(Updated and expanded, October 9, '10)
The United States is roiling. This Age of Obama has brought a wrack and upheaval in America beyond what even Obama-bashing right-wing reactionary rednecks like myself had reckoned on.
This is the greatest disquiet in American society in at least a generation, and what is called the mainstream press mostly missed the story, because it's part of the same elite that's looking over the palace balconies at all those uncouth, unlovely commoners in this Great Peasant Revolt.
It does seem that there's an entire class of people who deny or dismiss what President Obama and his Congress have wrought, or else blame the American people for not more joyfully giving their country away and deferring to their elite while it "remakes the nation" unrecognizably. There's a conventional wisdom among the conventional Obama-apologists to explain it all away, invoking the old "it's the economy, stupid" formulation from the 1992 presidential campaign, that if the natives are restless then it's a simple matter of their impatience with the pace of Obama's economic "recovery," which is perceptible mainly to the most partisan Democrats and the press. It is the economy, sure enough, but it's everything else as well.
So here is a pitifully inadequate list of recent news to give some small sense of the state of the United States in the Age of Obama, Year 2. Anyone depending for their news on the news sections of this Chronicle-Herald would be oblivious to all of the following points and more besides.
In just the first year and a half under Obama, the national debt "held by the public" went from $6.3 trillion or $20,000 per American, to $8.8 trillion or $28,000 for every man, woman and child in America -- more debt in 19 months than was accumulated under the first 40 presidencies over 200 years.
In the 19 months since Obama's $862 billion stimulus to "create or save 3 to 4 million jobs," the American economy has lost 2.6 million jobs net.
More Americans have died in Afghanistan in 20 months under Obama and his suicidally-restrictive rules of engagement, than died in seven years under Bush.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps confirmed that Obama's announced date-certain for starting the Afghan withdrawal is giving "sustenance" to the enemy.
The ruinous ramifications of Obama's unread, 2,700-page health-care bill have been coming out every few days, from the very East German requirement that businesses file two "1099" forms for every transaction with another party having dealings amounting to more than $600 a year, to increases in premiums of up to 9 percent, to the outlawing of the cheaper, no-frills prescription plans held by over 3 million seniors.
Obama's mad "Cash for Clunkers" policy of destroying used cars caused a needless and predictable shortage, so that Edmunds.com found the average used car a year later cost $1,800 more.
Obama's allies at the "Business Roundtable" turned on him, its chairman blaming him and his Congress for an "increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation."
Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is regulating the smaller operators in the New England groundfishery out of business, its Obama-appointed administrator having declared openly her intent to "remove" a "significant fraction of the vessels."
The House of Representatives didn't bother itself with passing a budget for the first time since the Budget Act of 1974, despite that House Democrats have a 77-seat margin and can pass any old thing they please.
The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who was as responsible as any single figure for Obama's unread, 2,300-page finance reform bill, announced that "no-one will know until this is actually in place how it works."
Two Justice Department lawyers testified that Obama's Civil Rights Division is "hostile" to "race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act."
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement union council voted "no confidence" in the Obama administration, 259 to 0, charging that Obama's ICE director and assistant director "have abandoned the agency's core mission."
When the president of Mexico used the occasion of his address to a joint session of Congress to denounce Arizona's modest and necessary steps against its illegal alien invasion -- which steps are supported by two-thirds of the American people -- the Democratic majority and Obama administration attendees rose in a 20-second standing ovation, after which the Obamas threw him a White House celebrity dance party.
And after Obama's cancellation of America's manned space program, for the first time since there's there's been such a thing as manned space flight, his NASA administrator listed three charges given him by Obama, none of which had anything to do with space, and "perhaps foremost" of which was "to reach out to the Muslim world."
Obama and his Congress have taken things uniformly from bad to worse, and conjured new troubles where there were none. They have replaced the consent of the governed with contempt for the governed, and they do not know better than the American people what's good for them. Obama's campaign was a fraud, and the question now is whether he'll even offer for re-election, or if he'll tell the American people that they can't fire him, he quits. There's a reckoning coming.
