may be a rule in politics that if you play the game long enough, you go bonkers. You make stuff up. You act like a ninny. I mean, look at Newt Gingrich and how, after a few good debate performances, a rise in the polls and then a slip, he stood on his head and sang "The Star Spangled Banner" backward.
Well, not quite that, but his crybaby tantrum was nearly as crazy. But another recently bizarre actor still has plenty of influence.
That would be President Barack Obama.
Here is Mr. Smoothie, orator supreme, folksy charmer when he wants to be and hellfire preacher when the spirit calls. He is as bright as they come and someone whose power of personality got him elected to the presidency more than any other noticeable qualification. Never mind: He could at least fake competence convincingly, most people probably figured, only he hasn't.
The effort to intimidate the Supreme Court was shocker enough, a brutal, ignorant trespass on separation-of-powers, but then came the laughable denouncements of the Paul Ryan budget, laughable because even if the Ryan budget were half as bad as he says it is, it would still be twice as good as his.
The Supreme Court is looking at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- "Obamacare" -- largely because of its insurance-buying requirement. If our already in-your-face federal government can force that, it can do just about anything, and if the Constitution matters, it can't do that. Nothing gives the government the power, certainly not a commerce clause meant to regulate some forms of commerce, not require people to engage in it.
Obama nevertheless growled that it would be "unprecedented" for a court to overturn something passed by such a strong vote, forgetting that the House vote was meek, no doubt a reflection of the shame of it all. The court has in fact overturned loads of laws with stronger votes for more than two centuries.
The president also said this interference would amount to an activist court of the kind conservatives rant against, meaning he doesn't understand what conservatives rant against. They're hungry for intervention on behalf of the Constitution, which is known as rule of law, and furiously against intervention on behalf of judicial temperament, which is known as oligarchy.
Progressives defended Obama because, after all, it's the supposed end that counts with them, not the autocratic means sometimes chosen to get there, and they defended him again when he took on the Ryan budget with malice aforethought.
The Ryan budget aims to decrease spending to avoid a debt crisis. Obama thinks we can spend our way to utopian bliss. To him, any serious slowdown in spending increases is inhumane, though the real inhumanity is the opposite. What kind of suffering will there be when federal fiscal policies give us a depression that will make the one in the 1930s look like a spring stroll on a Sunday afternoon?
There is a lot of dodging in the Ryan plan, to be sure. He takes on Medicare, but postpones action too long. He leaves Social Security alone, despite its soaring costs. He reduces some taxes to induce growth but does not specify loophole eliminations needed for revenue and a finally sane tax system.
He also does not reduce spending enough, but as incomplete as all this is, the faults are nothing compared to the insanity of the Obama budget. As an example, it does not address entitlement restructuring at all, and without restructuring, there is no way out of our peril. Taxing the rich won't get it done.
In the end, Obama is not bonkers. He is dead serious about getting his way with justices on a court and voters in America and will resort to whatever words it takes to get him where he wants to go, which is just as bad as bonkers.
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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.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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