Sequestration, for all its problems–and I consider it to be an abdication of responsible governance–is helpful at least to this extent: it captures, in a single, still-unfolding act the problematic character of the president.
To understand why, let’s update our effort to follow the bouncing Obama ball. Here’s some of what we know.
(a) The president and his administration are responsible for the sequestration idea. (b) Before that fact became widely known, Mr. Obama misled Americans of that fact in a debate with Mitt Romney–and his aides did the same thing in the aftermath of the debate. (c) Thanks to Bob Woodward’s The Price of Politics, the White House has now been forced to admit that, as top White House adviser Gene Sperling put it on Sunday, “Yes, we put forward the design of how to do that [implement sequestration].” (d) Over the last several weeks, the president vilified sequestration as a brutal, savage, and inhumane idea. (e) At a press conference last Friday, when sequestration cuts began and the world as we know it did not end, the president began to moonwalk away from his scorching rhetoric, saying, “Just to make the final point about the sequester, we will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said.” (f) Since the sequestration idea was first signed into law by President Obama in 2011, House Republicans have twice passed legislation to make the cuts more reasonable–and Democrats have refused to act on it. (g) In the last week, Republicans have tried to give the president greater authority to make more reasonable cuts–but he has refused it, allowing unnecessary pain to be inflicted on Americans in order to blame Republicans.
To summarize, then: The president has spoken in the harshest possible terms about an idea he and his White House originated and signed into law. He has used apocalyptic language leading up to the sequestration–and then, as the sequestration cuts began, lectured us that “this is not going to be an apocalypse” as “some people have said.” And Mr. Obama has warned about the devastating nature of the cuts even as he has opposed efforts to make the cuts less devastating.
That’s quite a hat trick.
Will the president pay a political price for this fairly remarkable (and empirically demonstrable) record of dishonesty, inconsistency, and hypocrisy, to say nothing of inflicting unnecessary pain on the country he was elected to serve? I would think so, but I really don’t know.
What I do know is that the sequestration fight has once again shown us that Barack Obama has a defective public character and a post-modern attitude toward truth. He simply makes things up as he goes along. It looks to me that there are few things he will not do, and fewer things he will not say, in order to undermine his opponents and advance his progressive cause. That is something that is deeply injurious to American politics and America itself.
Well said, and thank you for not calling him a cynic (when the truth is far uglier than that)!
The fact remains that the GOP voted for sequestration. More important is the fact that the foundation of this crisis is the GOP's very real threat not to raise the debt ceiling — a threat, which if carried out, will damage not only the US but the world economy.
Just like a parent should give in to a screaming child who always wants it's way, right? At some point, you have to be willing to draw a line in the sand and consequences be damned, unless you want to just keep giving in and giving in until you end up with a monster (of a person or of a gov't, they are fairly interchangeable). Although, to be fair to statist supporters like yourself, this is exactly what you guys want, isn't it?
the fact remains that Obama proposed it and wanted it to be as draconian as possible so he could either pressure the GOP into limitless tax streams to leverage for more deficit spending or, failing that, have something to blame other than Bush for a stalled economy. n nHillelA's comment template: n na) nyah nyah nyah–I'm rubber you're glue, everything you say sticks back on you b) you're an idiot wingnut–rinse, lather, and repeat–the eternal shampoo of the spotless mind
The GOP voted for it last summer as a last ditch attempt at the balanced “grand bargain” Obama kept promising and reneging on. You can’t bargain in good faith with a liar. All last summer, Obama would make promise after promise, agreement after agreement, only to renege on every single one of them days or hours later. You do recall that, don’t you? And if Republicans had not agreed to the sequester (along with Obama’s broken promises that it would never be used) he and his cheerleaders like you would simply claim that Republicans were obstructionists not willing to agree to “anything.” It’s a cheap, dishonest tactic that those of us who actually pay attention aren’t falling for. You’re wasting your time trying to sell that stuff on a site like this.
Unfortunately for the country, we now have a majority of lazy, uninformed voters who have proven themselves incapable of penetrating the Democrat/media phalanx that promulgates the kinds of lies and half truths you display in your comments. So, I wish you joy in your project to lure the nation into self destruction.
The GOP has very rightly refused to raise the debt limit, it is time to stop spending and start cutting and I don' t mean cuts in the projected rate of growth but rather cuts in the meat, real cuts in what we spend. We could start with zeroing out all spending outside of the government and then a real 5% across the board. It is projected that this years tax receipts will set a record, with that being the case there should be more than enough to cover the interest on the debt and regular spending. Along with this a "balanced budget amendment" should be passed and baseline budgeting should be religated to the farthest corner of hell never to be seen again.
Not going further and further into debt will damage the US and world economy. Just like queers marrying queers, spending money you don't have, will never have, is from now on normal. Only a Harvard PhD in economics and human sexuality would bring those premises to the big debate.
He truly is a shit. It's quite incredible, actually.
A perfect precis of Wehner's article with a fraction of the wingnut babble — in fact, a perfect precis of most of the posts that appear in Contentions.
your refusal to see the point of anything is irriating–your repeated rhetorical reversal followed by insult is just obnoxious enought to suggest that you are, indeed, Jewish. stuck at 13.
HillelA has a character problem too. Is it any wonder he identifies with and supports Obama?
Congrats on finding a way to use the word "precis" twice in the same sentence. Speaking of wingnut babble. Don't you have something better to do than read it?