The United States is roiling. This Age of Obama has brought a wrack and upheaval in America beyond what even Obama-bashing right-wing reactionary rednecks like myself had reckoned on.
This is the greatest disquiet in American society in at least a generation, and what is called the mainstream press mostly missed the story, because it's part of the same elite that's looking over the palace balconies at all those uncouth, unlovely commoners in this Great Peasant Revolt.
It does seem that there's an entire class of people who deny or dismiss what President Obama and his Congress have wrought, or else blame the American people for not more joyfully giving their country away and deferring to their elite while it "remakes the nation" unrecognizably. There's a conventional wisdom among the conventional Obama-apologists to explain it all away, invoking the old "it's the economy, stupid" formulation from the 1992 presidential campaign, that if the natives are restless then it's a simple matter of their impatience with the pace of Obama's economic "recovery," which is perceptible mainly to the most partisan Democrats and the press. It is the economy, sure enough, but it's everything else as well.
So here is a pitifully inadequate list of recent news to give some small sense of the state of the United States in the Age of Obama, Year 2. Anyone depending for their news on the news sections of this Chronicle-Herald would be oblivious to all of the following points and more besides.
In just the first year and a half under Obama, the national debt "held by the public" went from $6.3 trillion or $20,000 per American, to $8.8 trillion or $28,000 for every man, woman and child in America -- more debt in 19 months than was accumulated under the first 40 presidencies over 200 years.
In the 19 months since Obama's $862 billion stimulus to "create or save 3 to 4 million jobs," the American economy has lost 2.6 million jobs net.
More Americans have died in Afghanistan in 20 months under Obama and his suicidally-restrictive rules of engagement, than died in seven years under Bush.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps confirmed that Obama's announced date-certain for starting the Afghan withdrawal is giving "sustenance" to the enemy.
The ruinous ramifications of Obama's unread, 2,700-page health-care bill have been coming out every few days, from the very East German requirement that businesses file two "1099" forms for every transaction with another party having dealings amounting to more than $600 a year, to increases in premiums of up to 9 percent, to the outlawing of the cheaper, no-frills prescription plans held by over 3 million seniors.
Obama's mad "Cash for Clunkers" policy of destroying used cars caused a needless and predictable shortage, so that Edmunds.com found the average used car a year later cost $1,800 more.
Obama's allies at the "Business Roundtable" turned on him, its chairman blaming him and his Congress for an "increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation."
Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is regulating the smaller operators in the New England groundfishery out of business, its Obama-appointed administrator having declared openly her intent to "remove" a "significant fraction of the vessels."
The House of Representatives didn't bother itself with passing a budget for the first time since the Budget Act of 1974, despite that House Democrats have a 77-seat margin and can pass any old thing they please.
The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who was as responsible as any single figure for Obama's unread, 2,300-page finance reform bill, announced that "no-one will know until this is actually in place how it works."
Two Justice Department lawyers testified that Obama's Civil Rights Division is "hostile" to "race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act."
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement union council voted "no confidence" in the Obama administration, 259 to 0, charging that Obama's ICE director and assistant director "have abandoned the agency's core mission."
When the president of Mexico used the occasion of his address to a joint session of Congress to denounce Arizona's modest and necessary steps against its illegal alien invasion -- which steps are supported by two-thirds of the American people -- the Democratic majority and Obama administration attendees rose in a 20-second standing ovation, after which the Obamas threw him a White House celebrity dance party.
And after Obama's cancellation of America's manned space program, for the first time since there's there's been such a thing as manned space flight, his NASA administrator listed three charges given him by Obama, none of which had anything to do with space, and "perhaps foremost" of which was "to reach out to the Muslim world."
Obama and his Congress have taken things uniformly from bad to worse, and conjured new troubles where there were none. They have replaced the consent of the governed with contempt for the governed, and they do not know better than the American people what's good for them. Obama's campaign was a fraud, and the question now is whether he'll even offer for re-election, or if he'll tell the American people that they can't fire him, he quits. There's a reckoning coming.
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