SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama - Dumber Than Sarah Palin
Why Can't the Prez Even Look Out for No. 1?
Thanks to CribNoteGate, we can finally say it out loud: Sarah Palin is stupid. But where does that leave Barack Obama?
Even stupider.
Let's set aside the fiction that public officials care about the country. Let's accept an assumption that everyone else can get behind: Politicians are skilled at looking out for themselves.
By this low standard, Obama is dumber than dumb. We're not talking Dubya dumb. We're not even talking Sarahcuda dumb.
We're talking pulling-off-your-mask-so-the-clerk-of-the-bank-you're-robbing-can-hear-you dumb.
A year ago, Obama comes into office facing a global economic meltdown. Half a million jobs are vanishing each month. Millions of Americans have just lost their homes to foreclosure; millions more are on the chopping block. So what does he focus on?
Healthcare reform.
OK, so it's true that Americans wanted and needed cheaper healthcare. Even if wasn't their top priority, it was worth a try. (But not instead of fixing the economy. But I digress.)
Things went wrong from the start. Mainly, this was because Obama was too dim to understand what had gone wrong with Hillary and Bill Clinton's 1993 attempt to fix the healthcare system. The president and his advisers fixated on a strange rewriting of history: the Clintons' mistake, they decided, was to propose a specific 1,342-page bill. Congress, feeling left out, had refused to get behind it.
As anyone older than 30 remembers, however, that's not what happened. Republicans opposed HillaryCare because they're always against healthcare reform. And Democrats didn't care. Because the plan was crafted to protect insurance company profits, it wouldn't have helped patients. HillaryCare didn't die because Congress wasn't involved. It simply didn't have a constituency.
But they still could have gotten something done. Staring down the Christmas 2009 recess, Obama had everything he needed. Senate Democrats, enjoying a rare 60-vote supermajority that precluded a Republican filibuster, passed a conservative version of ObamaCare. The House, also overwhelmingly Democratic, passed a slightly less conservative version. All Democratic leaders had to do was reconcile the two versions.
So what did the Moron-in-Chief do on Christmas Eve, after the Senate passed its bill? He sent Congress home for the holidays.
If I'd been him, I would have banged Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's heads together. "Go down to McDonald's," I would have said. "Walk into Banana Republic." Lots of people work over the holidays. Keep your members working until they finish the people's work!" I'm no genius. Anyone would have said that. He didn't.
Remember, Ted Kennedy had already died. Obama knew there was a special election scheduled in Massachusetts. Sure, it's a liberal state. But why take chances? When you have 60 out of the 60 votes you need to get something done, when you haven't accomplished anything substantive since taking office nearly a year ago, why wouldn't you strike while the iron is hot? He desperately needed a win. And he threw it away.
Two words: Id. Iot.
Every time it counts, Obama doesn't have a clue. Consider, for example, the $700 billion TARP bailout.
The CEOs of Bank of America, Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and several other giant corporations came to the Administration early in their term, wailing that (a) they would go out of business unless the feds bailed them out and (b) they would take a chunk of the economy with them, what with them being "too big to fail" and all.
Put yourself in Obama's position. I would have replied Tony Soprano-style: "OK, fellows, I'll help you out. I'll save your stupid asses. In return, the Treasury will take your next 10 years of profits. Your shareholders get squat. No bonuses. Your execs stay until we say they can quit, for $50,000 a year. If they don't like it, we prosecute them for fraud or unpaid parking tickets or terrorism, whatever, we'll come up with something. If you don't pay a decent return, we nationalize you."
"After all, if you're too big to fail, maybe you need to become part of the government."
Obama held all the cards. But he was stupid. And he was corrupt. (Two words: Timothy Geitner. Two more words: Goldman Sachs.) But more stupid than corrupt. And so, after AIG and Goldman used taxpayer bailout funds to redecorate their offices and pay extravagant bonuses to the corporate turds who ruined their companies in the first place, Obama was surprised. How could he be dismayed at "reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people"? He let them get away with it.
