Barack Obama had been mercifully traveling around with his mouth shut for most of the past two years, while his successor, President Trump, had been fixing the economy that Obama had nearly ruined, even as the Obama leftovers in the Justice Department were trying to cover up their own collusion with Russia in 2016 by accusing Trump of what they had done.
Still, Obama was out there last week making a speech at some place or other that was giving him an award for something he probably deserved as much as his Nobel Peace Prize (that he still hasn't given back). In the speech, he accused President Trump and Republicans of offering "a home to the politics of division and resentment."
OK, well, I'm calling him out.
What the heck are you even talking about, you contemptible liar?
The "politics of division and resentment", indeed. Let us set aside the fact that "politics" are by definition associated with division, since in a free country we elect people at the ballot box. We're not voting for a choice of people who agree with one another, but who disagree on how to lead. There is going to be division if there is politics. That is no different in the current campaign from what it was in any election campaign that Obama lied his way through, whether with "You can keep your doctor" or "There is no scandal at the IRS" or ... well, you heard them all.
Is it not "division", when you ram through a hugely unpopular health-insurance law without even consulting with Republicans and using a parliamentary trick to pass when the 60th Senate vote was lost because a replacement Senate race was won by a candidate pledging not to vote for Obamacare? What exactly was the olive branch you offered to those you divided yourself from after that?
"Resentment"? Do you even have an example of what is different in this administration from yours? Aren't you the one who sent your Attorney General to Ferguson, Missouri, to take the side of a convenience-store robber who tried to steal a police officer's weapon and got killed doing it? And vilified the officer so badly that he had to quit the force? And precipitated riots in the streets there?
Aren't you the guy who took the side, knee-jerk, of a professor in New England who was uncooperative with police? You engendered resentment on the part of law enforcement officers across the country, but I guess its OK to be resented by people you think are "pigs" anyway. And you know you do.
But actually, my problem with the speech is that "division and resentment" don't really apply to this president, let alone to where he would be the one accused of practicing them. Donald Trump's approach to the economy -- which has worked, by the way -- is as ecumenical as could be, certainly by virtue of the fact that his tax policy and stripping of burdensome regulations have resulted in historic lows in the unemployment rate of black and Hispanic workers. Imagine that. A rising tide, after all, lifts all ships.
But it is not in the interest of Barack Obama and his ilk to see success on the part of minorities in the USA. Rather, they need economic failure in minority communities so that they seek the solution of big, dominant, welfare-state government to take care of them, preferably on a generational basis, to produce the votes needed to keep them in power.
The nation saw through that, but it took two terms of Obama to realize that was what was going on. Fortunately for the USA, with power comes entitlement, and the entitled Hillary Clinton bullied her way to a nomination for an office she couldn't possibly serve well in. Someone who did her own "dividing", by insisting that her qualification for office rested upon her possession of a uterus.
Barack Obama could sure read a speech well (his extemporaneous stuff, well, that's a parade of stammering as his mind sifts through his platitude Rolodex). But unfortunately now we actually can stop and listen to the words he reads, and we understand that it's all lecturing; all passion and no substance. His failures in office will eventually be what unites us, ironically, behind an economically successful America that he had no hand in creating. All he did was screw up so badly that we were willing to vote for Donald Trump to get us out of it.
Which he is doing. If there is any "division", it is your legacy, not Trump's. And I don't "resent" that.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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A couple of observations:
ReplyDelete1) For 8 years we were constantly told that the economy was not recovering well because it was the result of George W. Bush's policies....or otherwise it was a 'new normal' because of demographic shifts (not enough population growth and inflation)
2) The emergence of good news means that the policies of Barack Obama are finally working, and Donald Trump is just benefiting.
I wonder...by this logic, wouldn't it be possible that this economy is also the result of George W. Bush's policies - since he did have an effect for 8 years (why not 10)? Or have the demographics (very rapidly) changed so we are in a 'new new normal'? Or, since policy preferences seem to have an 8 year delay and a long lasting effect, if, say, someone else wins the next election, will the economy going forward still be the result of Mr. Obama, despite our being two presidents down the road?
I think the real answer is: Presidents can't really goose the economy or make it better. Instead, they can either make a hospitable environment for 300+ million people to prosper in (through their own efforts), or they can cause severe damage with bad policies, and wreck an economy despite 300+ million people's best efforts.
A president can, if he/she operates fast enough, reverse damaging policies so that an economy can be unshackled, but the best policies only make government minimize the damage that it normally makes.
Aside from economics, just how stupid does the president think we are? Has no one observed the screaming hysterical s--t show that Democrats (or liberals in general) have been acting in since 2016? Does he actually believe that all of the crazy we have witnessed for two years is NOT divisive and resentful, not to mention hate-filled and destructive?
Or could it be that the Democratic leadership and much of the press know what is really going on, but the plan is to fool the country into voting Democrat in November? Because most of us (especially anyone who didn't attend university in the ivy league) are uncomprehending fools who are just waiting for the hysteria to whip us up into a hyper-emotional frenzy of anti-conservative hatred?
What the fellow above said.
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