The Audacity of Obama

The Source, Aug. 8, 2011 - Opening statement: After all the "hope," "change" and great speeches, the U.S. economy is still tanking. On Obama's attitude.

Below is the edited text version (also posted here);

Opinion: Barack Obama's wake-up

Did you really understand that debt ceiling debate that dominated Washington this past month?

We had very stern speeches by both the Republicans and Democrats. U.S. President Barack Obama gave what felt like the 700th speech of his presidency. But there's a bit of a difference between knowing how to read a teleprompter and knowing how to run a country.

Unemployment is now 9.1% in the U.S. - two points higher than it is in Canada. Their banks continue to fail. Consumer confidence is low. It's a double-dip recession - a second recession happening right after the first.

But it's not just unemployment and slow economic growth. It's insane spending by government. From bank bailouts to car company bailouts to union bailouts to nationalizing health care, there's nothing Obama won't throw money at. Trouble is, he doesn't have the money - so he's borrowing it at a rate unprecedented in human history. Lots of it was borrowed from China. Official Washington gave each other high fives when they agreed to a new, higher debt limit. But that's like a husband and wife and kids having a family meeting and agreeing to raise their own credit card limit. There's someone missing: The people lending the money.

On Friday, one of the world's most respected bond rating agencies did something never before done: Standard & Poor's downgraded America's credit from AAA to AA-plus.

In last month's debt deal, the U.S. federal government gave itself permission to borrow an additional $2 trillion - on top of their current$14 trillion credit limit.

This has been reported by the consensus media as "spending cuts." But spending has never been higher.

Obama's party, the Democrats, has gone into full blamestorming mode.

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, said the credit downgrade was the fault of the Tea Party anti-spending movement.

Barney Frank, the Democratic Congressman who presided over the junk mortgage meltdown in 2008, blamed the U.S. military.

Obama's White House - never so good with math - said S&P got their math wrong.

But the world believes S&P - the stock markets prove it. They all plummeted.

The downgrade was just a warning. But the thing about warnings is they're not the problem. What they warn about is the problem.

It says a lot about Obama that he is outraged at the messenger. Sort of like being woken up by a fire alarm, and being mad about the noise instead of the fire.


America, the world's great engine of freedom and prosperity, the world's guarantor of security for 60 years, the moral beacon to billions - has been weakened.

Is Obama upset about this debt downgrade? Yes, because it could interfere with his plans for re-election.

But he's not upset with the real problem: The beggaring of America, and suffocation of its entrepreneurial spirit.