You can hardly blame greedheads for taking money when you give it to them, no strings attached. But that's what he's doing—and it's seriously pissing people off.
Now that the prez is finally starting to think about the economy, he's proposing tax breaks for companies that hire new workers.
Actually, it's a good idea. Or it would have been, when I proposed it back in the 1990s. Now it can't possibly work.
Twenty percent of Americans can't find a job—and the number will continue to rise. So people can't earn money. Most people's income has been frozen or declining in real terms since 1968. So they don't have savings to spend. And the credit markets are frozen. So they can't borrow.
Americans are finally poor-poor, Third World poor; they're tapped out and can't come up with money to spend. So much for the consumer economy. When a company can't sell anything, how can it hire someone? Tax cuts are too little, too late—that might as well be Obama's official motto—but that's all he can come up with as he stares down the barrel of a potentially devastating Republican sweep this November.
Memo to Obama: People. Need. Money. So hire them. Like FDR did.
How'd someone so dumb get into Harvard? Ask Dubya.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the new graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is publishing a new political manifesto for Fall 2010. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
Thanks to CribNoteGate, we can finally say it out loud: Sarah Palin is stupid. But where does that leave Barack Obama?
Even stupider.
Let's set aside the fiction that public officials care about the country. Let's accept an assumption that everyone else can get behind: Politicians are skilled at looking out for themselves.
By this low standard, Obama is dumber than dumb. We're not talking Dubya dumb. We're not even talking Sarahcuda dumb.
We're talking pulling-off-your-mask-so-the-clerk-of-the-bank-you're-robbing-can-hear-you dumb.
A year ago, Obama comes into office facing a global economic meltdown. Half a million jobs are vanishing each month. Millions of Americans have just lost their homes to foreclosure; millions more are on the chopping block. So what does he focus on?
Healthcare reform.
OK, so it's true that Americans wanted and needed cheaper healthcare. Even if wasn't their top priority, it was worth a try. (But not instead of fixing the economy. But I digress.)
Things went wrong from the start. Mainly, this was because Obama was too dim to understand what had gone wrong with Hillary and Bill Clinton's 1993 attempt to fix the healthcare system. The president and his advisers fixated on a strange rewriting of history: the Clintons' mistake, they decided, was to propose a specific 1,342-page bill. Congress, feeling left out, had refused to get behind it.
As anyone older than 30 remembers, however, that's not what happened. Republicans opposed HillaryCare because they're always against healthcare reform. And Democrats didn't care. Because the plan was crafted to protect insurance company profits, it wouldn't have helped patients. HillaryCare didn't die because Congress wasn't involved. It simply didn't have a constituency.
But they still could have gotten something done. Staring down the Christmas 2009 recess, Obama had everything he needed. Senate Democrats, enjoying a rare 60-vote supermajority that precluded a Republican filibuster, passed a conservative version of ObamaCare. The House, also overwhelmingly Democratic, passed a slightly less conservative version. All Democratic leaders had to do was reconcile the two versions.
So what did the Moron-in-Chief do on Christmas Eve, after the Senate passed its bill? He sent Congress home for the holidays.
If I'd been him, I would have banged Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's heads together. "Go down to McDonald's," I would have said. "Walk into Banana Republic." Lots of people work over the holidays. Keep your members working until they finish the people's work!" I'm no genius. Anyone would have said that. He didn't.
Remember, Ted Kennedy had already died. Obama knew there was a special election scheduled in Massachusetts. Sure, it's a liberal state. But why take chances? When you have 60 out of the 60 votes you need to get something done, when you haven't accomplished anything substantive since taking office nearly a year ago, why wouldn't you strike while the iron is hot? He desperately needed a win. And he threw it away.
Two words: Id. Iot.
Every time it counts, Obama doesn't have a clue. Consider, for example, the $700 billion TARP bailout.
The CEOs of Bank of America, Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and several other giant corporations came to the Administration early in their term, wailing that (a) they would go out of business unless the feds bailed them out and (b) they would take a chunk of the economy with them, what with them being "too big to fail" and all.
