Obama's Recession

Any discussion about who is ultimately responsible for the recession would not be complete without a clear definition what a recession is. In economics, a recession is a business cycle featuring a general slowdown in economic activity over a period of time; usually two fiscal quarters or longer. The other criterion for identifying a recession is an increase in unemployment of greater than 1.5%. It is clear based on the generally accepted criteria that the recession began under George Bush with the third quarter of 2008 showing a 2.7% decrease in GDP and the decline jumping to 5.7% in the forth quarter of 2008 and a corresponding increase in unemployment from 5.8% to 7.2% over the same period.

Except for the last two quarters of 2008, unemployment during the Bush administration had cyclically fluctuated between four and six percent just as it had during most of the Clinton administration. Clinton stepped into office with unemployment at 7.3%; remaining at or near that level until October of 1993. Of course the banking system was still generally believed to be in good shape then and since we found out that most of the deregulation that nearly collapsed the system had not occurred yet, it probably was. I find in curious that the real reduction in unemployment during the Clinton years did not take place until he abandoned his plans for healthcare reform. Apparently, the business community had the same reservations about the future of their profitability with Clinton-care as they do with Obama-care. While Clinton did not lower taxes, his advisors did convince him to reduce the capital gains tax and that made the risk of investment more palatable.

Obama has not enjoyed a reprieve from high unemployment because the threat of his agenda has kept the business community from investing in labor or expansion. The measly incentives he proposed to help small business during his State of the Union Address lost weight and credibility when juxtaposed against his assertions in the same speech that he intended to follow through with healthcare, cap and trade and the hair-brained scheme of debt forgiveness for student loans for anyone that could avoid paying them for twenty years (ten, if you were employed in the service of the government).

There is nothing in the President’s agenda that does not take from those that earn wealth only to be given to those that don’t and that is what is killing new job creation. In fact, it took all eight years of the Bush administration for unemployment to rise 3%; Obama nearly achieved that in his first year in office. The President may have inherited a large national debt, high unemployment and a sagging economy; but he did not inherit the agenda proposals that have made all of these indexes far worse. That agenda is all his (or at least, it belongs to whoever is pulling his strings).

For all the damage that his proposals have wrought on the economy and no matter how many people tell him that this is what has stalled business, he still intends to follow through. I haven’t decided if that is just stubbornness on his part or if these are the marching orders from his number one White House visitor, Andy Stern. I think it is fair to question his motives and when you follow the money and the intent of the people that are pressing heavily for these socialist programs like Andy Stern, some interesting things happen.

Obama has recently made some very impassioned speeches where he says that he promised healthcare would pass and that is exactly what he is going to do. Well, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay in the first year and it is still open. He promised transparency in his administration; that healthcare debates and meetings would take place on C-Span. Not only have the meetings on healthcare barred C-Span coverage but congressional Republicans have been barred as well. He said there would be no more back room deals and then offered $300 million to Mary Landrieu for her vote and only God knows how much for Ben Nelson. Bernie Sanders got billions for community health services but in all fairness, that was to expand national programs and not just those in Vermont. All of that money and more had been handed out in closed door, back room deals.

Obama also said there would be no middle class tax increases. Those of us that watch this nonsense knew that was a lie of semantics from the start. His plans and programs, not to mention the FY2011 budget, call for a whole host of new taxes on goods and services; taxes that will be passed on to you by the businesses they affect. He could stand firm on his promise of not taxing you directly while taking it from business knowing they were taking it from you. Now apparently he is going to make the same mistake George H.W. Bush made. Remember “Read my lips – no new taxes”? Bush reneged on that and Clinton never let you forget it during the campaign.

Now that Obama has blown through four years worth of Bush deficit spending in his first year in office, the nation is crying for fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism for most of us in this country means cutting spending to live within our means. For a tax and spend Progressive, fiscal conservatism means making sure you have enough tax revenue to cover your planned spending. It was announced this week that the President is considering a middle class tax increase now that the Congress has passed “Paygo”. Paygo simply means Pay as you go; a mandate that Federal spending increases have to be offset by a decrease in spending elsewhere or an increase in taxes. So now, in a recession, the President wants to tax the middle class twice; once directly and then again by turning overtaxed businesses into tax collection middlemen. That is why they are trying to sell us on the notion that the recession is finally easing.

