He Has Now Won Twice (Alas)

Or, why we despair. 

Anyone who uses the Latin phrase inter alia instead of the more prosaic "among other things" deserves at least a listen.

Written by a Brit, who has been there/done that, it's as clear an explanation for why conservatives believe the re-election of Barack Obama says more about America than it says about Obama. Which is why many of us, like the author, despair.

I've linked the entire article below. Here are a few choice nuggets.

"But, consider this: A president of the United States just ran a reelection campaign based on the promise of government largess, exploitation of class division, the demonization of success, the glorification of identity politics, and the presumption that women are a helpless interest group; and he did so while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the looming — potentially fatal — crisis that the country faces. And it worked." 

"Our president, a Narcissus masquerading as a Demosthenes, makes big speeches packed full of little ideas, and he is applauded wildly for it." 

"I have watched how these sorry ideas play out in the real world, and it is not pretty: They make people’s lives worse, and yet simultaneously convince them that any reform will kill them — a fatal combination. Americans should avoid this path sedulously, for that way lies decline." 

"The president has an ample library of ideas from which to choose, and yet he raids the Old World." 

"This year, certainly, was not the perfect storm of 2008. Then, novelty and redemption played a role; this time, an insipid bore ran on an openly statist platform and won the day in a country that is supposed to be 'center right.' Maybe it no longer is."  

"The central problem, then, is not that Obama will be president for the next few years, but that the American people — knowing him — chose to reelect him." 

"Obamacare will now go into effect, and Americans will soon feel entitled to its fruits. Those who doubt that this will have a deleterious effect on American republicanism have clearly never been bribed with their own health care." 

"Alas, there is nothing written in the stars that says that America will always be America." 

"Why I Despair," by Charles C. W. Cooke (National Review Online)

Because...

Last night I drank an entire bottle of wine, sitting in the kitchen listening to Mitt Romney lose the election one swing state at a time.

This morning, I have a headache.

Here are just a few random thoughts.

·      I have some very specific reasons for voting for Mitt Romney. Do Obama supporters have theirs? I'm working on a theory that most people, if asked, could not give their reasons. Some day I'd like to ask people who voted for Obama in 2012 to fill in the blank: I voted for Obama because_____________. I am not a betting person, but I'd be willing to bet real dollars that they could not complete the sentence. Theirs, I'd wager, was an emotional vote, not a rational, reason-based vote. Real dollars. 

·      Some people celebrate Obama’s win the way fans cheer for their team. But  we are not two teams. We are America. What if Obama’s re-election is not good for America?

·      One of my liberal friends on Facebook basically suggested I get a life (take up a musical instrument?) Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard says something similar. In saying “good riddance” to the 2012 election, he writes, “What’s worrisome, perhaps only to me, is that too many people take politics too seriously. More than a few folks I’ve run into in recent years are obsessed. They’re political junkies in the non-metaphorical sense. They’re addicted. It’s fine to be concerned about this year’s presidential race. It’s enormously important. And it’s smart to keep up with the news. But there’s a limit. Politics isn’t life." 

·      Another of my Facebook friends nudges me toward God: “Society will continue to run. God’s purposes will continue whether it includes a strong America or a weak one. Society will continue in its disordered love to make attachments and idols about them. We will continue to believe lies. But if there is any value in the Incarnation, it is the grace of God stepping into our lives to turn our heart toward Him and say, In spite of it all, You are enough.”

·      OK, so I admit, I'm a political junkie. And I also admit my faith took a bit of a beating last night. My good Christian friends posted or texted things like, “God is still on the throne.” While I don’t think I stopped believing this, I do admit to being found muttering last night, somewhat despondently, “So I guess you have turned your face away from America after all.”

·      Of all the people who voted to re-elect Barack Obama, it’s the twenty-somethings that irk me more than anything. Some of their Facebook postings (“Congratulations, Mr. President! “We Won!” “Get over it, Obama-haters!”), for example, suggest they they don't have a clue about what just happened. To these young people, all I can say is, Be careful what you wish for. You just re-elected a man to office who has nothing to show for his first term and who offered no new ideas about how things would be different during his second. This is now your America.

·      More than anything else about this election, the thing that has distressed me the most is the media. Those who voted to re-elect Obama did so, I believe, for two reasons: the lies they heard (about Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular) and the truth they didn’t hear (about the Obama administration in general and Barack Obama in particular). Both of these factors can be traced to a corrupt (yes, I did say corrupt) and left-leaning (yes, provable, proven) media who did everything in their power, including concealing information (yes, provable) in order to protect from scrutiny and/or promote Obama. This aspect of the 2012 election, and also the 2008 election, is what frightens and disturbs me the most, especially since the twenty-somethings who are jubilant this morning don't seem to appreciate how dangerous this is. 

