How (and Why) Obama has Impeded Recovery

By Alan Caruba

During and after his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was hailed as the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt. History records that Roosevelt presided over the Great Depression, begun in the previous administration of Herbert Hoover who got most of the blame. Roosevelt’s policies extended it well beyond the normal recovery from a recession.

In his book, “Dupes”, historian Paul Kengor, wrote “Roosevelt won in a landslide in November 1932. To liberals and traditional Democrats everywhere, he was more than just a new face at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was a kind of political savior at the most desperate time in their lives.”

Roosevelt was immediately assailed by the Communist Party USA as he launched his New Deal stew of programs intended to reverse the effects of the economic crisis. As Kengor notes, “No president had ever moved so far to the left, and so quickly, but it was not enough for the comrades.” They portrayed Roosevelt “as a warmonger bent on wreaking havoc on the poor USSR (Soviet Russia)” because they feared the U.S. might go to war against it.

As we now know, some of Roosevelt’s closest advisors were either Communists or extremely sympathetic to Communism. Harry Hopkins was one of them and was later exposed as a likely Soviet agent. The Venona transcripts of secret communications between U.S. Communists and their Soviet handlers revealed this.

Obama came into office following the 2008 financial crisis which, as we know, he blamed entirely on George W. Bush. Triggered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government sponsored enterprises, the crisis reflected the many “subprime” mortgages they had pressured banks to make. Bush’s efforts to rein them had fallen on deaf ears.

Like Roosevelt, Obama initiated a number of policies and legislation, not the least of which was his “stimulus” package to turn around the economy, but which has left it with a higher level of unemployment today than in 2009-10. His other initiative, stimulating Green energy has cost taxpayers billions.

In “New Deal or Raw Deal?” historian Burton Folsom, Jr., wrote of Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) documenting that it and other measures did nothing more than balloon the federal government while interfering with the normal action of capitalism to recover—as it had many times before—from financial crises.

Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, first elected in 1907, summed up Roosevelt’s efforts saying at the time, “No depression can be ended by gifts, gratuities, doles, and alms handed out by the Federal Treasury, and extorted from taxpayers that are bleeding from every pore.”

As Folsom put it, “Capitalism had failed in Roosevelt’s view of the world and that opened the door for new experiments in government ownership and government direction of the economy. Private enterprise would become public enterprise.”

Why anyone would think that Barack Obama, a “red diaper baby”, raised by leftists and mentored in his youth by a card-carrying Communist, Frank Marshall Davis, would act any differently than Roosevelt, repeating all his mistakes, is to be ignorant of history.

The Worst Recovery Ever

Writing in the April 3rd Wall Street Journal, Edward P. Lazear, 2006-2009 chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, wrote about “The Worst Economic Recovery in History.” Assessing Obama’s policies, Lazear said that “our current recovery pales in comparison with most other recoveries, including the one following the Great Depression.”

“The Great Depression started with major economic contractions in 1930, ’31, ’32 and ’33. In the three following years, the economy rebounded with growth rates of 11%, 9%, and 13% respectively…According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recovery began in the second half of 2009. Since that time, the economy has grown at 2.4%, below our long-term trend by either measure. At this point, the economy is 12% smaller than it would have been had we stayed on trend growth since 2007.”

“It would be difficult to argue,” wrote Lazear, “that government policies over the past three years have enhanced confidence in the U.S. business environment. Threats of higher taxes, the constantly increasing regulatory burden, the failure to pursue an aggressive trade policy that will open U.S. exports and the enormous increase in government spending all are growth impediments.”

Like Roosevelt, Obama has impeded a rebound in the growth of the economy and he has done it by applying all the wrong Socialist “solutions” that extended the Great Depression from 1929 to 1941.

For Obama, this has truly been a crisis that would not be allowed to go to waste. What he has done has been to impose Obamacare in the face of massive rejection, overseen the loss of two million jobs, and increased the national debt to levels that put the U.S. on a crash course to financial collapse.

It would be naïve to think he did not know what he was doing. If one wanted to bring the United States of America to its knees, he would pursue Obama’s policies of the past four years. His “open mike” gaff, speaking with Russia’s President, Dmitry Medvedev, confirms his intent to work closely with America’s longtime adversary if reelected.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Taking Hostages: Tehran in 1979 - Cairo in 2012

American diplomats, 1979, in Tehran, Iran

By Alan Caruba

As someone who vividly recalls the Iranian “students” who took our diplomats hostage in 1979 and the 444 days it took to get them back, the repeat of this by the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, putting 19 pro-democracy, non-government organization (NGO) Americans on trial on trumped up charges has an ugly repetitive feel to it.

The contempt the Iranian revolutionaries, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, had for America and, I might add, international law and practice that goes back centuries, is everything you need to know about dealing with militant Islamists, whether they are in Iran, Egypt, or anywhere else on the face of the Earth.

Just as then-President Jimmy Carter dawdled while looking for a diplomatic response, this same scenario is now being played out by Barack Obama and it won’t work now just as it did not work then. Carter authorized a failed military operation that, by most accounts, was poorly organized and executed.

What is needed now is a Navy SEAL unit or larger force to go in, rescue our American hostages, and extract them from Cairo. We need direct military action, just as we need direct military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, missile operations, and the barracks of the Revolutionary Guards.

Just as Jimmy Carter was seen as weak, so too is Barack Obama and, for America and the world, that is very bad news. I don’t care if the Iranian leadership and other militant Islamists don’t like America. I want them to fear us.

Apparently they didn’t get the message when the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the home city to its military college. While bin Laden was right up the street and around the corner, we are supposed to believe that no one in Pakistan’s military or intelligence structure had the slightest idea. He was living in a large walled compound. Short of buying his own groceries, you’d think someone might have noticed. And, of course, now they are angry at us for killing the man behind the murder of some 3,000 of our citizens, including an attack on the Pentagon!

When the Iranians went into the streets in June 2009 protesting the bogus election of Mamoud Ahmadinejad, Obama’s response was that the U.S. “shouldn’t meddle” in Iran’s affairs. A plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to America in a Washington, D.C. restaurant was discovered and some people might call that “meddling” in our affairs.

This hostage-taking needs boots-on-the-ground action now. The only upside to this event is that the longer it goes on, the same disenchantment that resulted in the defeat of Jimmy Carter will be Obama’s fate in the November election.

The fact that Obama has imposed the largest debt/credit crisis that the nation has ever incurred, unemployment levels that rival the Great Depression, a housing market that is still in the tank, and is busy hollowing out the nation’s military capabilities at the worst possible time seems to gone unnoticed by the forty percent or more of Americans that think he’s doing a swell job.

Our present problem is that Obama does not like America any better than our enemies do. He does not like our Constitution, recently blaming the Founding Fathers for the limitations they wisely imposed to avoid a government grown too large and a president with powers beyond those granted.

This nation is in peril from the same gross stupidity that gripped it prior to World War Two until Pearl Harbor occurred in 1941. The war in Europe had been going on since 1939 and the Japanese had invaded China in 1937.

We are in a new, dangerous era with the chaotic situations in the Maghreb of northern Africa where U.S. assistance, via NATO, was provided to overthrow Gaddafi and Obama's swift rejection of Egypt’s Mubarack led to his downfall. There are uprisings in Syria and Yemen. It is the result of massive resentment against dictatorial regimes, but the real problem will be how these revolutions turn out.