There was a modest gain in GDP and a slight easing of unemployment last month. Both of which are easily explained by the billions spent in stimulus money and the increase in government employment as they ramp up for the 2010 census. Neither of these small increases are the result of real economic growth and neither will be lasting. So now that he is planning to raise taxes to show his fiscal conservatism, where are the corresponding spending cuts? Well, the President of semantics has the answer to that too. He increased discretionary spending 25% in 2009 and will add another 20% in 2010 but he promises to freeze discretionary spending in FY2011. Mr. President that is not a spending cut; that is freezing your insane increases so they can’t be cut.

Early in the Twentieth Century, America had a similar crisis. After World War I, America was faced with a deep recession brought on mostly by huge increases in the personal income taxes imposed to pay for the war. By 1920 we had slipped into depression and unemployment had topped 12% but unlike this President, the drastic steps that were needed were actually taken. Congress halved government expenditures and slashed taxes to nurture the economy. The result was a period of unprecedented growth not seen since the creation of America and that brought the country out of depression within two years when unemployment had dropped to just over 3%.

Until there is a recognition that government is the problem and not the solution there will be no meaningful progress in spending cuts, debt reduction or economic development. If there is ever going to be an epiphany in Washington on this, it certainly will not begin with this President. If America can elect a Congress this November that can put an end to Obama’s agenda that will be a good start. They might even be coerced by an active and involved electorate to propose legislation to finally restrain the wasteful ways of Washington. The bad news is that unless those daring individuals are elected in numbers sufficient to override a Presidential Veto; that new legislation will have to wait until a responsible President can be elected in 2012.

None of this would be needed if Washington actually obeyed the Constitution and had not ignored the Tenth Amendment for the past hundred years. Tomorrow, we will discuss what our government would look like if we had a Federal Government that actually resembled the intentions of the founding fathers.

Paul

Obama Didn't Inherit the Recession - He Hired It

In continuation of Friday’s article, we were discussing whether or not the Obama administration could continue to call this recession the “Bush” recession. The answer is no and the Obama administration has to face the fact that the statute of limitations for blaming Bush has run out and he now owns the economy; especially since his administration has already used all of their “Ivy League” experimental theories to correct it. As much as they would like to enter the 2010 campaign cycle with as much emphasis as possible on the “mess” that Obama inherited, there are several of those pesky little facts out there that all of Obama’s rhetoric will not change. As it turns out, Obama didn’t just inherit the recession, he hired it.

#1- President Obama has retained people within his administration that were previously key policy makers whose actions contributed to the current recession.

#2- Much of the small business community has sited major parts of Obama’s agenda that have shaken the confidence of business in the health of the economy under Obama’s leadership and in their ability to remain profitable should those agenda items become law.

#3- The actions taken by this administration to correct the faltering economy were, and continue to be, centered on government control, government spending, and the monetization of debt complicated by the dangerous misreporting of economic indicators.

We already discussed Tim “Turbo-Tax” Geithner, Obama’s current Treasury Director; specifically how his actions while he was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve and a member of the Washington “Group of Thirty” have been considered by many economists as directly impacting the economy in ways that have severely damaged the banking industry. We also discussed that Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s current Chief of Staff was on the board of Freddie Mac during the period that Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Obama torpedoed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain communication and e-mail records that might have helped an investigation implicate his dear friend and Chief of Staff.

Let’s talk about some new people. Barack Obama’s choice for Director of the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) is Peter “Loverboy” Orszag. If you recall, the OMB gave the Senate Healthcare Bill a failing grade on maintaining the “budget neutrality” that the President required of any bill he would sign. Of course a quick closed door meeting between Obama and his Budget Director fixed that and within days, the OMB reevaluated the plan and Viola! It was budget neutral! Thank God for Orszag! It is critically important to economic recovery that the business community can trust the estimates of government. After all, to be able to expand and chance the hire of new employees, business must be able to accurately estimate little things like future tax liabilities and the burden that new regulations will have on the cost of manufacture, labor and energy. Can you imagine if people began to mistrust the government; especially in the area of official reports and estimates? The ramifications would be astounding. Why you could dump hundreds of billions into the economy and never create a single job!