Put yourself in Obama's position. I would have replied Tony Soprano-style: "OK, fellows, I'll help you out. I'll save your stupid asses. In return, the Treasury will take your next 10 years of profits. Your shareholders get squat. No bonuses. Your execs stay until we say they can quit, for $50,000 a year. If they don't like it, we prosecute them for fraud or unpaid parking tickets or terrorism, whatever, we'll come up with something. If you don't pay a decent return, we nationalize you."
"After all, if you're too big to fail, maybe you need to become part of the government."
Obama held all the cards. But he was stupid. And he was corrupt. (Two words: Timothy Geitner. Two more words: Goldman Sachs.) But more stupid than corrupt. And so, after AIG and Goldman used taxpayer bailout funds to redecorate their offices and pay extravagant bonuses to the corporate turds who ruined their companies in the first place, Obama was surprised. How could he be dismayed at "reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people"? He let them get away with it.
You can hardly blame greedheads for taking money when you give it to them, no strings attached. But that's what he's doing—and it's seriously pissing people off.
Now that the prez is finally starting to think about the economy, he's proposing tax breaks for companies that hire new workers.
Actually, it's a good idea. Or it would have been, when I proposed it back in the 1990s. Now it can't possibly work.
Twenty percent of Americans can't find a job—and the number will continue to rise. So people can't earn money. Most people's income has been frozen or declining in real terms since 1968. So they don't have savings to spend. And the credit markets are frozen. So they can't borrow.
Americans are finally poor-poor, Third World poor; they're tapped out and can't come up with money to spend. So much for the consumer economy. When a company can't sell anything, how can it hire someone? Tax cuts are too little, too late—that might as well be Obama's official motto—but that's all he can come up with as he stares down the barrel of a potentially devastating Republican sweep this November.
Memo to Obama: People. Need. Money. So hire them. Like FDR did.
How'd someone so dumb get into Harvard? Ask Dubya.
(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the new graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is publishing a new political manifesto for Fall 2010. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
posted by Ted Rall at
6:01 PM
22 Comments:
if president molehill didn't let Congress out for the holidays he would be portrayed as a total grinch
dumb like a fox, (and no, sarah isn't one of those, either).
aig employees have recently lavished another hundred million dollars of your and my money on themselves, in the form of more "bonuses", while still owing us a hundred and 24 billion, with a "B", of those dollars. and this after aig broke the financial back of this country, and pretty much the world.
no, obama isn't dumb. he's set for life, double set, set to the tenth power, after giving away all our money, money we don't even have, money we'll probably end up paying 600 percent interest on to the chinese, to his friends in Big Banking. and now he wants to do the same for big Pharma and big Insurance with his "healthcare" plans.
yeah, he's not dumb.
we are.
we don’t even have jobs. We’re so dumb, we just want some dumb little job, while this is all swirling around us.
love ya ted, but let's get down to cases. this was all planned before obama got into the whitehouse. he had to pledge to these maneuvers, so that he Could get into the whitehouse.
let's not give in to the "oops!" myth. like "oops! i just started 2 illegal wars after conspiring to commit 9/11". or, "oops! i just gave away all the american tax payers' money, and now those mean bankers won't play fair!"
oops. yeah, right.
let's not pander to myth, let's call it like it is.
You nailed the motherf@#ker right on the head; the only way to jump-start the economy is employing the unemployed. This banks/corporations bailout crap reminds me of Russia in the 1990s; none of that wealth trickled down until the Kremlin tough guys threw out the IMF-WTO planners, beat the taxes out of deadbeat businesses, and beat down the "novy rich" class. In other words, the superstructure was cannibalising the base. BTW, there are fears that the Dems might try to destroy Social Security (for the "war"; read it in CounterPunch.)
- Strelnikov
Obama is Wall Street's man through and through. He is not dumb but he did and is doing what he has been "selected" to do. He was "elected" to bail-out Wall St. and the banks and not to help the common folks.