·      Is America doomed? I guess I'm thinking so. I have many sunny and optimistic friends. But I’m not so optimistic. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. America has been a dominant player on the world stage for a long time. It appears, however, to be in decline, militarily and economically. There was an extremely good chance that Mitt Romney could have altered the trajectory of this decline. As a Christian, I prayed for him to be given this chance. But, to be honest, as a Christian, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that these prayers weren’t answered. After all, there is a Biblical time-table for human history, and America’s place in this history is looking more and more like a footnote, especially with Barack Obama at the helm, steering us leftward, possibly into obscurity.

Those are my thoughts for now. Here are some additional musings from the conservative punditry:

Michael Barone: One America tends to be traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs, and suspicious of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly religious, less charitable, skeptical of business, and supportive of government as an instrument to advance liberal causes . . . there are going to be many Americans profoundly unhappy with the result of this election, whichever way it goes. Those on the losing side will be especially angry with those whose candidate won . . . Now the two Americas disagree, sharply. Government decisions enthuse one and enrage the other. The election may be over, but the two Americas are still not on speaking terms.

Jedidiah Bila: I always hear "We are a center-right country." No. A center-right country does not elect Barack Obama twice. Time to re-evaluate."

Mark Steyn: A lot of the telly chatter is about how Republicans don’t get the shifting demographics: America is becoming more of a “brown country,” as Kirsten Powers put it on Fox. But New Hampshire is overwhelmingly white — and the GOP still blew it. The fact is a lot of pasty, Caucasian, non-immigrant Americans have also “shifted,” and are very comfortable with Big Government, entitlements, micro-regulation, Obamacare and all the rest — and not much concerned with how or if it’s paid for.

Kevin D. Williamson: The lessons of Ohio are that Barack Obama is a skillful demagogue, that the ancients were wise to number envy among the deadly sins, and that offering Americans a check is a more fruitful political strategy than offering them the opportunity to take control of and responsibility for their own lives.

A terrible, horrible mistake

Heartbroken. Still trying to process.

If I keep this in perspective, from the standpoint of my faith, then....America's loss is a sign of the end times. Watch and see. The diminishing of this great country (which Obama is heralding) could signify the beginning of the end times.

That's my view of this.

But I had hoped....from a strictly human point of view, for my children's sake, that Mitt Romney would have turned things around.

Bottom line: we're doomed.

But Christ's kingdom is coming.

Obama is a terrible, horrible mistake, and he will destroy this wonderful country.

Someday the next generation will understand this, but may not be able to remember how it came about.

I fear for their future.

My heart is breaking.

Is 2012 the Most Important Election of our Lives?

Charles Krauthammer, writing in the National Review Online, believes it just might be. 

An Obama second term means that the movement toward European-style social democracy continues, in part by legislation, in part by executive decree. The American experiment — the more individualistic, energetic, innovative, risk-taking model of democratic governance — continues to recede, yielding to the supervised life of the entitlement state. 

If Obama loses, however, his presidency becomes a historical parenthesis, a passing interlude of overreaching hyper-liberalism, rejected by a center-right country that is 80 percent nonliberal. 

A Romney win, however, 

...could guide the country to the restoration of a more austere and modest government with more restrained entitlements and a more equitable and efficient tax code. Those achievements alone would mark a new trajectory — a return to what Reagan started three decades ago. 

Krauthammer concludes: 

Every four years we are told that the coming election is the most important of one’s life. This time it might actually be true. At stake is the relation between citizen and state, the very nature of the American social contract.

A brief but insightful analysis. Here's the entire article. 

 "The Choice," by Charles Krauthammer (National Review Online, November 1, 2012)

Why Am I Not Surprised?

So Obama's fiscal 2013 budget proposal allows for the interest rates on federally-funded student Stafford loans to revert from the current 3.4% back to 6.8%. The rates would kick in July 1, 2013 (after the November election). So even though Obama has been traipsing the country telling college students that his administration would leave the rates at their current level but that the Republicans would allow them to rise, in point of fact, Obama's own budget has already got the rate increase in place. In other words, his budget plans and the Republicans' plans on this matter are the same.

Obama is cynically counting on college students' tendency to take his words at face value. How many college students will bother to fact-check these claims (or do what I do, which is get my news and information from the New Media rather than rely on mainstream news outlets)? Obama understands that college kids can't be bothered to double-check his claims. Most of them have already decided he's on their side, so he can say whatever he likes and they won't question it. This article mentions a Harvard poll showing Obama leading Romney among college aged voters. I'm not surprised--I interact with thesekids  on a daily basis. Most of them are not inclined to be skeptical of Obama.