Orszag is another one of those intellectual theorists that has never held a real job. While he was not a “Rhodes” Scholar like Bill Clinton, he was a Marshal Scholar and after earning a degree in economics from Princeton, Orszag traveled to England where he obtained his Masters Degree and Doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics. He sites several people that he considers “Mentors” including Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz was not your average apple pie and baseball American and was himself, a proponent of globalist economic policy, market socialism and what he called a “more sustainable and just global economic order”. In addition to Stiglitz, Orszag also considered Robert Rubin an important influence in his life.

Yes, that is the same Rubin that spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs as a board member and Co-Chairman before joining the Clinton administration as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. After leaving the Clinton administration, Rubin became Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup and would eventually serve as interim Chairman between November and December 2007. In January of 2009, Citigroup announced his resignation after having been criticized for his performance. Rubin became one more name on the list of individuals that had brought the financial system to ruin before leaving with more than $100 million dollars in cash and stocks.

The current Director of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama is Lawrence Summers. “Larry” began his academic career at MIT where he studied physics but soon switched to economics, earning an B.S. in 1975. He attended graduate classes at Harvard where he earned his Ph.D. in 1982. At age 28, Summers became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Like Orszag, Summers is a theoretician when it comes to work and has spent his life either teaching, in government or governmental organizations like the dreaded World Bank. While all of that sounds impressive, I still don’t know how we let people teach what they have never been involved in….like where business actually fits into a market economy. Summers early career was as an “academic economist” and he was responsible for providing research data for economic studies.

As a researcher, Summers has made important contributions in many areas of economics, primarily public finance, labor economics, financial economics, and macroeconomics. Some of Summers' early papers concluded that corporate and capital gains taxes are an inefficient form of taxation. Cutting the capital gains tax rate, Summers found, could help the economy grow. One of Summers' prominent findings in labor economics is that unemployment insurance and welfare payments are a major contributor to unemployment, and therefore should be scaled back. Since the Obama administration has taken a course contrary to these proven economic strategies, it is apparent that Larry’s career in politics and as a professor at Harvard, has caused him to trade his lust for truth for the comfort of being part of the ruling elite.

Of course there is a down side to losing your “religion” and Summers would find out that when you ignore what you know is right and true because it is unfashionable, bad things are bound to happen. As Treasury Secretary, Summers led the Clinton Administration's opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999; a 180 degree reversal from the data he provided for other economists earlier in his career. Summers supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act). After passage, Summers announced: "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy. Unfortunately for Summers, the deregulation under the Glass-Steagall Act is widely known to have created the conditions that directly led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; the precursor to the financial meltdown of 2008.

Summers also testified before Congress that there was no need to require additional regulation of the institutional OTC derivatives market, a move that would later lead to the near collapse of AIG. The work that Summers did for the Clinton administration in fact, created the conditions that would nearly drive the nation into depression a mere ten years later. Upon leaving the Clinton administration, Summers became the President of Harvard University. He decided to invest University funds using the loopholes he created through deregulation. Of course interest swaps and hedge funds can’t be maintained forever and his financial wheeling and dealing would end up costing the University over $1 billion dollars and cost him his job, forcing his resignation in 2006.

Now the Obama administration is shaping the financial direction of the nation under the advice of the actual architects of the financial meltdown that nearly bankrupted the entire financial system of the United States if not the world. One could argue that the Bush administration should have taken reasonable steps to restore the needed regulations which could have prevented the crisis and he probably would have if his administration hadn’t received the assurances of the Federal Reserve and Congress that everything was fine.

So in summary, the Obama administration is blaming the Bush administration for a recession that was brought on by financial deregulation enacted by the Clinton administration under the advice of people that Obama just rehired to direct the financial direction of the country under his administration. The question that remains unanswered is why Obama thinks that any of this is a good idea.

Paul

Is it really Bush's Economy or Obama's?