That is something we cannot control, but we must do what we can to protect American citizens abroad to protect our national interest and to project real national power.

The Middle East is tribal. With the exception of Israel the “nations” we must deal with are merely armies with a national flag, not modern democratic governments responsive to their citizens. That is why Iraq threatens to break apart. It is why the majority Syrians want to end the minority Alawite tribe’s control. It is why Palestinians are not welcome anywhere.

The President’s top intelligence advisor recently told a Senate committee that sanctions are not working against Iran, but the President wants to pretend they are. The U.S. and the rest of the world are waiting for the Israelis to do to Iran what we and our allies should be doing to end its nuclear threat.

Likewise, if we wait around while the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo makes us look like a bunch of punks it will just get worse for us in Egypt and the Middle East just as it did in 1979.

In Egypt we need to get in, break some furniture, shoot some bad guys, get our people out, and then shut off the billion-plus dollar aid spigot.

No more American tourists, no more American aid, and no more Mr. Nice Guy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Whatever Happened to...?

By Alan Caruba

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary election on Saturday, it strikes me that the overwhelming coverage of the campaign process has shoved some important stories to the sidelines.

There is noticeably little coverage of the nation’s obscene unemployment problem; one that is comparable to the Great Depression.

With ample good reason, we no longer hear anything about (a) global warming or (b) climate change. We don’t hear “renewable energy” stories in the wake of the Solyndra scandal or the demise of comparable “Green” companies, but Obama’s decision to refuse to permit the XL Keystone pipeline was a reminder that all his talk about job creation is just that—talk.

The rising price of a gallon of gasoline is never mentioned in the news, up from $1.86 when Obama took office to $3.40 now. That sort of thing used to get incumbent presidents defeated in the past.

Events beyond our shores continue whether we are in a primary season or not.

The future of the European Union is still somewhat precarious. Whether the Euro continues as the currency of the EU is an important issue affecting America’s trading partners. The U.S. Sovereign debt rating has already been reduced but now nine EU nations have been put on notice as well.

The Obama/Clinton foreign policy in the Middle East continues to erode. Egypt, a major player, is moving into Islamist—anti-American, anti-Israeli—control. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed as a political force in Egypt and today they have emerged as the biggest player. Egypt is moving out of our orbit of influence.

Iran continues inexorably toward acquiring the capacity to make its own nuclear weapons. Its growing desperation regarding the sanctions is generating a lot of bellicose threats. The entire Middle East is silently praying that Israel attacks and disables its nuclear capabilities. Anything else is morally indefensible.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Iraq is in shambles once again with bombs going off in its cities and little likelihood it will be able to function as a nation despite its vast oil riches. Libya has lots of oil, too, but it is still struggling to create a functioning government in the wake of Gaddafi’s overthrow. Syria has everyone in the Middle East on edge watching to see if Assad can avoid what appears to be his inevitable overthrow. His late father, though, did just that by slaughtering thousands.

The seemingly endless political debates continue minus Jon Huntsman who is backing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Pretty soon we shall be calling Romney “Teflon Mitt” because the voters appear to be bored with all the sniping from his opponents regarding his success in the private sector. Newt Gingrich seems to have no idea what capitalism is or does.

Even the calumnies heaped on the Tea Party movement don’t get much attention these days. We have learned, however, that the current Congress has been the least productive, accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in recent history. Records have been kept since 1947. In light of the disaster called Obamacare, that is probably a good thing.

One trend is noticeable. With the exception of the Keystone decision, any news that might harm the reelection of President Obama is hard to find in the mainstream media.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

America's Dark Mood

By Alan Caruba

It is possible for an entire nation to suffer depression? Not the financial, but the emotional kind.

I have not spoken to anyone, however, that has expressed any optimism about the state of the nation and the air is full of conspiracy theories regarding what new action Barack Obama might take. The most popular of these is that he will declare “a national emergency” in order to assert powers that would put him in control of the nation without reference or consultation with Congress.

I would have dismissed such a notion in the past, but Obama genuinely scares me and a lot of other people as well. An example of this was the great surge in gun sales that led up to Christmas. Guns are not generally regarded as the kind of gift you find under the Christmas tree unless you’re a hunter or shooting sportsman.

I cannot shake off the memory of the march on Washington in 2009 when an estimated million Americans gathered there to peacefully protest the pending passage of Obamacare. The President’s chief political advisor, David Axelrod, dismissed the gathering saying, “They’re wrong.” That’s beyond arrogance. It signals contempt for the way a democracy works.

They were not wrong and the Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing in March in response to 26 U.S. State Attorney Generals who filed suit to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional. The manner in which the then-Democrat controlled Congress forced the bill through to passage was scary, along with then-Speaker Pelosi’s statement that we just would have to read the bill “to find out what’s in it.” It was apparent that none of members of Congress who voted for it had bothered to do that.

What’s scary, too, is that Congress has provided the presidency with all manner of virtually dictatorial powers that were intended to be evoked only in the event of a major, national crisis. Even following 9/11 these powers were not used to hamper news coverage, freedom of travel, and other aspects of our lives. 9/11, however, was followed by the Patriot Act and many of us continue to have grave misgivings about some of its provision.

A more recent piece of legislation that permits the President to authorize the seizure, arrest and imprisonment of anyone deemed an enemy of the state is scarier still. Obama says he would not use such powers but modern history is filled with examples of dictators that did.

So, yes, America is in a very dark mood these days. New Hampshire’s citizens are poised to vote for a Republican to be that party’s candidate for the presidency. Adopted in 1945, at the end of World War Two, New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live free or die.” It is my hope that other Americans feel the same way.

Suffice to say that Barack Hussein Obama is not like any other President in the history of the nation. It is more than a little frightening that this unknown quantity was so carefully “packaged” that, along with a mainstream media that were literally enthralled with him, enough voters were found to elect him.

A lot of those voters were young and likely unaware of U.S. history, the Constitution, and the principles by which the nation is intended to be governed. A lot of those young voters, now a bit older, looking for jobs that don’t exist, living at home still, and perhaps also saddled with huge college loan debt may not vote at all or vote for anyone but Obama.

The other group that was instrumental in his victory was African-Americans and one wonders if a majority among them have had a change of heart. I doubt it. A third group was union members and the civil service unions and others have benefited greatly from his Administration despite growing opposition at the state level.

It is worth keeping in mind that there is a hard core of 25% to 30% of voters who are blindly liberal and utterly immune to facts or reality. The “Occupy” movement drew from this group and they quickly wore out their welcome wherever they gathered. If enough liberals are disheartened by their personal situation, they too may not turn out in large numbers to vote.

As for the GOP, it has become fractionalized by its libertarian segment, its evangelical Christian segment, and by what was a cohesive Tea Party conservative segment. They need to set aside their differences to elect a candidate who can defeat Obama and I am inclined to believe that the closer we get to Election Day, they will.

As with any depression, one has to shake it off and find ways to turn dark moods in to bright tomorrows. That’s America’s job. We have done it in the past and we can do it again.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Media Whips Up Phony Iowa Primary Frenzy

By Alan Caruba

We are, once again, witnessing what the media does best, whipping up a public frenzy over an event or, in the present case, the primary elections they are seeking to influence.

