Four More Years? Some Predictions

Greetings from the Left Coast, which, once again, has lived up to its nickname by remaining solidly "blue."

Well, the people have spoken. And, incredibly, they have decided to give Barack Obama four more years. The second-guessing and what-went-wrong analyses will go on for at least that long. Certainly the media had a lot to do with it. If they had done their job in the first place, he wouldn't have been elected in 2008, let alone re-elected with the economy in the dismal shape it's in today. All you need to do is go back and review what the media said about the state of the economy in the run-up to the 2004 election, when, in fact, it was in much better shape than it is today, and compare it to their reporting this campaign season. Add to that their deliberate inattention to the Benghazi story, making it easy for their man to run out the clock, and Barack Obama becomes the first president in modern times to be re-elected with a smaller percentage of the vote than he got the first time around, despite having run the most despicable campaign I can remember in my 60 years on this planet.

In four years, we went from "hope and change" to seniors threatening to "burn this motherf***er down" and c**k-punch Romney if he won. We saw Obama follow precisely the path he accused others of in the last campaign: "When you don't have a record to run on, you paint the other guy as someone people should run away from." We saw the phoney "war on women," which was given legitimacy by a compliant media. We saw Romney falsely accused of indirectly killing a man's wife by being responsible for taking away her health insurance. We saw him falsely accused of wanting to take away women's access to contraceptives. Elect Romney, we were told, and he would overturn Roe v. Wade and completely eliminate "a woman's right to choose," which was patently ridiculous, because it is not possible for any president to simply overturn a Supreme Court decision. Republicans, we were told, were for dirty air and dirty water, and for letting autistic children fend for themselves.

But apparently enough voters believed all of that to put Obama over the top - a realization that saddens me. It isn't pleasant to realize that so many of my fellow citizens are that susceptible to lies and manipulation. We may have had an excuse in 2008 in that the media didn't do its job in telling us who Obama was and what he believed. But we've seen him govern for four years now, and we've seen that he is, as some of us tried to say in the beginning, an extreme left-wing ideologue who wants to reshape the nation to fit his ideology and has no desire to compromise. We've seen the results of his four years: continuing high unemployment, anemic economic growth, disdain for the separation of powers, and a willingness to simply ignore laws that he finds inconvenient to the pursuit of his goals. There is no excuse this time for not knowing who Barack Obama is. But we re-elected him anyway.

It's possible that we've finally reached the tipping point in the electorate that we've been warned about. When nearly 50% of the population pays no federal income tax, and 10% of the population pays 70% of all the federal income tax collected, we are in a dangerous place as a nation. Why shouldn't a large portion of the population vote for bigger government and more entitlements if they're not the ones who have to pay for it? If you add in those who simply can't be bothered to educate themselves on the issues beyond the 5-second sound bites on the six o'clock news, those people may now be in the majority. Only time will tell. And if you think I'm overstating the case, consider that the top Google search trend in the few days before election day was "who is running for president." Most of those searches came out of North Carolina, with Ohio and Pennsylvania coming in second and third, respectively. All three, of course, being "swing states" that were enormously important in the election, and that had been saturated by ads for months.

But, nevertheless, today's reality is that Barack Obama will be our President for four more years. So what should we expect? Here are some predictions that I really hope are wrong. We'll circle back in a few years and see how many I got right:

• The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) is here to stay. (This statement really isn't a prediction, it's now a fact of life.) Four years from now, we will be much too far down that road to unwind things, or to do more than implement some minor tweaks. As Obama knew all along, by the time the majority of Americans find out they've been lied to about the cost of the program, their ability to keep their own insurance if they like it, etc., it will be too late. It only remains to be seen how much damage will be done to the economy from companies deciding not to hire new employees because of the cost of providing them with health care, or cutting them back to fewer than 30 hours per week so they aren't required to do so, or dumping their health plans altogether and pushing their employees to the health insurance exchanges because it's less expensive for the employers to pay the annual fine than it is to pay the premiums.
• Sometime in the next four years, unless stopped by an Israeli attack, Iran will obtain nuclear weapons.
• The Muslim Brotherhood will turn Egypt into an Islamist state and renounce Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.
• At some point in the next four years, possibly as a result of increasing instability in the Middle East, the average price of a gallon of gas will top $5.00.
• Unemployment will not drop below 6% in the next four years, unless the number is manipulated by more and more people giving up on finding a job and dropping out of the labor force. We will be told that this is the "new normal."
• Economic growth will continue at its current anemic level of roughly 2% per year, which will not be enough to return us to pre-recession employment levels by the end of Obama's second term.
• Federal deficits will continue to average $1 trillion per year.
• Sometime in the next four years, America's credit rating will be downgraded again.
• President Obama will continue to blame Republicans in general, and former President Bush in particular, for our ongoing economic problems.