The New York Times inadvertently validated my assertions that Republicans would be wise to recognize the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation but in order to keep their credentials as a liberal member of the Robert Gibbs Propaganda Club, found it necessary to embellish the story with their own pro-Obama flavor. The Times reported that a recent Times/CBS poll shows the President with an edge over Republicans in the upcoming election, totally missing the point. All of Congress is entering the election cycle with its lowest approval rating ever and that should be hard to ignore unless of course, you have the additional armor of being the Liberal media’s intellectually elite shock troops.

Of course the poll was crafted in such a way that you had to agree that Bush was totally at fault for our current economic woes; exonerating the President from all responsibility. I will be the first to admit that Bush’s economic strategies were an abject failure and while he was tough on terror, he was no better than a run of the mill, liberal spending Democrat when it came to economic and public policy. What the poll ignores is the duplicity of Obama’s closest advisors in perpetuating that failure which deepened the recession.

It began with the appointments to his cabinet. Tim Geithner had studied international economics in college and his early career placed him in the International Affairs Division of the U.S. Treasury and as an attaché to the United States Embassy in Tokyo. He was also deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy, senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs, assistant secretary for international affairs and the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.

One would think that resume would have qualified him to be Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury but there are some disturbing issues hidden in his resume too. In 2002 he left the US Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department. He was also the director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund; an organization that rarely has the economic interests of the United States at heart but instead, finds itself regularly aligned with the United Nation’s desire to redistribute the wealth of Western democracies to developing nations.

The friends (and enemies) that Geithner made while traipsing around the world seems to have shaped quite a few of his views and it is his “citizen of the world” mindset that made Geithner necessary to Obama’s cabinet. While going through the confirmation process it was found that Geithner had some tax “difficulties” of his own and he dismissed those difficulties, blaming his lack of expertise in using the personal tax preparation program “Turbo Tax” for the discrepancies. Really? A man studied in international economics that just happened to have an early career in the Treasury Department couldn’t figure out how to use a $19.95 computer program to pay his taxes? Well, the Senate bought that excuse so I will let that rest. Not because I believe him, but because there are bigger problems with Geithner than that.

Geithner was President of the New York Federal Reserve in 2003 and Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee component. In 2006, Geithner became a member of the Washington financial advisory panel “The Group of Thirty” where in 2007, he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. Do you see a red flag there? Geithner also arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns and also supported his friend and Goldman Sachs CEO, Henry Paulson, in his bid to promote the bailout of AIG. While billions in taxpayer funds were flowing into Bear Stearns and AIG, Geithner curiously ignored Lehman Brothers, letting them slip into bankruptcy. But hey, friends are friends and all that. The bottom line is that there are number of private economists that say Geithner’s actions severely damaged the United States economy while he played fast and loose with taxpayer funds; favoring friends and destroying enemies.

If that isn’t bad enough, we have Rahm Emmanuel. Emmanuel is noted for having an explosive temper that manifests itself in ways that could be considered damaging for a White House Chief of Staff. Emmanuel had worked on a number of Democratic campaigns including the Presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. While working on the Clinton campaign, he reportedly sent a dead fish in a box to a pollster that was routinely late in providing much needed poll results. In another incident after the 1996 election, Emanuel was so angry at Clinton’s campaign enemies that he stood up at a dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of what he considered traitors, shouting 'Dead!” and plunging the knife into the table after each name was called out. It sounds like Rahm’s parents let him watch way too many violent movies as a child.

Unlike many of his current colleagues, Rahm Emmanuel actually had a real job before entering politics and the seedier world of investment banking. Unfortunately for Rahm, his job at a Chicago Arby’s ended suddenly when he lost part of his finger in one of the machines. Considering Geithner’s qualifications as Treasury Secretary include imploding the US Economy as head of the NY Federal Reserve, I am really surprised that Emmanuel wasn’t named to head OSHA or the Department of Health and Human Services; especially when considering his impeccable safety record. However, it is Emmanuel’s cut-throat Chicago style of politics that is the real criteria for his position as Obama’s Chief of Staff. As Chief of Staff, he is one of the orchestrators of the administration’s “blame Bush” campaign and one of the crafters of the Obama “evil greedy banker” policy. He should know; after all, he was an evil greedy banker himself.

