Bankruptcy
It appears that Barack Obama has won another four years in office. Despite what many consider to be one of the weakest and most incompetent presidencies in history, the American people have decided to stick with this man. Even worse, the Democrats look like they will gain seats in the Senate, even though it was the Democratic majority in that Senate that has refused to pass a budget — as required by law — for the last three years. For that dereliction of duty, the American people have decided to reward them with more power.
Overall, it appears that the polls that favored Democrats in their sampling were actually capturing the tone of the country. The public wants big government and a restriction in freedom. 2010 was a fluke, not a trend. I was wrong.
We are stuck with Obamacare. We are stuck with trillion dollar deficits. We are stuck with bankruptcy. I have little hope now for the near future. It will probably take fifty years or more to fix the problems that the past four years and the next four years will create.
This is not even a conservative perspective. No policy can survive, even good leftwing policy, when the government is bankrupt. And with trillion dollar deficits the new normal, we are guaranteed that the government will go bankrupt. And it will take everything else down with it.
Even worse, this willingness of the American public and its intellectual class to ignore this reality, to make believe that trillion dollar deficits don’t matter, suggests an intellectual bankruptcy that is even more appalling. For you can’t fix a problem if you refuse to face it.
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Have to agree.
Certainly this is really bad for the nation. Obama and his senior staff have said his plan for a post win was, “now the republicans will give in”. Which it certainly won’t. They won reelection in sticking to what they are doing, and even Romney won the popular vote or was a virtual tie..
Obamas plans are:
– massive across the boards tax increases on jan 1
– gutting the military nuclear/conventional/etc
– further elimination of medical insurance availability.
– Further economic and employment declines.
Obama said he most admired FDR, who drove the country into the longest deapest depression in history. As well as a military so denuded that they went into WW-II training with wooden guns. (Internationally we seem to be drifting toward another world war scale conflict.) It seems Obama could really do more damage then FDR.
An election bought with bailouts in Michigan and Ohio, and federal jobs in Virginia. Poor Israel faces the prospect of dealing with Iran alone. Nothing to stop federal bureaucrats from wreaking havoc on our nation. Executive orders that can’t be overriden. Another liberal Supreme Court appointment? A continuation of POTUS’ war on religion. This is an unmitigated disaster. People may look back on this as the darkest day in American history.
I weep.
They(47%) have realized they can vote themselves a raise. And the nation will suffer for it. And then they too will suffer for it, and blame the other people.
I’m no happier about the results than anyone else, but, you know what, we’re stuck with it.
These are the cards we’re dealt.
We can go through the Five Stages of Grief, or we can just accept what is, and move on. As someone once said “Why are you arguing what’s already been decided?” My opinion is that in the next four years the US may well be the least crappy dung heap in the world, but that isn’t the same thing as success. The Obama win has strengthened my resolve: the best revenge is doing well.
“even though it was the Democratic majority in that Senate that has refused to pass a budget — as required by law — for the last three years.”
That can’t be true, surely we would have heard about that during the election.
To some degree Republicans and Democrats are speaking past each other and not too each other. Whatever platform Romney was running on was not what Obama was running against.
If you go read HuffPo or many of the other liberal sites, you will see stories about how this election was a victory over racism. They actually think that this election was between old racist white men and everyone else.
The Republicans, TP, and even libertarians need to develop a strategy to counteract the racial stereotypes applied to them by Democrats.
Watch this video from Brandon Darby, he gets it, and then google his name and read the rest of his story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2YjRdt2koPY
In reference to the Democratic majority’s refusal to pass a budget for the past three years you wrote “That can’t be true, surely we would have heard about that during the election.”
See these posts:
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/tomorrow-will-mark-1200-days-since-the-senate-led-by-the-democrats-passed-a-budget
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/senate-democrats-dont-even-bother-to-show-up-for-a-budget-meeting-called-by-their-own-leader
It is a fact. Moreover, because filabusters are not allowed on budget bills, you only need a simple majority to pass a budget. All the Democrats have to do is put a budget together and pass it with their majority. Thus, the only reason the Democrats haven’t passed a budget is because they don’t want to.
It is my theory that by forcing continuing resolutions, the Democrats are also forcing a continuation of the stimulus package passed with their last budget in 2009, thus keeping federal spending as high as possible.