As I said, I sincerely hope that I'm wrong on all of the above. We'll find out over the next four years. Thanks for listening.

Liberal Myth Number...Oh, Heck, I Lost Count...

Greetings from the Left Coast!

One of the many liberal talking points that just won't die is how our economic problems and ballooning deficit are due to all the spending on those "illegal" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I recently had the following comment exchange with one of my Liberal Facebook Friends ("LFF"):

ME: (...Facebook status update grumping about references to the "cost" of tax cuts, as though our tax money was something the government is entitled to, and it's some kind of sacrifice for them to take less of it...)

LFF: "I think they want the top 2% to start paying their part so we can get out of debt or something like that."

ME: "I think if you run the numbers, you'll find that you could tax the top 2% at a 100% tax rate and we still couldn't get out of debt at the current level of spending. But that's another issue - I was objecting to the use of the word 'cost' in the context of a tax cut."

LFF: "Good point.... Sadly. I hate to think how long it will take to pay off these wars and all the bailouts. None of which have done any good for the [people] of America."

ME: "According to the Congressional Research Service, the cumulative cost of the War On Terror, from 9/11 through the FY2010 defense appropriation, is approximately $1 Trillion. That includes all of the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. This year's budget deficit alone is more than that. So it ain't the wars that are causing all the budget problems. (See http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)"

LFF: ...(recap of how government debt grew from 2000 - 2007...) "Increased spending was needed last year to boost the economy out of recession. There are plenty facts to support that this is working. To ensure the economy did not falter, spending has continued this year. So by 2011, deficit spending should be reduced. The most recent budget forecast from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) showed the budget deficit at $1.3 trillion in FY 2011, more than the $1.17 trillion deficit for FY 2010, but down from the $1.7 trillion deficit for FY 2009."

LFF: "By the way… Babyboomers paid extra into Social Security to ensure there would be enough funds to support our retirement. Well it’s all gone and do you know what it was spent on? Yep. the stupid, winless wars all about greed."(...more stuff on the Social Security mess...)

ME: "I think you're making my point for me. The single-year budget deficits in FY2009, FY2010, and projected deficit for 2011, are all greater than the total amount spent on Iraq and Afghanistan in the last nine years. The War On Terror represents only a small part of the spending problem."

LFF: (Silence)

Now you, gentle reader, have no doubt spotted a number of other points in LFF's comments that could have been challenged:

• Reference to the top 2% "paying their part." For the love of God, the top 1% of income earners already pay nearly 40% of all income taxes collected, and the top 5% pay over 50%, while 47% of households pay no income tax at all. How much do they have to pay before they're "paying their part?"
• The comment that none of the wars and bailouts have done any good. I'm tempted to agree on the bailouts, but the wars haven't done any good for the people of America? That comment alone is worth several blog posts.
• The comment that increased spending was needed last year to boost us out of recession. Really? Can I see a show of hands of all of you who feel boosted out of the recession?
• There are plenty of facts to support that this is working? Care to share any of them?
• By 2011, deficit spending should be reduced. Yes, I believe it will be, but only because so many Democrats are going to be kicked out of office in November.
• The "stupid winless wars" were all about greed. That's odd, because I thought they were all about terrorist attacks on American soil that killed thousands of our fellow citizens.

And that, gentle reader, illustrates one of the biggest challenges of talking to your liberal friends: it's difficult to stick to one subject, because so many fallacies get dumped on you so quickly that your first reaction is to just walk away shaking your head and wondering what universe they've been living in for the last several years. Be patient with them, and try to stick with whatever the original point was without getting sidetracked. If that doesn't work, you can always walk away shaking your head.

Thanks for listening.