The most current example is the forthcoming Iowa caucuses and, as Michael Barone noted in a December 27 Wall Street Journal commentary, Iowa is hardly a bellwether predicting who will be the Republican nominee to oppose Barack Obama.

In “As Iowa Goes, So Goes Iowa” Barone, a respected political analyst, noted that “the Hawkeye State has voted for the eventual Republican candidate only twice—in 1996 for Bob Dole, in 2000 for George W. Bush—and only once was the Iowa winner elected president.”

You would not know that from the 24/7 election coverage of the cable news channels, nor the print media coverage. For Republicans, the greatest concern is that a literal handful of Iowans might vote for Rep. Ron Paul who is to the left of Barack Obama on most issues.

For my part I have tried to ignore Ron Paul as much as possible, but he is getting the full media treatment, including an appearance on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. The views he expresses are pure lunacy. He supports legalizing drugs, shrinking the military, isolationism, and all manner of policies that would incalculably harm the nation.

The whole primary process, along with the many debates, is intended to winnow out the weakest candidates. Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain are already gone. After the Iowa caucuses, no doubt Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman will cease to be serious contenders. Rick Perry has proven himself to be a good governor, but a poor national candidate. Newt Gingrich is waning under close examination.

Mitt Romney is beginning to look like a paragon of experience and rationality.

Insofar as the national media catapulted Barack Obama into the White House, we need to be especially wary of the media’s enthusiasms for one candidate or the other and, at this stage, its “horse race” mentality.

Elections are a study of mass movements, the gathering of supporters coalescing around a particular candidate, and they say much about the national mood.

If the polls are any indication, Obama’s consistently falling approval numbers, despite the occasional blip, suggest that most voters with the exception of diehard liberals are deserting him after three years of crippling national debt, continued high unemployment, flatlining housing prices, his war on energy and the states struggling to deal with illegal immigration. Even liberal news media are pulling back from the adoring coverage he once generated.

Years ago in the 1950s a blue collar philosopher, Eric Hoffer, penned a book, “The True Believer”, that became a national bestseller. Hoffer had devoured the works of great thinkers as he rode the rails during the Depression years, worked in the fields, and became a longshoreman.

Hoffer’s book, still in print, had some insights regarding mass movements that are well worth revisiting. It was written in response to the likes of Hitler and Stalin, but it holds true for the current enthusiasms of Ron Paul’s supporters and those who cling to Obama’s myths.

Well before Obama’s vacuous offer of “hope and change”, Hoffer wrote, “For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power—a slogan, a word, a button. No faith is potent unless it is also faith in the future; unless it has a millennial component”, i.e., a hoped-for period of happiness, peace, prosperity, and justice. Obama has not delivered on any of these.

“Every established mass movement has its distant hope, its brand of dope to dull the impatience of the masses and reconcile them with their lot in life.” Americans, however, may be the most impatient people on Earth.

The utter failure of the Obama administration and the wreckage it has left in its path quickly mobilized a leaderless movement called the Tea Party. Its rejection of Obamacare and other administration policies and programs is the background music to the battle in Congress between those advocating the failed programs of the Democratic Party and the large contingent of newly-minted Tea Party-supported Republicans is evidence of a mass movement that the media continues to disparage.

Even those who do not identify themselves as Tea Party patriots will play an important role in the 2012 elections. Their power is revealed in the Democratic Party’s announcement that it will not seek votes from white, middle class working people, but concentrate instead on those on the government dole, union members, and those who want the status quo.

A national election is an exercise in propaganda, but Hoffer noted that “The truth seems to be that
propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe.” That is Obama’s dilemma and downfall. His endless speeches fall on deaf ears these days and will in 2012.

The 2012 elections will not be decided, nor even influenced by the outcome of the Iowa caucuses. For that we need to watch New Hampshire on January 10, South Carolina on January 21, and most especially, Florida on January 31.

We need more faith in a future without Barack Obama; one that is barely a year away.

We need more faith in the U.S. Constitution and continue to demand that it be obeyed.

We need more faith in our communal past. Hoffer wrote, “It was not the irony of history that the undesired in the countries of Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new world on this continent. Only they could do it.” America continues to be a work in progress.

Pay no heed to the media’s arrogance, wedded to failed socialist programs. Pay no heed to Ron Paul’s lunacy. Pay no heed to Obama’s lies. We shall win through to a restored America.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Pundits, Primaries and Polls

By Alan Caruba

In the event you did not read about it at the time, the Prohibition Party met in June 2011 and nominated Jack Fellure as their presidential candidate. The Socialist Party USA held their convention in October, nominating Stewart Alexander. The Constitution Party will meet in April and the Libertarian party will gather in May 2012. The Green National convention will not be held until July.

You are likely to hear a lot about the 2012 Republican national convention at the end of August in Tampa, Florida and the Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in early September.

To save you any anxiety involved with the latter, Barack Hussein Obama will be the Democratic nominee unless someone checks the U.S. Constitution which specifically states that only a “natural born” (both parents must be citizens) American can run for or be President.

The nominees of the two major parties will be determined by state primaries and the one receiving the most attention at this point is Iowa’s on January 3, 2012. Why anyone takes this primary seriously defies the imagination. Iowa caucuses have selected the widely known choice of both major parties with few exceptions. It did surprise folks when Mike Huckabee won in 2008, but his run quickly faded. You have to go back to 1972 for the George McGovern choice that surprised voters.

As this is being written, there is an orgy of news coverage of various polls in which the candidates for nomination rise and fall like the tides. There is little substance to these polls that are the subject of intense news coverage.

It is naïve to think that the liberal mainstream media does not try to influence the outcome with its selective coverage. Recall that just a few weeks ago, Herman Cain was the choice and now they’re claiming Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul will run away with the Iowa vote.

President Obama’s poll numbers regarding his performance in office are so low that his prospects of reelection even at this date are doubtful. The economy, as always, will be the deciding factor and it will not significantly improve by Election Day.

Political operatives will pay far more attention to the New Hampshire primary on January 10, followed by the January 21 primary in South Carolina, and January 31 primary in Florida. Despite several dozen other state primaries, the party convention nominations will have largely been determined by the January primaries.

Politics in America is a blood sport. So much money depends on their outcomes that literally millions are spent to secure victory. The federal government has become a giant spigot of income redistribution. It is so over-leveraged that it must borrow forty cents of every dollar it spends. This year’s outlay of campaign dollars will no doubt top a billion dollars.

Self-interest will be the driving factor among the donors with ideology a close second. Despite being castigated by President Obama, Wall Street will predictably be a major donor to the Democratic Party. Rent-seeking corporations such as General Electric will not be far behind.

I would recommend that you not get caught up in the journalistic frenzy over the entire primary process. Obama will be the Democratic Party nominee and Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican Party’s choice. It is a cliché, but true nonetheless, that in times of economic crisis, people vote their wallet

Suffice to say I will not be voting for the Prohibition, Green or Socialist Party candidates.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Defining Journalism Downward

By Alan Caruba

New technologies drive out old ones, either eliminating, altering, or reducing their use. The traditional world of print journalism has felt this rather dramatically as subscriptions have fallen off, though often replaced by either free or paid access to their content.