BILL CLINTON: " I feel your pain!" n nBARACK OBAMA: I'll create your pain and then lie about it. n nWho is the bigger B.S. artist? Send in your cards and letters.
I think what we are seeing is not evolution, but “Devil-ution”
Take heart. Oboutme's winning "cool" factor is about to assume room temperature. That White House tour discontinuance b.s. has last straw written all over it.
Great piece of writing. It is very telling that Obama wants the cuts to inflict the maximum pain and then blame Republicans. If he doesn't want that, why doesn't he accept the offer to say how the cuts are implenented. The only conclusion is that he only wants to score points against the opposition. He should put the country first, not his agenda.
because he is a student of Jeremiah Wright and his 'damn America' crap n nhis agenda is not to make the America we love better, his agenda is to 'fundamentally transform' America n nwe are now discovering what that means n n
Look up the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and see if it doesn't strike you that it's entirely possible this is exactly what Obama is doing. Oneor both of those professors were teaching while Obama was in the university. The basic idea is that rather than a physical revolution, you use the system against itself to crash it, by using it's own rules to bankrupt the system. Then you can install a socialist/communist/marxist system in its place. So now we've got record high welfare rolls, record duration unemployment, record high unemployment coupled with record low job participation rates, massive and ongoing stimulus programs, record high implementation of costly regulatory burdens, strangle hold on any energy production wherever possible, unprecedented federal quantitive easing (printing money), etc., etc., etc. n nCloward-Piven, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, etc., all the sort of stuff Obama teethed on.
Democrats are public hypocrites
It is part of their campaign strategy, enabled by the Mendacious Sellout Media.
Obama, four years and a half into his Presidency has yet to assume office. He's still playing the role of President–well, that's one take. The other is that his manifest incompetencies are irrelevant to him as folks have noted–as long as the wreckage drifts leftward, leftward and his celebrity quotient and future earnings potential drifts upwards.
Obama and his lies are possible because of the defective character of the public.
And the mainstream media.
If I could take actions that are irresponsible, blame someone anyone else and get away with it, I would be very tempted to do it. Is not the first amendment of the Constitution guarantees a free npress suppose to stop the irresponible behavior of any and all politicans be they Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton or President Obama?
When you are already a Narcissist, a Liar and a Hypocrite there aren't many places you can go to overcome that.
Defective public character? He is just a liar.
I guess we have moved on from “credibility gap.” (Remember that one?)
And how many useful tools such as Hillel voted this clown into office and then kept him there? Yes, the electorate is defective.
No worries – From now on, Obama will simply blame every negative economic item that's reported – jobs, unemployment, recession or slow growth, etc. – on the supposed Republican caused sequester. And of course they caused it out of sheer political spite, because they don't give a rip about the 99% of American citizens. See how that works? He's loving it. n nThis is the most Orwellian, un-presidential, and unimaginable behavior for a top official in the USA ever.
Rational Db8, Obama is just a cynical actor, not unlike any other garden-variety two-bit political hack. What is truly Orwellian are the accolades, the fawning, the dismissive apologetics, the outright deception and lying of the so-called independent press. Without their tacit endorsement of and championing of this non-entity and his destructive ideology, Obama would have been a mere foot-note in local Chicago politics. I blame the MSM/academia/entertainment triumvirate who are Obama's willing whores. We have at least two of them who share their inane, post-modern idiocy here …
I honestly can't see how any true conservative (advocate of limited government) can criticize the sequester. Yes, the hegemonists oppose the defense cuts, but hegemonism isn't conservative.
…. Will the pretender to the presidency pay a political price for this for him ordinarily – as is empirically demonstrable – record of dishonesty, inconsistency and hypocrisy. And of the willfull inflicting pain on the nation he was "elected" to serve ….
…. Will the pretender to the presidency pay a political price for this for him ordinarily – as is empirically demonstrable – record of dishonesty, inconsistency and hypocrisy. And of the willfull inflicting pain on the nation he was "elected" to serve …. n nWill any — but those too damned stupid to known they're lied to and/or who are too damned mean-spirited and/or greedy to care — even ever believe the world's most deadly-dangerous dullard even knows the meaning of the words delivered him to read? n nLet alone that he comprehends the meanings conveyed in the phrases the otherwise tongue-chewing babblin' idiot by rote reads? n nWhat is urgently needed is that we trace, face and then erase the faceless manifestations of evil that make the coke-headed marijuana-mumbling-one and Missus Moocherelle-Antoinette's bullets. n nAnd load their TelePrompTer guns. n nBrian Richard Allen
Hi! I'm HillelA and I'm an absolute f*cking idiot!
Our King, Obama Malkheinu, is a true work of art, idolized and adored as a Savior, a Redeemer, by half of the country, who in a state of mass delusion and frenzy, have surrendered to Him their hearts, minds, and souls.
Regardless of policies coming out of DC, the fact the nation is in dire financial straights remain. It is up to the COMMAND-in-Chief, POTUS, Leader of the USA to take the responsibility and do the job he was eleccted to do. To totally dismiss our financial problems in a flamboyant manner has to stop. He can no longer depend on playing the blame game or suggesting hap-hazzard measure of increases, taxation. OBAMA has to put on his big boy pants, stand before the nation and come clean with specific, detailed measures to reduce spending in the USA._His ego driven leadership tactics are becoming old and very dangerous._BO is not God Almighty he is a man who is way over his head and enept in the job he was elected to perform.