I confess I don’t understand Obama, or the political views of several of my children who voted for him. I was always convinced that he was a radical leftist and nothing he has done has shaken that view. When Jimmy Carter was elected, I can remember thinking, “Well, he has been a businessman. He can’t be that bad.” He was. I never had a doubt that Obama would be bad although, not even my worst fears were equal to his actions. He has insulted friends like Britain and India. He appears to be bent on appeasing every enemy, like Russia and Iran, while attacking small countries like Honduras with no apparent reason.
His economic policies are inexplicable. The financial meltdown came after years of complaints, from the Wall Street Journal for example, about the policies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Other financial newspapers explained the hazards of the loan incentives. There was blame to go around because the Bush Administration should have reined in the Fed and the SEC should have intervened and no one did. Still, there is evidence that warnings were ignored. The response in the fall last year was controversial and the Republican House refused to support the bailout bill the Bush Administration presented, to their credit. They held firm on the worse bill the Democrats presented after Obama’s inauguration. The auto companies should have been allowed to file bankruptcy and Bush’s failure to allow this will haunt us for years, even if he did have some fair reasons. Ron Paul, crazy as he is on some subjects, keeps looking better every year.
I really do wonder what all this will look like in two or three years.
Canada has a good leader who seems to be doing the right things, while we try to cope with a media darling who might just be unraveling American history forever. Maybe we are Argentina, after all.
Be that as it may, when I contrast a know-nothing do-harmer like Obama with the prime minister of my own country, a principled and reliable politician who has defended the democratic tradition to the best of his ability and steered the country through the recent economic meltdown with reasonable firmness, who is naturally averse to bedding the media and wary of ingratiating himself with the public, and who possesses verifiable talents, I have no doubt that were Canada’s Stephen Harper president of the United States, it would find itself in a far more resilient position than it does now.
There is a powerful irony at work here. President Obama is well on his way to ruining the American economy and reducing the nation’s defensive posture before an increasingly threatening world. The evidence for so unflattering an assessment is bluntly undeniable, at least for those who have managed to resist hypnosis. Yet he is staunchly defended by the MSM, receives accolades from a vast and robust constituency of devoted supporters, including the Oslo bunch, and is crowned by a nimbus of invincibility. Prime Minister Harper, on the other hand, finds himself constantly struggling to maintain a minority government, faces the prospect of no-confidence motions against his administration and ad hoc coalitions of the disgruntled, and is regarded by the teeming number of leftist nannies in this country as “scary” and of nurturing a “secret agenda” — an agenda, be it said, which is transparently conservative and responsible. If there is a scary and secret agenda to be feared, it is not here.
Read the rest. It is sobering.
“I confess I don’t understand Obama, or the political views of several of my children who voted for him.”
Ignorance? Willful blindness? Naivety? Guilt at their good fortune in being born to you and your wife?
I don’t know, Mike. Perhaps those of your children whom you’re referring to will chime in here on your blog and explain.
Did you happen to catch Beck (TV) on Friday? He had one of his specials and the audience was made up of doctors and med students. The med students by and large appeared to be Obamacare supporters.
I don’t know what to tell you, Mike. I wish I could buck you up by telling you things will get better, but you and I know they’re only going to get worse.
My advice: Adjust your Will so that those of your kids with common sense have a fighting chance to weather the coming storm and protect your grandchildren. As to your kids who just don’t get it… well… always love them, but don’t waste financial resources on them; they’ll only blow their inheritances and who does that help? No one.
BILL
[…] Maybe emigration to Canada should be considered « A Brief History… […]
I know from experience that medical students and junior docs are single payer enthusiasts. Why not ? They have never earned a living and hate to see the poor doing without good care. They hate dealing with insurance. So do I. What they haven’t figured out yet is that the poor don’t take advantage of that preventive care. They don’t take good care of themselves. There is a reason they are poor. Eventually, if you practice in a private setting, you learn that single payer doesn’t work. Fewer and fewer will learn that but some will.
“What they haven’t figured out yet is that the poor don’t take advantage of that preventive care.”
Yeah… but here’s what I don’t get, Mike:
I operate under the assumption that medical students – those who have persevered and excelled academically so as to win acceptance into medical school in the first place – are… umm… fairly bright – indeed, well above median intelligence.
So… how can these folks – as a population (in the statistical sense) be so frigg’n stupid…?!?!
I mean, Mike… obviously I consider myself fairly bright, but I’ve never considered myself “Med School” or even “Engineering School” bright.
How come I know what these dopey “kids” don’t…???
May God have mercy on this once great nation…
BILL
Another comment from Bill who is having trouble getting them to post:
“What they haven’t figured out yet is that the poor don’t take
advantage of that preventive care.”
Yeah… but here’s what I don’t get, Mike:
I operate under the assumption that medical students – those who
have persevered and excelled academically so as to win acceptance into
medical school in the first place – are… umm… fairly bright – indeed,
well above median intelligence.
So… how can these folks – as a population (in the statistical
sense) – be so frigg’n stupid…?!?!
I mean, Mike… obviously I consider myself fairly bright, but I’ve
never considered myself “Med School” or even “Engineering School” bright.
How come I know what these dopey “kids” don’t…???
(And I knew it back when I was a “kid” myself so it’s not just age
and experience.)
May God have mercy on this once great nation…
BILL
Bill, try to remember when you were 20 and think about having been a student making As all that time. I’m not surprised by naive students. When I was still interviewing applicants for UCI medical school (10 years ago), I used to give more points to those who had done something outside of school. One girl had taken over her parents’ Baskin Robbins ice cream shop when her father had a heart attack. Another was an Iranian student who had gotten interested in medicine from working in an aid station for the army in the Iran-Iraq War. He had come to the US, worked on his English, lived with his brother in San Jose, worked the night shift at Sun Microsystems while he went to San Jose State during the day.
The secretary in the admission office told me I was the only one who ever mentioned such things. The other faculty were interested in how many peace marches the student had been in.
When something gets rewarded, you get more of it.
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