Rahm Emmanuel was an advisor to Bill Clinton; a position he resigned from in 1998 to pursue a career in investment banking with Wasserstein Perella. In his two and a half years at Wasserstein Perella, he earned a reported $16.2 million dollars. As an additional favor to his friend, President Clinton named Emanuel to the Board of Directors for the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac") before he left office in 2001. Emmanuel’s position earned him at least $320,000, including later stock sales. Obviously a political appointment, Emmanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees; a Board that met no more than six times per year.

During Emmanuel’s time on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Imagine that? The Obama Administration subsequently rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) later accused the board of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." Thanks to Obama’s stonewalling of the Freedom of Information Act request, we will never know the depth of Rahm Emmanuel’s participation in those scandals or how much his actions may have damaged the fiscal stability of Freddie Mac. We can only assume that if Obama’s friend and Chief of Staff were not implicated, that the FOI request would probably have been granted.

Emanuel resigned from the board of Freddie Mac in 2001 when he ran for Congress; eventually filling the seat vacated by another Chicago criminal, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich is currently on trial for Federal Corruption charges stemming from an investigation that alleges that he (Blagojevich) tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became President, for cash or favors. Emmanuel kept his Congressional seat until his appointment by Barack Obama to the position of Chief of Staff.

The part that I cannot figure out is how this administration claims insulation from the current financial crisis when so many of Obama’s key appointees played major roles in bringing about the near collapse of the economy? Factually, if the Democrat controlled Congress that Bush was plagued with from 2006 forward, had actually performed their required function of providing oversight for the Federal administration structure, perhaps corrective action would have been taken by Bush that could have mitigated the economic implosion of 2008. Like I said before; friends are friends and enemies are enemies and the Democrats in Congress would have had to crucify some of their own to do that and there was no need to sacrifice them if you had a Republican President you could blame instead.

Monday – Why hasn’t the economy shown signs of recovery? The truths Obama can’t blame on Bush.

Paul

Old Politicians Never Die, They Just Smell Like it.

Do you remember the good old days when ex-Presidents would build their libraries, make a few stops on a speaking tour and write their memoirs? Now it seems that not only ex-President’s like Jimmy Carter have no idea when to keep their mouths shut but even those that ran for President and lost just have to put their two cents in as well.

Actually, it has nothing to do with the current date because there are large gaps between the Presidents that left office determined to allow the next President to shape policy and the course of the nation as they see fit and then there are those that must emanate an irritating buzz from the sidelines just to remain in the fringe of the spotlight. In fact, it seems that the proclivity of pestilence seems to be a product of ideology with liberals displaying a general inability to afford any measure of courtesy to future administrations; the same courtesy that they would have demanded for themselves had they actually stayed in office.

Former Presidents understand the searing responsibility of holding the highest office in the land even though none of them knew the depth of that responsibility when they began their race to become President. As such, there has always been a certain amount of sympathy that is afforded the next President because of the demands associated with that job. Even George Washington commented to John Addams that he felt sorry for him as he took the oath of office as the nation’s second President. While some serving President’s have invited criticism by blaming every failure of their administration on the previous one, it is a very rare occasion when a former President responds in kind but it still happens.

What is different as of the late twentieth and continuing into the early twenty first century is that for the first time, the losers are twice as vocal as the former Presidents. Most Americans know that Truman ascended to the Presidency after Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945 but how many know that Truman was FDR’s third Vice President. The first, John Garner, resigned at the beginning of FDR’s second term and the second, Henry Wallace, was too liberal even for Roosevelt. In fact, Wallace believed that the Russian Revolution was on par with the American Revolution and both represented equal and important parts of man’s march to freedom. Truman was selected as the Vice Presidential nominee for the 1944 election as Roosevelt’s health wavered and Wallace was believed to be too radical to chance his elevation to President should Roosevelt die in office.

How many know that Truman had no Vice President in his first term and that the Vice President in his second term, Alben Barkley, was not his running mate in the general election? Most know very little about former Vice Presidents that did not attain the Presidency and even less about those that lost elections for President or Vice President because there was still some measure of decorum back then. Now, the losers take the stage, still striving for the fame they feel they were cheated from attaining. Al Gore, unlike his predecessors, refused to call for unity behind the new President and instead, fanned the flames of the left’s outright hatred of George Bush after the election of 2000.