I'm getting weary of this president's deceptive claims, his demonization of good people (yes, Republicans), his outright lies, his distortions. Are there any twenty-somethings out there who can see through his trickery and start speaking out? Will my own kids? their friends? their friends' friends?

Show me college aged kids who think and don't just feel, and I'll show you a path out of the mess Obama has made of this country.

Obama's Budget Would Double the Interest Rates on Student Loans After the Election

What I Look for in a President

Read this in an article yesterday ("A Story Not Quite Right," by Kathleen Parker):

Apparently, during his campaign for president, Barack Obama made a powerful case for health care reform by talking about his mother who died from uterine and ovarian cancer. As the story goes, Obama's mother was denied insurance coverage because of her pre-existing condition. Parker quotes Obama as saying, "I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment."

Parker writes, "Thus, the story of Obama, Ann Dunham and corporate America's inhumanity toward pre-existing conditions became an inviolate holy trinity of immense political power."

Then, her bombshell: "If only it had been true."

The rest of the article describes how Obama, who actually acted as his mother's lawyer during her illness, basically fabricated the part of the story where his mother couldn't get insurance. In fact, Parker writes,  "According to Janny Scott, a New York Times writer and author of the book A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother, Dunham's cancer treatments were covered by her employer's insurance policy. She was denied disability insurance, which would have helped Dunham pay her deductible or unreimbursed medical costs. These apparently ran into the hundreds per month."

So the president embellished the story of his mother's insurance coverage in order to "sell" America on his health-care plan. Is that OK?

Not in my book. Whether it's right or wrong for insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions (and I believe it's wrong), the president of the United States manipulated the facts, fabricated part of his mother's story, in short, lied, in order to accomplish his objectives.

This tendency on President Obama's part--to distort and manipulate the truth in order to accomplish his objectives--is one of his failings, not only as president, but as a person.

I remember back when George W. Bush was president, Bush-haters (members of my extended family included) accused him of lying to justify the Iraq war. One famous bumper sticker went something like this: Clinton lied: Hillary cried. Bush lied: People died.

Very clever. The thing is, Bush didn't lie. President Bush did what he thought he had to do for the security and safety of the country, based on the knowledge and intelligence that he was faced with at the time. And it's important to note that he was not alone in making the decision. He assembled a coalition of other countries. He went to Congress, and Congress approved. One can't help but contrast Bush's approach to Obama's, which was not only to not ask Congress for approval to go to war in Libya but then to refuse to comply with Congress' request to seek its authority after 90 days because, according to Obama, "American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities." More rhetorical legerdemain.

The point is, it's easy to call someone a liar when their policies offend you. People hated George Bush, so the assumption that he "lied" about Iraq fit nicely into the narrative they had created about him, not only that he was inept, but that he was evil.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is, in fact, dishonest. Kathleen Parker was too gracious to call him a liar: "It is too much to say that Obama told an intentionally tall tale to mislead the public," she writes. "But it is also incorrect to say that he told a true story."

Maybe Obama doesn't lie outright. But he does midlead. He is disingenuous. He fabricates, distorts, and exaggerates. It's typically subtle, done for rhetorical effect, and generally accomplishes what he hopes to accomplish: i.e., shovel a bill through Congress, change the subject, place blame on others (usually his predecessor or members of the Republican party), buy time until he can come up with yet another misleading rhetorical appeal.

Another example of his duplicitiousness: telling a CBS news anchor that he couldn't guarantee that Social Security, disability, or veterans' checks would be delivered by August 3rd if Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling because "there may simply not be money in the coffers to do it." That sounds scary. Those who actually take the time to punch the the numbers, however, say there actually is "money in the coffers."

The federal government takes in roughly $180 billion every month. (It also borrows $135 billion a month.) Social Security payments are about $60 billion a month, payments to all military personnel (veterans and otherwise) are about $12 billion, and payments to disabled veterans are about $6 billion. That totals about $78 billion. To say that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers” to pay for these items is plainly false. One might even call it “engaging in scare tactics.” (Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard).

 I'm not sure which is more frustrating: that Barack Obama can't be trusted or that people apparently still take him at his word. I'm also not sure why people would vote to re-elect him. He's proven to be an ineffective and even petulant leader. But the one thing that completely disqualifies him in my book, trumping all other failings, is his dishonesty. I for one would not "re-hire" him as my president. And that's what this next presidential election is (or should be) all about: deciding whether to "re-hire" Barack Obama as our president.

Give me an honest man for president, even one who makes mistakes, over a duplicitous one, any day.