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Wow. President Obama and the question:

Is he “Deserving of Darts”?

Broad subject…right?

We have never “awarded” Barack Obama this dubious GiN distinction before for one simple reason: once we’d get going, we’d be hard pressed to stop. The GiN Joint doesn’t have that many darts on the premises…in fact, we’d probably create a national dart shortage.

The content of Thursday’s speech rolling out “The American Jobs Act”, provided a target-rich environment to be sure, but I honestly didn’t catch every word. I was frequently talking to my TV…frequently asking rhetorical questions of the President on the screen…frequently wondering aloud at the dizzy Democrats who applauded so many times…frequently expressing frustration about past Republican responses to similar policies. I didn’t start talking to the TV right away. It’s been a while since anything the President has said provoked that reaction from me.

When I realized I was listening to practically the same speech I’d heard too many times in January and February 2009, realized I was listening to even more obviously absurd version of the February 2009 Stimulus push, I confess, I really lost my temper.

It’s very important to understand that the February 2009 Stimulus is “the gift that keeps on giving”. Over two and a half years after that monstrosity’s passage, the facts about its damage to the economy, irresponsible spending, fueling of left-wing agendas, paybacks to political cronies, and its whitewash over state and local budgetary problems are still coming to light. Perhaps the most recent bit of information readers will recall involves the diversity manuals purchased by Omaha Public Schools. Our article “$130k for School Diversity Manuals Just the Tip of the Stimulus Iceberg” exposed much greater amounts of damaging spending than $130,000, and that article focused only on the Stimulus’ education spending. Ironically, we just referenced that article on Wednesday when we provided a visual example of such waste.

And of course, we’ve written about the Stimulus bill many times before. Although I will not take the time to re-hash all of its problems here ( just those of which we are aware, anyway), I will point out two articles we’ve written because the ideas they include are very important and worth repeating:

• In July, we published “OF COURSE the Stimulus is Killing Jobs and Unemployment is Up” in which we highlighted an analysis by White House economists which included numbers that proved the February 2009 Stimulus was actually killing jobs.
• In March, we published “The State of Nebraska Has YOUR Medical Records: Next Up…the Feds“, in which we explained that the February 2009 Stimulus was actually historic health care legislation because it contained buried provisions to set up an entire medical records infrastructure, through government, and was a set up for the health care “reform”.

If you take a look at those articles about education spending, medical records technology, and search the site for “Heineman Stimulus“, the frustration I mention above about Republican responses might make more sense.

Quite obviously, it would be possible to take the President’s “jobs speech” line by line and take apart the flawed, dangerous thinking behind it. But we must focus on a particular bulls-eye here. Because I was talking too much, we must be thankful that Linda is more able to keep her temper than I. She caught the most disturbing statement he made:

How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this Chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result? (emphasis added)

The embedded video, below, is the full speech. The President made the remarks above beginning at approximately 28 minutes, 25 seconds.

Wow.

What he is talking about?

Let’s consult the experts.

Of course, we need the appropriate music as we ponder and write down our answer:

I know! I know!

scribble

scribble

scribble

scribble

For all of those who wrote down the correct answer:

I suppose we could call the Constitution “rigid” IF we would consider the idea that we should adhere to the rule of law rigid¹.

What President Obama advocated in his speech generally and alluded to in his amazing “rigid” remark should not be misinterpreted as ignorance. As I wrote for A New America:

“A philosophy of positive rights epitomizes the Obama Administration.
Barack Obama knows the Constitution, he just doesn’t agree with it.“

To illustrate that point, I chose to include a clip from the following 2001 Chicago Public Radio interview:

So let’s discard the facade. Re-read the President’s statement with the word Constitution substituted in the appropriate place:

What kind of country would this be if this Chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated the Constitution?

Uh…

Hmm…

I don’t know – A financially solvent country? Peopled with citizens who assumed responsibility for themselves and their extended family members instead of lying to themselves that they can pay less into a system than they take out of it² ?

Oh, and maybe we’d have a country which wouldn’t keep telling people it will “keep its promises” when promises to someone will be broken, it’s just a matter of when and to whom.