Gore used the notoriety he had gained from the attention surrounding the 2000 election re-count to push his radical (and wrong) agenda to foster awareness of the so-called threat of global warming. This thrust him into the limelight once again and like any other attention starved brat, only served to reinforce his ill behavior. As an irritant to Bush administration climate policy, Gore sought to inculcate the radical environmental movement and eventually, the youth of the western world with a religious fervor about coming disasters that will befall the planet because of global warming. Even now, as the IPCC and the CRU have been caught red-handed manipulating and even suppressing climate data to support their hokey theories; Gore persists, spewing out these outrageous claims while his so-called “irrefutable” evidence crumbles bit by corrupt bit. You know, you almost feel bad for him. He couldn’t handle losing the 2000 election without a tantrum and now, in the absence of real proof, he’s acting like the proverbial madman on the corner shouting “The end is near!” as people cross the street to avoid eye contact with him.

Of course Gore could have avoided this embarrassment if he weren’t so vain and simply accepted his defeat with dignity. In fact, he could probably have lived out the balance of his life as a respected political analyst much as Henry Kissinger has. Even Richard Nixon managed to redeem himself and in the later years of his life, had been in high demand by news programs that were analyzing the, then current, Clinton administration. Nixon became a serious voice in the political discussion again because he displayed the confidence of a serious man and not the dour attitude of a sore loser.

By now, we are all used to the nonsensical drivel that emanates from the mouth of former President, James Carter. Most of what Carter says only serves to remind us why his Presidency marked the low tide stain for the modern Democratic Party and more importantly, why his bid for reelection was rejected by the American people. The naiveté of his recent statements are perfectly consistent with the simplicity that he exhibited during his Presidency. Unlike Gore, Carter isn’t lashing out over sour grapes, he just doesn’t know any better. Truthfully, I had always held that I liked Jimmy Carter personally. I think he is one of the few Presidents that followed his heart. Hid did what he believed was right; however, his idea of right did not serve the nation well and as much as he is an honorable man, he did not possess the necessary qualities that a modern nation demands of a President.

Now we have John Kerry. Kerry is only one of a long list of Massachusetts politicians that is quite popular in the liberal rat’s nest of Massachusetts but has failed miserably on a national level. Kerry comes from a wealthy family (Forbes) and married into a wealthier one (Heinz). Like so many born to wealth, the political scene was alluring to Kerry as he drooled at the thought of testing out all of the Socialist theories he had learned in Yale. After all, the lives of the general population are only pawns for wealthy socialists to play with and if they are wrong and their policies ruin the nation, they still have their fortune to escape with. It is all an exercise in theory for them.

Kerry had served in the United States Navy during Viet Nam. Assigned to a swift boat in what veteran’s call “the brown water navy”, Kerry was reportedly injured in combat several times and was decorated for bravery. Kerry had requested early release in January of 1970, for the purpose of running for Congress that fall and was discharged in March of that year. Rather than running for Congress, Kerry decided to join the anti-war movement after his release from the Navy and had made a number of high profile appearances as a decorated war veteran opposed to the war. Of course Kerry had to go just a bit too far and while speaking out against the war ended up denigrating the President, the nation and even his fellow sailors in the process. This would prove to be a critical mistake later in life.

Kerry did run for Congress in 1972 but that bid would fail as Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely were found in the basement of the opposition’s campaign headquarters. Charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny", the two fenced with the courts for a year with the case being eventually being dismissed a year later but not before Kerry lost the election.

After completing law school and embarking on a brief career in law, Kerry was eventually elected to the position of lieutenant governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis in 1982 and then to the United States Senate in 1985. In 2004, Kerry decided to run for President. During his campaign, a group of swift boat veterans protested his candidacy and brought his service record and military honors under severe criticism citing inconsistencies in the recorded events. Statements Kerry made during earlier “anti-war” interviews resurfaced in which he admitted that he tried to avoid combat by asking for duty with the swift boats which up till then had been used only for coastal patrols. Of course his voting record as one of the most liberal progressives in Congress was too much for main street America and only served to seal his fate. His 2004 bid for the Presidency with running mate John Edwards, ended in a close but failing race with Bush beating Kerry by only 2% of the popular vote at a time when Bush was also wildly unpopular.

