Gary Was Wrong - July 2009

My June column on the first 100 days of disaster thus far from Obama’s reckless regime turned out to be too kind to him. Events of the past month have already proved that his poor decisions since January have put the world in grave military and economic danger. More about that in future columns.

For now, I’d like to comment on many of the thoughts which my new opponent on the left, Gary Lazarus, wrote in his inaugural column last month. I was quite pleased to see Gary admit in his first column that the recent worldwide banking collapse was caused by deregulation efforts which started in the Carter years and picked up steam in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Of course he didn’t mention those names or that our country had Democratic presidents at that time. But I thank him anyway for his honesty and look forward to other similar admissions in the months to come.

On the other hand, Gary stated that “few Presidents in our history have faced the challenges that Barack Obama now faces”. I beg to differ and only need to remind him what our country faced that September morning in 2001. There have been few challenges of that magnitude facing any President of the United States. That one day changed the Bush Presidency and our country forever. Whether you liked Bush’s response or not, our homeland stayed safe for the rest of his Presidency. I still shutter to think what a President Al Gore or a President Barack Obama would have done.

Gary also stated that there is no more pressing challenge for Obama than the economy.
As any student of economics knows, the economy tends to move in business cycles in which every 7 or 8 eight years, the economy reverses it previous course and either retracts or expands. Obama happened to take office when a cyclical retraction was underway just as Bush did after the economy started to slide in 1999 from the bursting of the stock market tech bubble during Clinton’s final year. Certainly the banking and housing crisis add a level of severity to the current retraction but we must not forget it was Democratic protectionism for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their forcing of banks to loan in red zones which helped create the housing crisis.

The good news is that many economists believe our current recession is on the mend already no thanks to any of Obama’s planned multi-trillion dollar borrow and spend plans since even his own administration has admitted that less than 5% of those trillions have yet to be awarded or spent. And the American public understands this reality since recent polls already show that the Obama regime’s reckless economic plan has caused polls to again reflect a higher trust in Republicans than Democrats to manage our economy. But when that money starts to flow get ready for inflation we have not seen since the Carter days.

I do pity Gary for falling for many of President Obama’s campaign lies. Despite Obama promising to end the war in Iraq, Obama has already admitted that tens of thousands of troops may be needed indefinitely – just as candidate McCain had said – in order to ensure that this new beacon of democracy can be sustained. And Gary fell for media talking points that an Obama Presidency would result in an improved image of the United States around the world. So why have no other countries joined the Obama surge in Afghanistan? And why have France’s Sarkozy and Germany’s Merkel already expressed their concern for the direction Obama is taking our economy? And why have European voters recently moved many of that continent’s governments to the right while our country is sadly moving to the left?

Gary also made a point of mentioning a comment that radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh opined about wanting Obama’s policies to fail. I do not recall the Democrats rooting for George Bush’s tax cuts to succeed (thankfully the cuts did) or rooting for his efforts in Iraq to prevail (Democratic Senate President Harry Reid in an almost treasonous moment took to the Senate floor one day to say that we had lost that war). Recent polls are proving that the American public already does not like many of the actions which the reckless Obama regime is taking. Sounds to me that Rush was just reflecting what the American public has already come to think of Obama’s ruinous plans for change.