It is their content, however, that has felt the brunt of change because bad or even false journalism is now subject to instant analysis and exposure. It is journalism’s failures or distortions that now are an increasing part of the news stream.

A recent tweet by a Washington Post reporter asking for some dirt on Newt Gingrich as well as earlier breeches of ethical behavior have taken this newspaper from the glory days of Watergate reporting to the most tawdry political intervention. The Post’s job is to observe and report, not to participate or, in this case, initiate. A reporter deliberately and openly seeking to destroy the reputation of a candidate should be fired. There’s a reason why editorials are restricted to the editorial page.

Rather than having to wait for the morning edition to arrive, people have access to 24/7 cable news channels and Internet sites that can update their content at will. There are the aggregators of news like The Drudge Report that shine a spotlight on news reports that might not ordinarily receive attention.

Many such sites have a distinct political orientation, so one can elect to receive either a liberal or a conservative flow of news.

Most certainly consumers of news have grown increasingly wary of its traditional providers—newspapers—who are seen to have agendas that are widely perceived, with notable exceptions, as liberal. Ditto news magazines. Ditto television network news. Ditto the likes of MSNBC. For those outlets suspected of poor journalism, the blowback is lost subcribers, viewers, and listeners. The marketplace rules!

Most certainly, it was journalists who betrayed the nation into electing a complete cipher, Barack Hussein Obama, to the highest office of the land. There will surely be books written about the way the mainstream news media covered the 2008 election, catapulting an unknown, first term Illinois Senator with a virtually invisible resume into the Oval Office. The coverage was egregious and fawning.

It wasn’t journalism. It was propaganda.

The coverage of “global warming” has further done great injury—and continues to do so—as email revelations in 2009 and again this year demonstrate that it was a concoction of the United Nations Environmental Program and, in particular, its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Simply put, it was a lie from start to finish, but it was a lie that was given substance and support from the domestic and international news media as governments became participants as well.

There has been an unspoken redefining of journalism from objective reporting to active participation, deliberately shaping public opinion whether the core of the content offered is true or not.

This has been particularly evident in the areas of science and business reporting. The recently published “The Bloomberg Way: A Guide to Reporters and Editors” notes that “Economies, markets, companies and industries are little understood, much less appreciated. The public—our readers, viewers and listeners—suffers the consequence of journalism’s traditional ignorance of these subjects and the arrogance of reporters and editors reveling in their ignorance.”

That is a fairly astonishing rebuke by its author Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief, but it is also a very accurate one regarding what is surely the most important content any news outlet can offer.

Newspaper’s loss of revenue has reduced the maintenance of foreign bureaus and most such news these days is the product of news syndicates such as the Associated Press and Reuters. The AP has an egregious liberal orientation, harmful to its content.

The lost revenue has greatly reduced staffs in newsrooms. This puts increased pressure on reporters to produce more stories against the usual deadlines. It impacts the quality of the reporting, a process done on the fly in the best of times. Government and other spokespersons have a distinct advantage in shaping or shading the news of the day.

Politics is conducted in a non-stop spin zone. Historically in America, going back to the earliest elections, newspapers have always been enlisted by candidates or parties to advance their message.

Journalism in the broader sense of the word is changing and one of the most unique aspects is the rise of the blogger, often an expert on some aspect of the news such as science, military affairs, energy issues, or just local news. A recent court decision rejected the assertion that bloggers are journalists. Some are. Most are not.

I became a journalist shortly after discharge from the Army in the early-1960s. I went from a rookie reporter to the editor of a local weekly in just under six months because there was no one else to take over the job. I progressed from there to a daily newspaper. The typically low wages journalism provides propelled me into communications jobs for government agencies, a leading educational institution, and into fulltime PR.

I never stopped thinking of myself as a journalist because, ultimately, the only thing that matters is the truth, no matter whether you are providing it or reporting it.

Years later I have come full circle to journalism as a commentator. I still love newspapers, but I know they are dinosaurs, perhaps not doomed, but surely less dominant. Television news is most useful covering natural disasters, local crime, and providing weather reports, beyond that it is thin stuff most of the time.

Good journalism depends on good people, well educated, and skeptical, to report on a very complex world. It will require people with a mastery of specific aspects of that complexity who do not see themselves as “change agents”, but as true reporters.

Instead of pounding out a story on a Remington typewriter, they will so do on laptops and desktops, but real journalism, performed ethically, professionally, and with pride will still be just as exciting. It will still depend on the truth as its most precious commodity.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

"What Were They Thinking?"

By Alan Caruba

The thing I fear most right now is having to write a column about the Republican Party in late November 2012 with the title, “What Were They Thinking?”

Let’s put it this way. No incumbent President since Jimmy Carter has had worse polling numbers than Barack Hussein Obama.

The question—the fear—on the minds of most Republicans these days is whether the Party intends to commit political suicide by choosing the wrong candidate to run against Obama and to add to their present agony, it has a litter of candidates who run the gamut from charisma-challenged to scarily brilliant.

Let’s review the choices.

Jon Huntsman, a former Governor of Utah, is in the race I’m convinced only because he harbors a deep animus for Mitt Romney, a former Governor of Massachusetts and fellow Mormon. Oh? You didn’t notice we have not one, but two, Mormons running? We do. No matter. Huntsman has so far managed to keep his tinfoil hat hidden in a box in the trunk of his car. Fortunately and wisely virtually no one is paying him any attention.

Then there’s Michele Bachmann. Frankly, I don’t want to have to listen to Nanny Michele for four years telling me to clean my plate because there are starving children somewhere in the world. She gained notice leading the Tea Partiers against Obamacare. Good for her. Now please return to the House of Representatives and leave us alone.

Rick Santorum is a very nice fellow and that’s his problem. He’s too nice. He doesn’t scare me or anyone else. In a dangerous world, I want a President who just might blow the hell out of some nation or other. He’s stuck on the abortion issue when the majority of Americans have, for better or worse, moved on.

The Cain Train officially derailed on Saturday, Nov. 4, and saved us from having to further give him any serious attention. I don’t much care that a bunch of dubious women claimed he was a sex fiend. I do care that Herman couldn’t find Ecuador or Chad on the map if his life depended on it. He had no experience working with a legislature or in politics except for losing one race in Georgia. He was and is extraordinarily unqualified to be the President of the United States

It pains me to say this because I love Texans and have many friends who live there, but Governor Rick Perry is not ready for prime time. Granted that Texas is big enough to be a small nation, most people outside of Texas are unaware that its legislature meets in regular session on the second Tuesday in January of each odd-numbered year for a session that is limited to 140 calendar days! Perry is charming and fairly bright, but even I could run Texas by drinking heavily for 140 days every other year.

I will not even linger over Ron Paul because he is a Libertarian and widely believed to have come from another planet. Paul gives “old”, “cantankerous” and “opinionated” whole new meanings when you put those words together in a sentence.

In March of this year I wrote about “the Newt-ster” saying that Newt Gingrich “intellectually, is head and shoulders above anyone else in the race. In terms of pure brain power, he has a real grasp of most issues.” Gingrich has a grasp of every side of every issue because, at one time or another, he has been on it. If, however, you had heard him speak to the Polk County Republican Party in Iowa last week you would know he would wipe the floor with Obama in a debate. For all his flaws—and who does not have flaws—he has an historian’s and working politician’s grasp of issues, big and small. Do I agree with him on all of them? No, but I think he could make the changes needed to turn the nation around and I believe he has a passionate love of America.