Now that Iran is on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and Obama is facing harsh criticisms from other world leaders for vacillating in the face of Iran’s refusal to obey international law, John Kerry is stepping to the foreground for his fifteen minutes of fame again. He is demanding more negotiations with Iran even though negotiations have only proven to allow Iran the time continue the development of nuclear arms without fear of reprisal. In fact, Kerry tried to arrange a visit to Tehran to speak with Iranian officials as if to say that he can do alone, what the current administration in its entirety could not. Apparently, Iran can spot an elitist publicity hound faster than the people of Massachusetts can and denied access to Mr. Kerry.

John Kerry should accept that outside of the “People’s Republic of Massachusetts”, no one really cares what he thinks. For that matter, we really don’t care what any of the political figures that Massachusetts has cursed the nation with has to say about much of anything. If things continue as they are, we are going to see a lot more liberals stamping their feet in the press and on the news shows after the 2010 election send many of them home so I guess we should thank Gore and Kerry for preparing us. It only goes to show that old politicians never die, they just smell like it.

Paul

Newsweek's Curious Adoration of Al Gore

Barack Obama is an unqualified disaster so rather than accept fact, Newsweek (or is it News-Weak?) is taking a trip down memory lane so they can play “What if Gore won the 2000 election?” In what may be the most idiotic article to ever to stain the pages of that Liberal rag-sheet, News-weak has decided to imagine a fantasy timeline to give us a glimpse of what a Gore Presidency would look like.

We know Liberals are all about fantasy. After all, in a Liberal’s world, hard work and research just can’t yield the concrete results that wearing ribbons do. If they could only convince all Americans to wear the appropriate ribbon of awareness, think how much human suffering would vanish overnight. In fact, the ribbons possess so much power; Liberal’s would rather wear those than waste their money on funding established research or support centers. That is unless they are one of those filthy rich liberals. In that case, they use their money to create foundations; accepting donations to raise awareness among the massive population of insensitive people that do not wear ribbons.

The other thing Liberals love to do is dream about the utopian society they could create if last remnants of capitalism were finally swept away and the progressive (Marxist) agenda were realized in totality. Since Obama clearly can’t deliver on that, they did the next best thing and created a dream world where Bush was defeated and Gore took his rightful place as the 43rd President of the United States.

In David Rakoff's dream world, 9-11 never happened because Gore took the appropriate steps to prevent it and Gore’s attention to the environment, particularly the restoration of wetlands and erosion prevention on the gulf coast, mitigated the severity of Katrina and the swift response of the Federal government under Gore, prevented countless deaths and needless devastation. Obama maybe a weak and ineffectual Liberal but he is still a Liberal so they just couldn’t ignore him. In Rakoff's world, Gore would eventually name Obama as a Supreme Court Justice.

The piece begins by eluding all sense of Constitutional law as the United States, under Gore, finally becomes party to the Kyoto Protocol and passes a comprehensive energy bill. Somehow, the mystical powers of Al Gore can even circumvent the Constitutional requirement that the Senate ratify our treaties with a 2/3 majority, something that could not happen with Kyoto and would not happen even if Copenhagen managed to cobble an agreement together within the next few days. The comprehensive energy agreement is also a work of fiction since that was proclaimed dead on arrival with democrats in control of both houses of Congress and a President that is willing to sign it. But this is a work of fantasy so to hell with logic and law….let’s dream on

At the ceremony to mark the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, President Gore announces ground breaking for high speed maglev rail along the Eastern Seaboard. Old rail cars would be sunk offshore to create artificial reefs and by September 2009, the system is opened, offering high speed rail service from Portland, Maine to Jacksonville, Florida. Of course, since Al Gore is the patron saint of the religion of Climatology, he would have no problem at all persuading the eco-fascists that the rail line is an important step in the “greening” of America….or would he?