They now own it and no one to blame. This county will get four more years of the same and worse. So be it. It will only clarify the true differences that no spin or rose-colored glesses can hide. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and half this country will learn that fact the hard way. We will rebuild and recover.
There was an element of sarcasm to my first paragraph.
I really cant understand how not passing a budget in three years didn’t come up in the election, or the debt, deficits, war in Afghanistan, and any number of important issues that would have been front and center had an R been president.
As disturbing and foreboding as the general election result is…there is still a great deal of work to be done and much that can be accomplished. The Republicans retain the house and half the country is still very Republican. There is a big place in our country for the values and principles of the party. It’s time to re-craft our message and to do a better job of convincing Americans. It will be done and l look forward to being a part of the generation of Republican leaders that will do so.
Anyone who has been part of the intellectual world understands. I was in the movie business, then taught at the School of Visual Art and New York University in New York, then became a science journalist and a book writer. Trust me, these communities are partisan to the extreme, tilted toward the Democratic Party. Worse, they are closed-minded about their positions. They call themselves intellectuals, but will not entertain the slightest doubt or criticism of the policies of the Democratic Party or the left under any condition.
The result, they work to get Democrats elected. They will do anything to protect their party, even if it means refusing to cover the most basic scandals. Thus, the lack of coverage of the budget, the debt, the deficits, Libya, gun-running to Mexico, etc.
The day after an election is always tough for a large group of people, and in this case, just about 50% of the country. So immediate responses aren’t always good. But I’ll offer mine:
1. This country is changing, both demographically and maybe even on issues. If the Republican Party wants to remain relevant, it better accept those facts. The change will be even greater in 2016. And it has forever been thus. Parties had to change when blacks got the vote, when women got the vote, when there were a greater number of immigrants from European countries like Ireland and Italy, and so on. Evolve, or die. Dare I say it…evolution.
2. If the take-away from this election for the Republicans is “we just did not do an effective job of getting our message out,” rather than “we need to review what our message is,” say hello to President Hillary Clinton in 2016. Just my opinion.
3. Thats not to say the Republicans should ignore messaging. I said once before here that you underestimate the skill of the Obama (and now Democratic) ground game at your own peril. I know this. The Rove style that was so effective for Bush has been eclipsed by the Plouffe style. Their use of modern communication methods and polling analysis needs to be emulated, not ignored.
4. If you don’t think a review of issues is needed, I suggest that you also consider this. The Democrats won re-election for the President, gained in the Senate, and it is now looking like they will also gain in the House. But also review many of the ballot initiatives this time around: marriage equality was on the ballot in a number of states and passed. Even attempts to limit marriage equality were rebuffed. Marijuana legalization made gains. And I have to say, this is the first election that I have seen the Democrats so outspoken (at least in the recent past) about the right to choose. And it certainly did not hurt them.
5. And lastly, its time to move on from the attempts at de-legitamizing the Obama Presidency. The birther, non-Christian, Trump distractions. I really think by far the majority of Americans are rejecting this nonsense. Republicans are much better sticking to their knitting: fiscal responsibility.
But what do I know…I live in a house by the shoreline in New York.
Well said, Joe.
Obama won the popular vote by 2.5 million votes. There is no sugar coating this….the country got what it asked for.
Time to stock up on gold and silver.
This is one of the saddest days in my life. The majority of voters believed that the small petty man occupying the Oval Office was worthy of being President of the USA. I can understand his first term; people didn’t know what he was. There is no excuse now. People knew the man and what he stood for and yet still voted for him. The game is over. Thirty years of dumbing down produced the results we saw yesterday. The people are corrupt, the institutions are corrupt and the Government is corrupt. All that is left is to sit back and wait for the eventual collapse. Lets hope there is something better on the other side.
>.. half this country will learn that fact the hard way. We will rebuild and recover.
Europe never did, and is making no progress toward it.
Sometimes empires, nations, cultures, just decide to die.
I’ld argue that Romney was a bad person to deliver the message, since he never believed in the message.
>..say hello to President Hillary Clinton in 2016.
No chance. The dems she thought were her alies conspired against her to get in extreamist Obama, are still in power, still fighting for his goals. The Clintons are to moderate for the current democratic party.
Sad but true.
Agree big time. But I can’t see much reason to be hopeful of the “something better on the other side”. Were not as a nation going to be in much shape to build a better.