Which leaves us with Mitt Romney; old sure-and-steady, a man who has had the political misfortune of actually changing his mind over the years, largely because he ran as a Republican in one of the most Democratic States of the Union…and won!

Romney is an attractive, intelligent, and very well qualified candidate, having succeeded in the worlds of politics and business. Let’s also give him points for having lived a moral life as a good husband and father. He has made it this far without a single major gaffe, but Romney increasingly gives the impression of being robotic. He is locked into his political gameplan and talking points, and it has worked to this point. It may get him the nomination.

Of the two, Gingrich is just more fun to listen to as he speaks extemporaneously, citing Jefferson and Lincoln, quoting the Declaration of Independence, reminding us why the first Americans fought a Revolution. Gingrich has already made some history of his own, wresting control of Congress away from the Democratic Party in the mid-1990s. He could do it again.

The Republican Party made a spectacular mistake in 2008 when they choose John McCain. I think the Iowa primary will give Gingrich a win. I think the New Hampshire primary will give Romney a win. After that, money—lots of it—and organization will make the difference.

What matters above all other considerations is that the Republican Party must have a candidate who can send Obama packing. If that happens, America’s future will begin to improve in the late evening of November 6 when the election results come in.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama Counts on Supreme Court to Okay Healthcare Act

By Alan Caruba

There’s a reason conservatives dislike activist judges and that is their record for rendering judgments that ignore the Constitution and impose their personal views on the rest of us.

Some like the 9th Circuit Court are famous for this and, in my home state of New Jersey, its supreme court imposed a law that required the state to spend billions on “Abbott” districts in some cities to supposedly improve the quality of education.

The New Jersey court ignored the state constitution that, like all others, only empowers the legislature to authorize such funding, but instead the legislature rolled over adding to the debt level of the Garden State. Need it be said it is controlled by Democrats?

Now we learn that the Obama administration is eager to have the Supreme Court rule on Obamacare. The announcement of whether they will or not will come on November 14. Let it be said that the judges read the newspapers too. They know who’s in the White House and where the political power exists in Congress.

While there are a number of reliable conservative interpreters of the Constitution on the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Samuel Alito Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, what makes this particularly worrisome are the two recent Obama appointments, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The two women are liberals and Kagan in particular should recuse herself from the case because she was an advocate of Obamacare, arguing for it when she was the Solicitor General of the U.S., the position she held before being confirmed by a Democrat controlled Senate on August 4, 2010.

Obamacare should and must be repealed NOW. Restore America’s Voice Foundation recently delivered 1.6 petitions calling for this action, the largest such petition drive of its kind in history. We should all contact our Senator’s offices and demand this as well.

The House of Representatives has already voted to repeal Obamacare, a bill that distorts the “commerce clause” of the Constitution. Its passage would place more power in Congress than it was ever intended to have. Were the Supreme Court to rule that it is constitutional, nothing would stand in the way of this and future congresses from passing laws requiring you to purchase goods and services you do not want and cannot afford.

Obamacare must be defeated for the same reason that Barack Obama must be defeated in 2012. It is a wonder to me that he remains in office given the fact that:

He has refused to show a valid birth certificate.

He has a suspicious Social Security number from a state in which he never lived.

He defied a court order to cease implementing the Health Care Act.

He defied a court order to stop implementing the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling moratorium.

He has filed lawsuits against states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN, etc.)

He has appointed 45 “czars” who are unaccountable to Congress.

Under the Constitution, he is ineligible to be President because he is not a “natural born” citizen. His father was a citizen of Kenya.

There are so many reasons why he should be shorn of office that it is only the level of political corruption in Congress, the compliance of the American press, and the astonishing patience of the American people that has allowed him to be President.

America cannot afford to permit Obamacare to become the law of the land. It will not survive four more years of Barack Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Fly on the Wall of the Oval Office

Satire by Alan Caruba

It is not widely known, but security specialists have developed listening devices that resemble an ordinary house fly and one of them was installed in the Oval Office just before Barack Obama walked in on his first day on the job. Here are selections of conversations overheard.

Obama: “Where’s the bathroom. I have to take a wicked wee-wee.”

Obama to Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff: “Chicago rules!”

Obama to Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary: “You’ve got them eating out of your hand. They’re kissing our shoes. Good thing they’re such idiots.”

Obama to Vice President Joe Biden: “Just to go out there and say any damned stupid thing you want to, but stay on the daily storyline so we’re both lying about the same thing.”

Obama to Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State: “We’re going to tilt toward all the Muslim countries. Show them we’re their friend. As for Europe and just about everywhere else, tell them anything they want to hear.”

Obama to Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury: “Tell Bernanke to keep printing money and borrowing a lot. We’re going to be bailing out all our friends on Wall Street, over at General Motors, and giving loans to every cockeyed green energy scheme that walks in the door.”

Obama to Bob Gates, Secretary of Defense: “Thanks for sticking around from the Bush days. Now let’s get the heck out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere else we can. War is so yesterday.”

Obama to Eric Holder, Attorney General: “It’s time to even the score with whitey.”

Obama to Kathleen Sebellius, Secretary of Health: “Wait until they see Obamacare! It’s a socialist dream come true.”

Obama to Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior: “According to Agenda 21, we have hardly made a dent in grabbing up more land for the federal government to control. Also, do whatever you can to slow down all that permitting for coal, oil and natural gas exploration.”

Obama to Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture: “Just keep the farmer’s happy, Tom. We’ll push ethanol for the corn growers and keep doing all the old FDR stuff.”

Obama to Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor: “Hilda, this is going to be an administration the unions love, so keep in close touch with the guys from SEIU, the NEA, and the AFL-CIO. Whatever they want, they get.”

Obama to Gary F. Locke, Secretary of Commerce: “Frankly, Gary, I don’t know a damn thing about business, er…commerce…whatever.”

Obama (on the phone): “No I don’t want to talk to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.”

Obama to Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation: “Ray, think electric cars, high speed trains, you know, stuff people don’t want and don’t need.”

Obama to Janet Napolitano, Secretary of National Security: “Janet, you were Governor of Arizona and now the state is full of illegal Mexicans. Keep up the good work.”

Obama to Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy: “No more coal, Steven. It’s dirty. So is oil. Fact is I think we need a lot less energy to get people used to how bad things are going to get.”

Obama to Lisa Jackson, Director of the Environmental Protection Agency: “Regulate! Regulate! Regulate! Do not hesitate to regulate!”

Obama to Michelle Obama: (On the phone) “Yes, Michelle. Yes, Michelle. Yes, Michelle.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

President Kill-Joy

By Alan Caruba

“We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge,” said President Obama at a recent fundraiser in San Francisco.

Didn’t Obama know that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam to which he also referred were built in the midst of the 1930s Great Depression? And that, clearly, the people that built them had not lost their ambition or willingness to do great things.

What is the difference between those great construction projects and the building of the Freedom Tower that has now passed a decade in the effort to replace the destroyed Twin Towers? The answer is government at all levels from federal to local makes such projects difficult because of a matrix of laws and regulations, mostly environmental, that slow all enterprises in America today.

