United Liberty

Obama’s address Tuesday evening contained a fascinating lesson in economics and monetary policy for the American public. Let’s review:

So the recovery plan we passed is the first step in getting our economy back on track. But it is just the first step. Because even if we manage this plan flawlessly, there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system.

I want to speak plainly and candidly about this issue tonight, because every American should know that it directly affects you and your family’s well-being. You should also know that the money you’ve deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system. That is not the source of concern.

Tonight as I write this, given that I don’t possess a television and find live-streaming an often frustrating experience on my lap-top computer, I chose to read a prepared text of President Obama’s first State of the Union address rather than listen to it live. Reading such a text can reveal more in some ways, as one isn’t influenced by the mellifluous tones of a well-polished politician’s voice.

As a citizen of the United States and the world, I am very concerned with the trends I am seeing in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seems to be belligering the public into giving him more power:

In honor of Presidents Day, CSPAN released the results of their poll asking who is the best president in American history.  Not surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln (once again) topped the chart, but the regular last place finisher, Andrew Johnson, was replaced today by the last president born in the 18th century, James Buchanan.

Why is he considered the worst president?  Reading through several sources, it appears that President Buchanan is seen as the man who could have stopped the War Between the States (or Mr. Lincoln’s War, as it’s known here in the South).  His “lack of action” is what earns him last place.

Another of President Obama’s nominations has sunk like a rock:

ANOTHER day, another blow for Barack Obama’s hopes for a “new politics”. On Thursday February 12th, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire announced that he had withdrawn as Mr Obama’s proposed secretary of commerce. Mr Gregg is a Republican—and one, to boot, who once voted for the Commerce Department to be abolished. Bringing him into the cabinet had been billed by the Obama team as an important sign of Mr Obama’s commitment to government from the centre. Mr Gregg would have been the third of Mr Obama’s “post-partisan” appointments: his transport secretary, Ray LaHood is a Republican, and his defence secretary, Robert Gates, served in the same job under George Bush (though he does not describe himself as a Republican).

The left screamed about the Bush administration using fear. It’s being used again in this same way—to get packages through Congress. The same way Bush and Cheney did it, now Obama and Biden are doing it. You don’t hear a word from the left. I mean, I’m sitting there going, ‘Am I in the Twilight Zone here?’

There’s no denying that the Bush Administration used policies of fear in an inappropriate manner to convince Americans that it was necessary to allow our civil rights to be ignored and abused in order to provide security for our nation.  But O’Reilly is correct- using these same tactics in order to pass the largest spending bill in history is equally reprehensible.

President Barack Obama’s skin color clouds one other progressive aspect of his presidency: he is the first post-Baby Boomer elected to the nation’s highest office. This is a cause for celebration, as the Baby Boomers may likely have done more harm to America than any previous generation.

Don’t believe me? Here is a list of the sins of the Boomers, or as I call them, “the Worst Generation:”

The Worst Generation’s crowning achievement is Woodstock. They’re actually proud of the fact that they spent their youth dressed like transients and having sex in the mud. The Greatest Generation’s crowning achievement, on the other hand, was defeating fascism on the beaches of Europe.

Whereas divorce was frowned upon by the Greatest Generation, the Worst Generation left millions of children fatherless and directionless.

The Worst Generaton has left us with a Social Security time bomb.

George W. Bush’s administration started off badly on Sino-American relations with the 2001 spy-plane crisis (often eclipsed in the collective mind by the major incident that occurred in Manhattan and Washington DC seven months later). I agree with Evan Osnos’ piece in the New Yorker, in which he argues that Obama should make a diplomatic visit to China as soon as possible:

The news is dominated by all the talk and debate of the so-called economic “stimulus” package, which, in the House-passed version is said to be $815 billion, while the version under consideration in the Senate is (not surprisingly) even more expensive at something closer to $900 billion. None of these figures take into account the true cost of the program when the interest on newly incurred debt is added (those figures have a range beginning at $1.2 trillion with a limit no one even knows).