Wall St. has the green light to run amock, so you are hearing about these despicable infuriating bounuses with only some theatrical posturing from Obama but nothing will be done to curb the runaway greed and corruption of Wall St.
He didn't REALLY want health care "reform" in its current form. The insurance/health care complex wanted more concessions in addition to the despicable concessions they alrady had in the current bill. That is why he waited for the Massachusetts senatorial election. He instenctively new that a Republican will win and that will be a good execuse to shelf the current bill or water it down more.
I think that the health care "reform" bill was just to distract the folks from the economy and Wall St. shenanigans and the trillions of dollars that Wall St. got in bail-outs from both the treasury and the Federal Reserve.
And Sarah Palin knows there are not 57 states, how to pronounce corpsman, and doesn't mistakenly say her faith is islam.
How would you make someone work for a bank and do a job if they didn't want to? I'm an orthopaedic surgeon and I have a job. If I chose to completely quit, move to the backwoods and carve wooden ducks to sell by the roadside could you force me to operate? Same thing with bank executives. You're saying "you have to stay on and do a good job for us no matter what!" Isn't that what Ayn Rand's John Galt refused to do. True the bank executives were at fault. Throw them in literal prison for fraud but I hold that no one should be forced to practice their craft if they choose not to. If I wind up not making money to be a surgeon, I'll find something else. Ted, you were an aspiring engineer. Would you give up being a columnist and cartoonist to be forced to design car parts because it is the engineers collective faults that Toyota gas pedals stick. The day that healthcare tells me I have to operatue simply because I am required to or be thrown in prison is the day I forget how to screw together bones and make license plates.
I actually take this as a sign of a troubled conscience. Rather than just ram through single-payer and get it over with, the Dems, due to their guilt at promoting a system which has failed miserably, needed to have the public believe that it was a "bi-partisan effort". Obamas stupidity rests in the fact that he genuinely believes that people are fooled by his theater.
As for improving the economy in general, what needs to be done is to get Government out of the way. Progressive socialism is a proven failure and should be cast aside.
Look, now Barry wants to track your cellphones (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html) "Feds push for tracking cell phones". Meet the new boss....
Common Dreams deleted your article about 40 mins after it was there. It had comments, and it's just gone.
I'm sort of disappointed in the tone of this piece. Calling people stupid just seems adolescent. You are good at evaluating performance, motive, and connecting dots to explain why things aren't what they appear, but when you devolve into a rant about stupidity and competence, I don't think it's constructive anymore.
sorry, ted, it's a flop. I agree with your analysis, I just think there's no evidence to support the idea that he's stupid, or any value in discussing his relative intelligence -only his effectiveness.
Specifically, health care failed because Clinton trusted Bob Dole and the Republicans to keep their end of the deal. Per Clinton: "Then he gets Bill Kristol's famous memo that says, you know, If you let Bill Clinton pass any kind of health-care bill, the Democrats will be the majority party for a generation, and you can forget about your presidential hopes. Your only option is to beat anything. Kill it off."
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/bill-clinton-interview-1009-3
Sound like a strategy we see today? Don't let Dems get a victory in any way. Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.
You've got it wrong Ted, Obama isn't stupid, he's as smart and cruel as Machiavelli. Yeah he knew what he was doing 'cuz the ones he are working for/with wanted it that way. Since Reagan we have seen the slow dismantling or hobbling of the Republic & our Middle Class, while its coffers were emptied to build up the external empire of over 878 bases and a near $trillion dollars each year to maintain it along with unnumbered mercenaries in cahootz.
Our gov't is so beholding to corporations for day-to-day operations that we are lost as a secular gov't free from the pernicious influence of money and fanatical religion. Our special forces are riddled with Christian Crusaders isn't good for us either. It is a conspiracy by the richest 1-10% to do what they failed to do in 1934. Take over and have it all. The Shock Doctrine writ on us.
The Clinton's just wanted to expand the pool of corporate healthcare providers by trying to get their own small group of 8 companies to get in on the gravy train. The 5 large ones didn't want any more in the game. Less profits for them. That was the reason for nixing it.