Well, let me correct myself. If you are building an utterly useless solar farm, utilizing solar panels made in China because it is too costly to make them here. Ditto for wind farms that even some Greens hate. Or if you are building electric cars that no one wants to buy. Then, yes, you not only get a federal multi-million dollar loan guarantee, but a lot of red tape is cut for you.

One is, of course, reminded of the unlamented Jimmy Carter who also had a low opinion of Americans, particularly those who used energy for any reason…like heating their homes in the winter.

There was a time when Democrat Presidents like Truman and Kennedy actually believed in their fellow Americans and said so. Even Clinton expressed confidence in us, but others like Carter and now Obama have been the great kill- joys, forever blaming their own incompetence on all of us, including those who voted for them.

I have long held the belief that Barack Obama does not like Americans. He spent the first year or so of his term going around the world criticizing America as the source of all the world’s ills.

Increasingly, the only audiences that cheer when the President shows up are largely composed of adolescents and union members. They either don’t know any better or are just happy to have a day off with pay.

And when a President shows up, he’s supposed to lift our spirits and inspire us. Except this one!

“Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation.” Says who? We are a long way from becoming an Islamic nation with Sharia law replacing the Constitution. Say amen everybody!

“In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.” Oh, you mean like the way Europe started both World War One and Two? Like the Europe facing a present crisis of sovereign debt that will collapse the European Union like a house of cards?

“We need to internalize this idea of excellence”, adding “Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.” Like you? Did you get your latest polling scores by being excellent? And why have you gone to great length to ensure that no one can see your college grades? Or anything else for that matter.

“I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.” Does that include the Standard & Poors’ downgrade of our credit rating for the first time in the nation’s history? Any more restoration like this and there won’t be enough electricity to keep the lights on.

I could go on but, as they say, the facts speak for themselves and, unfortunately, President Obama just keeps speaking and speaking and speaking about himself.

The one thing we are willing—eager—to do is go to the polls in November 2012 and send this retard back to Chicago.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Barocky Road

In honor of the 44th President of the United States , Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor: Barocky Road .

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $82.84 per scoop...so out of a hundred dollar bill you are at least promised some CHANGE..!

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but after you pay for it, the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you at no charge.

You are left with an empty wallet, staring at an empty cone and wondering what just happened.

Stimulating isn't it?

Editor's Note: Source Unknown

Jimmy Obama

The Cain Phenomenon

By Alan Caruba

Gov. Chris Christie has dropped out of contention as a GOP presidential candidate. So has Sarah Palin. Fading swiftly is Michelle Bachmann and the others, leaving Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and to the astonishment of a lot of people, Herman Cain.

What would astonish everyone would be a 2012 presidential race between a mulatto, Barack Obama who identifies with his African-American ancestry and ignores his white mother, and Herman Cain who rarely even refers to being a black American because it is increasingly irrelevant as people pay more and more attention to his message.

Cain would crush Obama. One gets the feeling that he got into the presidential race for that purpose.

Obama’s appalling performance in the highest office has seen his polling numbers decline. Obama is likely to be identified as the “American Idol” candidate who went from the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate to the presidency in four years. He is a political aberration, the result of media manipulation, and very bad mistake.

Terence P. Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com, reported on Thursday, October 6, that “The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,009,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30.”

“That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $.212 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through G.H.W. Bush combined.”

Herman Cain is all about fiscal sanity. Herman Cain is about capitalism. Barack Obama is a Marxist.

Cain’s message is beginning to resonate in Republican circles, especially among those who identify with the Tea Party movement.

This is not to say we can rule out Mitt Romney’s candidacy, though it is increasing clear that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is beginning to sound warning bells in the minds of many Republicans as his charm and bravado begins to thin in the wake of his poor debate performances and his unsteady responses to questions reporters pose.

Daniel Henninger, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing on September 29th, gave a brief précis of Cain’s resume in the world of business, asking “Does a resume like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-election software.”

Henninger concluded that “Herman Can is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.”

It is a long time between now and November 6, 2012, but I think Republican and, should he get the nomination, American voters, are going to giving Herman Cain a very serious look.

If Cain is elected, it will mean that a nation that fought a Civil War over slavery and waited another hundred years to finally confer full Constitutional rights to African-Americans will confound themselves and the entire world by putting Cain in the Oval Office.

I am not counting out Mitt Romney at this early point. He has become a very good campaigner. He’s refined his message, he is charming, and he “looks” like the Hollywood version of a president. He’s also a RINO, a very moderate candidate at a point in current history when the nation needs and wants radical change if it is to avert the deliberate destruction imposed on it by Barack Obama.

Herman Cain’s website offers his “999 Plan” and it is worth reading because it represents all the steps that must be taken to take American back from the brink of bankruptcy, from massive unemployment, and a thorough understanding of how to achieve that.

The primaries that lie ahead—Florida would vote next week if it could, followed by all the other states—will be the final determination of who will be the GOP’s presidential candidate. There’s plenty of time left for the fortunes of candidates to shift, but like Daniel Henninger, I am giving Herman Cain a serious look.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama Fatigue

By Alan Caruba

It occurred to me (and probably a lot of others as well) that it’s just over for Obama. It doesn’t matter that he intends to present yet another “plan” to get Americans working again after his Martha’s Vineyard vacation.

Whatever plan Obama puts forward will simply repackage his failed “stimulus”, his “tax the rich”, and other idiotic socialist notions of how to “fix” the economy. They didn’t work during the Great Depression and will not work now.

Like a female preying mantis that eats the head of the male who mates with her, just about everyone that has had any contact with Barack Obama suffers as a result. It didn’t matter if it was his white grandparents who took him in when his mother abandoned him---after having gone through two husbands. It didn’t matter if it was his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in whose church he learned the fundamentals of black liberation theology. He has a habit of abandoning or denying relationships. His marriage appears to be the exception.

Presidents, though, are judged on their accomplishments and Obama has so few it’s becoming an embarrassment. Like the woman who told him she was “exhausted” from trying to defend him, a lot of die-hard liberals are looking for cover as he hits the campaign trail to secure the nomination for a second term. If there is such a thing as an honest Democratic Party consultant or strategist, they would surely tell you that Obama is going to be overwhelmingly defeated.

A former Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards, famously said that the only way he could be defeated was if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. The only way the Republican candidate will be defeated would involve similar indiscretions. That has not stopped liberal scum from advertising for “dirt” on Gov. Rick Perry.

This is likely to be one of the dirtiest, if not the dirtiest, campaign ever waged against whoever is the Republican choice to run against Obama. That’s the “Chicago way.”

Come September, policy wonks will be looking to see what Obama has to say about the one issue that will surely defeat him, unemployment. Let me save you some time, the ill-famed “stimulus” devoted much of its billions as transfers to states so teachers, police and fireman could be retained and pensions paid, to ill-fated “green” enterprises, and to a few infrastructure projects after Obama discovered there weren’t many that were “shovel ready.”

The other part of his plan was to expand the size of the federal government through the creation of some truly monstrous bureaucracies such as those associated with Obamacare and the passage of the Dodd-Frank oversight of banks and financial firms.

Simply stated, government does not create jobs in the private sector. It just creates government jobs. Even The New York Times took note of a Brookings Institution report that found “clean-technology jobs accounted for just two percent of employment nationwide.”