Romney missed a golden opportunity to broaden the GOP base by choosing Rubio as his running mate. I totally agree that with changing demographics, the Republican Party has to play the Dem game by building coalitions of voting blocks. There simply aren’t enough conservatives to win in the manner of Reagan or the Bushes.. And they need to fire Reince Priebus.
Yes Kelly, but we’re not Europe…at least not yet. These next four years have the potential to perfectly frame big government statism as unsustainable by the machinations of our re-elected, inept, poser-in-chief.
I’m actually relieved and content with this outcome for several reasons: Firstly, if Romney had won, he would have been subjected to double the lambasting that GW Bush and Reagan received by the media right out of the gate with no honeymoon; Secondly, the establishment republicans have lost me for good and I am registering as a conservative in my state of SD; Thirdly, I want to see Obama own his last termin office and allof the dissappointment and failure it wil spawn; and finally it will offer the chance for true free market fiscal conservativism to highlight in sharp contrast the absolute failure that is Keynsian economics and its fellow traveller socialism to that of economic freedom and the principle of subsidiarity.
I’m not working to fix this economy.
Obama will get NO credit from my effort.
I can also see a large group of major businesses who have been sitting on cash for the last few years finally making the decision of what and where to invest it and they will invest it someplace with a more favorable environment than America is soon to become.
Watch American companies move more and more production and headquarters out of here.
David,
Mitt Romney didn’t miss a thing. He ran a great campaign, and he was winning. This is a preliminary conclusion based on a gut feeling — no more — but if you look carefully at the election results, in terms of the numbers of votes cast in the swing states, you start to see a stunning and frightening trend. Obama’s numbers were substantially less than they were in 2008 across the board, but Romney’s numbers were LOWER than McCain’s. That’s an impossibility. We might have to consider the unthinkable, that this administration stole the election by committing fraud on a massive scale. Our country might be in much deeper trouble than we think.
We’ve all know the the Democrats participate and secretly delight in voter fraud. What you suggest is what most consider the unthinkable…massive systemic voter fraud in the millions. With millions of illegal aliens able to vote with a utility bill as proof of residence alone, is it any wonder. Another thing to consider is the impetus for Obama to grant amnesty asap in order to legitimize these felons and make it harder politically for the Repubs to rectify. Demographis are destiny. The muslims understand this as well as our fellow South and Central American friends. You destroy western civilization by out breeding and overwhelming.
Thats because TOTAL voter turnout in 2012 was lower than in 2008 in every state other than Iowa. But have at it if you think voter fraud is what determined this election.
In this case I generally agree with Jim. Though I have no doubt that there was voter fraud, and that almost all of that fraud came from the Democrats, as there is a lot of recent evidence that they seem to support such behavior, I don’t think the results were significantly influenced by that fraud. I think this election instead tells us a great deal about our country and its electorate. Unfortunately, what it tells us about half the country is not good.
The dems can keep it up until there’s only one republican left and then everything will be that persons fault.
It is 1984.
yes . latinos . blacks . women
#5 yes . I was surprised to see amendment 64 pass in here in colorado
i thought he was going to win , but it felt close right up to election day . I’m still excited about america’s future , i don’t think the government will become that much worse . both sides need big money
I maintain that Romney ran a poor campaign. He let Obama get away with a lot, especially in the 3rd debate. His shining moment [Romney’s] was the 1st debate. One or two polls also showed that Hurricane Sandy and Obama ‘acting Presidential’ really made a difference. Hard to swallow that but the polling seems to prove it.
It is the true dumbing down of America. Which began long ago with the takeover of the education system in America. Plus Bush II, rightfully, has left a bad taste in America’s collective mouth. The so-called ‘Obama-phone’ was actually started by Bush II. Bush II have us TARP I, auto bailouts, no child left behind, Medicare Part D, an interminable war in Iraq and Afghanistan and ‘nation building’ in those two nations.
That a Republican Congress rolled over for Bush II on all this and more also remains a factor. That the Repubs had both houses of Congress and did not a thing about immigration; so the voters say, we might as well have real Dems in office. That the House remains in Repubs hands, with a very weak John Boehner as Speaker, is an [historical] oddity.
The House can refuse any additional funds for Obamacare, but will these weaklings? We’ll see.