If Obama was interested in creating jobs and reforming healthcare at the same time, he should hire a lot more auditors for the Tricare, Federal employees, health plab, Medicare & Medicaid programs. Then he could have audit the hell out of anybody & everybody that receives government money (e.g. States governments, hospitals, insurance companies, nursing homes, clinics, etc).
I have always heard that 10% or more of these programs' funds are eaten up fraud and waste. Redirecting that money from greed & waste to actually healthcare would probably do more for reform than the crap in either reform bill.
I think it's unfair to say Obama is dumber than Palin, unless it's because you have higher standards of Obama. But Ted, since you never had faith in Obama, you have less of a right to call him dumb.
Anonymous 1:42,
Excellent rebuttal. But I would ultimately place both Bush and Obama in the "dumb" category.
They think they're smart by acting dumb, but the joke is that they really are dumb to treat the American taxpayer as a cash cow when jobs are disappearing faster than you can say "bonus", and what jobs that still exist pay shitty wages. Pretty soon the tax money simply won't be there.
Clinton, on the other hand, was truly smart. He was smart enough NOT to get us into expensive wars with high American troop casualty rates, and he was smart enough to know that having jobs was important for the tax base. Not that it makes him morally better than the other two.
You think Barry is smart? Ever see him speak without his TelePrompTer?
I read the book Obama penned after being elected the first black president of the Harvard Law review, and I wondered what happened to Harvard. The book wasn't very good and was nothing one would expect from such a person in such a position. Then I found the NYT story announcing his election and learned:
" Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
"That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review."
Oh.
After he had Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge cop who busted him come to The White House for beer, I remembered his book and one little story about meeting a relative and, in trying to get to know him, invited him for a smoke. That was his conclusion -- "Have a smoke."
When I was in Cambridge a few years before he arrived, I coped with the same sorts of condescending invitations from power types who thought complex domestic political problems could be solved with parties that were nothing more than their parody of inclusion, and their way of sniffing out our weak points -- the "nice doggie" from the famous anecdote on diplomacy, that buys the people in power time so they can look for a rock.
I'm also a minority and, because my parents had me late, I've heard firsthand accounts of the Depression and World War 2, and of a snobby, patrician white Harvard grad named FDR who would have never invited the likes of us to drink and smoke unless we were wounded and in uniform. But his policies insured our people had jobs and, after a very nasty war, money for school. We could then buy our own cigarettes and smoke them with our friends, and if a cop got out of line, maybe he wouldn't have been punished in a way we would've liked, but our protests would never be answered as if we were stupid children, needing only to have something palliative stuck in our mouths, in place of food.
We now have had a whole generation of walking minority success stories gleaned from those who opened wide, and who think the rest of us should do the same. Their intelligence and suitability was measured by their willingness to cooperate rather than their ability to think critically and understand, rather than emulate, those in power. Little Barry gets to play golf -- its post-racial America! -- but despite my degree, this morning, I get to go look for soda cans. The difference is, at the end of the day, I pay for my own cigarettes.
Gee. Everywhere else seems to state the $700 billion TARP was passed in October 2008. When the election was in November 2008, how was Obama supposed to dictate the terms of a government agreement???
Toni M
Obama in interviews, although they are at least partly scripted, but without a teleprompter, he answers the questions VERY VERY SLOWLY, with a pause between a each word and the next . That is the behaviour of someone who has no convictions at all about the issues, who wants to make sure that he is following the script.
that strelnikov can really turn a phrase:
"the superstructure was cannibalising the base"
that would be us, alright.
just waiting for the gulags.
oops! my bad! they're already here.
maybe it's time after all, for that all expense paid vacation to club gitmo.
Come on Aggie, now you use "lack of evidence" as an argument?
Here's some evidence that global warming is a scam:
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz0fZuDBMcZ
Points.com is a way for people to donate, trade or cash out their unused airline mileage points. Get the goods while you can. Pretty soon only the military will have "permission to fly" and the fuel with which to do so. Or help send Ted on his mission if you like.
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