To which I say, “Duh!” If you want to know where solar panels and wind turbines are manufactured, Google CHINA. In the U.S., they are merely assembled for sale. So-called “green” companies are filing for bankruptcy with predictable frequency, taking taxpayer subsidies and grants with them.

What I confess I find astonishing are the continuing reports of the President’s fund-raising success. Notably Obama has already scheduled far more such events than the last four presidents who preceded him. Hollywood gives gobs of money and so does Wall Street. The latter has always struck me as odd if only because it represents a hotbed of capitalism while, in reality, its denizens tend to be raving liberals.

What worries me more than anything else about President Obama is the fact that he has sixteen months left in which to inflict as much damage on the economy and the nation’s future as possible. I have little doubt that is his intent.

He just issued an Executive Order as an end-run around the illegal alien amnesty issue that Americans have defeated a half dozen times when Congress tried to get it passed. The new fuel economy standards his administration has announced will add an average of $11,000 to the cost of buying a new car.

Another recent executive order tells the heads of departments and agencies to make sure their hiring practices involve “diversity” which is another way of saying pass on qualified whites and hire blacks and Hispanics. His Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomeyer, once ruled that a local fire department had to lower its hiring standards because no blacks passed its application exam. Whatever happened to color blind hiring?

A President is expected to provide leadership and Obama has provided none, domestic or foreign.

Americans cannot begin to fathom how much other nations around the world look to America to set the tone and provide direction in the conduct of their affairs with each other. We have seen what happens when foreign leaders and troublemakers conclude the President of the United States of America can be ignored with impunity.

America is experiencing Obama Fatigue. He has worn out everyone with endless speeches. The man lies. He lies all the time. He lies more than Bill Clinton during the awful Monica Lewinsky scandal or Richard Nixon during Watergate.

His job plan will be another lie, another pathetic liberal concoction in which the government just spends more money it does not have. Or worse, intends to tax people for money they cannot spare.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

God Sends Obama a Message

God sends Obama a message:

Hurricane Irene

Earthquake in D.C.

Earthquake and tsunami in Japan

Mississippi River flooding

Gulf of Mexico oil leak

Obamacare

Debt ceiling

Standard & Poor’s

The US economy

Democrat Party

Nancy Pelosi

Harry Reid

Joe Biden

And, finally, the Tea Party!

Black America's Gains and Losses

By Alan Caruba

You know that Barack Obama is in trouble when even the Congressional Black Caucus begins to criticize him.

Maxine Waters (D-CA) recently told a gathering that the CBC is “frustrated” with regard to unemployment, a problem that has hit blacks harder than whites. The only thing holding the CBC back from being more vocal, said Waters, was its fear they will lose the support of the black community.

It says something about Congress and politics in America that the only race-based caucus is the Black Caucus.

Like many Americans, I watched the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s unfold with the feeling that, a century passed the Civil War, it was long overdue.

The movement had a leader of remarkable talent, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., plus others from the ministry and labor movement. It was a time of turmoil that ended with the assassinations of Dr. King, President John F. Kennedy, and of Bobby Kennedy.

Others died too in the struggle but they have become relegated to being minor historic players. When the dust settled President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The changes in American life since then have been extraordinary. Afro-Americans were assured their voting rights, equal housing, and other opportunities that had been routinely denied.

Whites accommodated themselves to the changes, having already accepted the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that "separate but equal" schools, a widespread practice in the southern and border States, were unconstitutional.

While many blacks have achieved middle class status and risen to levels of real achievement, the vast bulk has not. These comments acknowledge individual success stories, but address the larger black community.

As a general observation, blacks in America have chosen to ignore the gains in legally protected civil rights equality.

By most indices the black community has not changed. In U.S. cities they remain ghettoized, as much from choice, as external circumstances. Instead of moving forward, integrating and assimilating into the larger white population; blacks have emotionally remained apart, nurturing a sense of being victims, holding onto an animus for whites.

Social failures are so rampant among blacks that it is appalling to contemplate how many are born into single-parent families, often raised a mother or grandparents because the men are absent. They drop out of school. Unskilled and often illiterate, employment opportunities are limited. Blacks and crime have become synonymous to the point where they fill the nation’s prisons far in excess of whites and Hispanics. Drug use ravages black communities.

To say whites are disappointed is an understatement. It is a source of resentment that is rarely expressed aloud to avoid being deemed a racist or engaging in hate speech.

So how does one explain the phenomenon of the first black President?

Observers attribute it to a large turnout of younger voters, born well after the 1960s, to union members, many of whom were government workers, to 98% of the Afro-American community, and, of course, Democrats in general. Many white voters who wanted to affirm their belief that equality was an American value pulled the lever for Obama.

Barack Obama has exacerbated white disappointment and it is likely that many blacks, too, are experiencing buyer’s lament.

Among whites, there’s a feeling that scores are being settled with incidents like Obama’s condemnation of a white Boston police officer, the appointment of Eric Holder as the first black Attorney General, and of others like Van Jones as Obama's “Green Jobs Czar.” Jones is a self-identified Communist and a radical environmentalist who resigned and is now safe in the bosom of progressive organizations.

The latest affront to a predominantly white population is an executive order, issued on August 18, titled “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workplace.” In other words, whites need not apply.

When whites became aware of Obama’s preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying “God damn America”, they had to actively ignore the fact that Obama had spent many years in his church, that Wright had married him and Michelle, and baptized their children. Theirs was no casual relationship, nor were others from any earlier point in his life such as the Communist Party member, Frank Marshall Davis, who advised young Barack that his white grandmother had a right to be scared of blacks because “She understands that black people have a reason to hate.”

It will be a long time before the majority white and Hispanic populations forget or forgive the legacy of Barack Obama.

Obama has wreaked economic havoc on America since taking office and this time people—black, white, Asian and Hispanic—have taken notice.

© Alan Caruba 2011

Flash Mobs: Being Young, Black, and Male in America Today

By Alan Caruba

Those who follow my commentaries know that I rarely discuss race in America. I find it an unhappy topic at best and, from my readings in U.S. history, I feel safe in saying there was never a good time to be Black in America.

Slavery before, during and after the American Revolution was a stain on the nation and, though some were slave owners, the Founding Fathers knew it. To get the new Constitution ratified among the thirteen States, they had to trim their sails to the point where Article One, Section Two refers to “those bound to service” and, for the purpose of taxation of “free persons”, the slaves were counted as “three fifths of all other Persons.” Ugh.

It would, of course, take a Civil War to end slavery, though Lincoln’s preferred solution was to put the slaves on a ship back to Africa. That was not likely because by 1861 when the war began, there were 3,954,000 slaves, the majority of whom lived on plantations where, from Virginia to Texas, they often outnumbered whites by 13 to 1.

My awareness of Blacks was limited in my youth, growing up in an upscale New Jersey suburban community where they were quite scarce. You could count the number of Black students in my high school on one hand. When I was drafted in the Army most of my service in the early 1960s was on a base in the Deep South. It gave me a close up view of segregation. When I was discharged, I became a journalist on a weekly serving a small New Jersey city neighboring Newark. I was there when the city’s first Black mayor was elected.