Environmental activists have fought every major project, green or otherwise, under the banner of protecting the diversity of species and to restore the natural beauty of a planet untouched by human activity. If the project was to replace an existing system rail by rail and tie by tie, I am sure they would find some foul species of hairless mouse that has called the existing rail line home. Even if none were found, they would still sue to force us to do another one of those endless environmental impact studies before the basic route survey could even begin. Damn! Those little details keep ruining the plot.

The story continues with Gore’s superior intellect being able to decipher a disjointed and seemingly meaningless string of information (which is all that was left of our intelligence gathering capabilities after Clinton-Gore gutted the system) whereby he discovers a plot crafted by Osama Bin Laden to attack the United States. Despite his historical disdain for the military and his repeated assertions that war is an option only needed by those that fail at diplomacy, Gore races to the nearest phone booth and dons his “Commander in Chief” Underoos before ordering preemptive strategic bombing strikes on Al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, averting the disaster of 9-11 altogether.

Just to imply the petty hardships that a victorious Al Gore would have to contend with as President, Rakoff adds that President Gore signs the Patriot Act to provide an additional measure of security for the country but since he is not George Bush, the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional. He also says that a Gore administration would be ridiculed and denigrated at every turn which I take as more of a slap at Obama than a commentary on Gore. In Mr. Rakoff’s world, Gore is unaffected by his critics; making the hard decisions that he apparently feels Mr. Obama is incapable of.

To further show his fierce determination and Gore’s iron will, when Vice President Joe Lieberman speaks out against healthcare reform, Gore demands, and gets, his resignation which only proves the adolescence of the author. When this article was written, Lieberman was still holding out on healthcare so he apparently felt compelled to throw a few literary rocks at him. After all, since Lieberman is obviously not part of the collective mind, he must be eliminated, even in a fantasy administration. Of course, Hillary Clinton is named as Lieberman’s replacement. Colin Powell steps down as Secretary of State and Bill Clinton assumes that position.

Just to prove that this is indeed, OZ and not a work of fact driven speculation; Gore supposedly signs a bill providing tax cuts equaling $1.35 trillion dollars over ten years to America’s wealthiest citizens, drawing harsh criticism from both the left and the right. He also faces the nation during his 2002 State of the Union address and singles out Iran, Iraq and North Korea as having goals similar to the Axis powers of World War II.

Fear not…all ends well with King Al Gore the first. He is eventually recognized for his bold actions and foresight in preventing not only an imminent attack on the US by fundamentalist terrorists but in preventing catastrophe through his environmental restoration of the Gulf of Mexico coast line, which saved thousands of lives and billions in property damage. The number of Gore’s successes are eventually criticized in the Senate because the sheer amount of time they have to spend commending this President’s actions are seen as distracting the Senate from their primary purpose.

Of course no story in News-Weak would be complete if it didn’t trash Bush too. Now that Gore has completed his two terms, it is finally Hillary Clinton’s turn. The Democratic ticket for 2008 is Hillary Clinton with her mate and running mate, Bill. Just as strange is the notion that George Bush throws his hat in the ring in a bid to finally capture his second term with brother Jeb as his running mate. Rakoff suggests that George Bush’s fortunes begin to turn after a televised and tearful interview about his alcoholism with Dr. Drew Pinsky; a condition that Bush supposedly falls pray to after his 2000 loss to Gore.

Really? Apparently Mr. Rakoff is under the delusion that Al Gore would have been able to have see what dozens of experts could not, where Islamic terror is concerned. Much like the followers of Nostradamus, the snippets of information about Bin Laden’s activities could only have been reasonably connected after the attack when the names and countries of origin of the perpetrators were known. Similarly, Rakoff assumes that Gore would have found a stomach for military action if the need arose and that he would even care about the environment if he were not in a position to personally accrue millions of dollars by exploiting the fears of the Eco-weirdoes on a national level.

No, Gore is a lack-luster and unpolished imitation of a politician frustrated by his failed bid for the Presidency. His lack of substance and personality is why he was not elected in spite of every felonious act of voter fraud committed by the left.

Now that climate-gate has proven the fraud of environmental extremism and may even be the largest hoax of the century, perhaps Gore will finally find some other kind of snake oil to peddle. Maybe he can retire to a local park and sell snow cones this summer to help in the fight against seasonal global warming?

Paul