It was the time of the Civil Rights movement, filled with marches and tumult. I met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1967 Newark erupted in rioting, the result of poverty, and of sense of being powerless and disenfranchised. The Italians who had run the city gave way to Black politicians and, five decades later, they still are in charge, but the social problems remain.

If anyone would have told me that America would elect a Black President, I would have said that was impossible. I was wrong and so were the many Blacks who rejoiced in the election of Barack Obama, confident that he would take the lead, representing them, paying particular attention to their issues. Obama proved to be more concerned with Islam.

I got to thinking about that when several commentators, referring to how he would be remembered, said that Obama would no longer be remembered as the first Black President, but rather as the first Downgrade President. When he addressed the nation on August 8, his cool detachment seemed alarmingly at odds with the tumult on Wall Street and around the world that had been triggered by Standard & Poor’s decision.

How do Blacks perceive Obama, I wondered.

A friend, Milton, a retired Black corporate executive, attorney, business owner who edits and writes for BlackQuillandInk.com, a website for Black conservatives, responded to my question noting that Black support for Obama’s candidacy was about 98%, but has slipped since to around 86%.

It was his view that the Blacks “have been poisoned to dislike non-Blacks” and to see themselves “as victims.” I understand the victim part, but was surprised by his observation regarding the animosity, if only because White America has gone to fairly extraordinary lengths to redress the ills of the past.

As America’s most famous minority, Blacks are now outnumbered by Hispanics and are being by-passed by virtually all other minority in America in terms of achievement and upward mobility. The chains may have been removed, but, as the syndicated columnist. Walter E. Williams, noted in July 2010, “The pathology seen among a large segment of the Black population is not likely to change because it is not seen for what it is. It has little to do with slavery, poverty and racial discrimination.”

“Today’s black illegitimacy rate is about 70%,” said Williams. “When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15%...Today, only 35% of black children are raised in two-parent households.”

And it gets worse. In an August 2010 Washington Post article by columnist George Will, he wrote that “By the early 2000s, more than a third of all young black non-college men were under the supervision of the corrections system. More than 60% of black high school dropouts born since the mid-1960s go to prison. Mass incarceration blights the prospects of black women.”

In recent weeks, from the Wisconsin State Fair to Philadelphia, from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, reports of flash mobs of young Blacks attacking whites are stirring racial fears. The most dangerous factor in Black cities and neighborhoods are the hordes of young males, raised by one parent, dropouts from school, no skills, no jobs, no prospects, and lots of angry energy that is too often diverted into crime and violence.

Barack Obama’s economic policies have failed the nation, but they have been especially adverse on Blacks. Black unemployment and foreclosures, for example, have skyrocketed under Obama and remain disproportionately high as compared to other communities. In short, Obama has done nothing for Blacks in America either on the macro and micro level to improve their opportunities or attitudes.

He has nothing in common with them; a half-white Columbia University graduate and Harvard educated lawyer, former instructor at the University of Chicago, married to a Princeton and Harvard graduate, herself an attorney. They have two girls that go to private school and their inner circle of friends, Black and white, are dedicated Marxists.

The editor of BlackQuillandInk.com says. “The Black community refuses to admit how wrong they were in voting for Obama.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

How to Create an Instant Bear Market

Dopey Deadlines & Deadbeat Democrats

By Alan Caruba

Is Tim Geithner the most clueless Secretary of the Treasury this nation has ever had? Is he the Eddie Haskell of national debt, so eager to please Obama that he has been a party to driving it up by trillions since his master took the oath of office?

Now, we are all forced to witness the idiotic political machinations of the White House trying desperately to put off the greatest financial debacle to face the nation in its entire history. It’s so bad that Moody’s Investor service has the U.S. “under review” to take away our unparalleled triple-A rating.

What makes his August 2nd deadline to raise the debt ceiling particularly obscene is that it is the anniversary of the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence.

For you history buffs, August 2nd was also the date in 1934 that Adolf Hitler became the Fuhrer of Germany and the same day, five years later in 1939 that Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to begin developing an atomic bomb.

It makes you wonder if history isn’t just a record of wars won and lost, along with an unbroken series of mistakes that would make any sane person scratch their head in bewilderment.

How did the United States of America go from Thomas Jefferson, the brilliant author of the Declaration of Independence to Timothy Geithner, a very upwardly mobile student of government and monetary affairs?

Suffice to say, as a public servant, he has served to the satisfaction of his mentors in numerous positions and also in liberal enclaves such as the Council on Foreign Relations and a three-year stint at Kissinger Associates, learning from one of the most Machiavellian characters of the modern era. At the tender age of 42, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The liberal elite take care of its own.

Geithner is the ying to Obama’s yang. They are perfectly suited to each other because both get their jollies playing the great game of state, although it should be said that Geithner is far better prepared for that role having studied abroad, including two years, 1981-2 studying Mandarin at Peking University and Beijing Normal University. His M.A. is in international economics and Asian studies from John Hopkins University School of advanced International Studies.

Obama’s education ended with a law degree from Harvard. Nobody knows what grades he made at Occidental, Columbia University or Harvard. He is often mistakenly referred to as a former professor of constitutional law at Chicago University, but in fact he was akin to a teaching assistant or adjunct, the lowest end of the academic ladder.

Obama’s mentors included a known member of the Communist Party when he was growing up in Hawaii, various “Marxist professors” at Occidental and Columbia University, and Bill Ayers who gained fame as a domestic terrorist, a member of the Weather Underground who describes himself as a “Communist with a small c.” To bring matters full circle, Ayers is a retired University of Illinois at Chicago professor.

All this is by way of background to suggest that the debt ceiling will be increased because there is no alternative.

The Washington Posts’ Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post White House reporter, posted this on their blog on July 13th.

“Today’s White House meeting suggests there is no deal remotely in sight on the debt ceiling. A GOP aide familiar with the talks told me, “Today was the most tense meeting of the week. In fact, the president ended the meeting by abruptly leaving the room. During the meeting, the speaker challenged the president to offer real spending cuts. He said the gimmicks and accounting tricks that Washington has used for decades are not applicable here.” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has had enough. “When White House officials attempted to justify budgetary gimmicks, the speaker said pointedly ‘We’re not doing that anymore.’”

At some point you wonder what is the point of keeping the talks from public scrutiny. The pathetically passive media is not demanding particulars from the White House. So, Obama sits back, refusing to present any significant cuts. He’s serious about three things: making the Republicans out to be the bad guys, doing nothing to upset his base and insisting on tax hikes. If this is where he really stands, it’s time, perhaps, to pull the plug or pull back the curtain on the charade.”

The only thing on Obama’s mind is how to position himself as the hero that saved America from the tripling of a huge debt that is mostly his making and to make the Republicans look like horrible people for insisting that the government stop spending money faster than Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve can print it.

As Karl Rove recent wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “The president has not only governed as a liberal—he’s governed as an incompetent liberal, thereby reminding voters that electing a Republican Congress and president next year is the only way to change direction.” A recent Gallup poll has Obama losing to any generic Republican candidate!

Little of this before, on, or after August 2, 2011 has anything to do with a responsible response by the Democrats in Congress or the White House to a huge debt that just keeps getting bigger with every passing day.

Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, once said, “It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.” Americans, since the beginning of the 20th century have been suffering the tyranny of socialism and a bloated government with seemingly no limits on its growth or its spending.

© Alan Caruba, 2011